Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the best mental health trusts in the country at reporting patient safety incidents.
The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has published summary data on patient safety incident reports from each NHS trust or local health board in England and Wales. The data, which summarises incidents reported to the NPSA’s Reporting and Learning System (RLS) in the period between April 2008 and September 2008, places the Trust in the top 25% of organisations at reporting incidents and at a position of 8th best out of 66 mental health trusts in the country.
A high reporting rate indicates a stronger reporting and learning culture. The average reporting rate (per 1,000 bed days) of similar trusts is 12.02. Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s reporting rate was 36.31. Data released also showed a consistent number of incidents submitted in each of the last 12 months, indicating that an organisation has a robust process for submitting data.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust’s Chief Executive Mike Cooke said; “We are very proud to be one of the top trusts at reporting patient safety incidents. We have a strong culture of reporting, always aim to be open and honest and support our staff to achieve this. By reporting incidents we can endeavour to learn from them. We make every effort to prevent incidents, but when they do occur, ensure we react and manage the situation to limit any harm caused and I am delighted to see that the majority of these reported incidents were of low or no harm at all.”
51.3% of the reported incidents were of low harm and 45.3% resulted in no harm at all.
The most common forms of incidence in the Trust were due to self harming (35.6%) and disruptive or aggressive behaviour (25.8%). These results reflect the nature of a proportion of the patients within the Trust – some of whom are highly volatile and have strong tendencies to self harm or harm others around them.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare has also been prompt at reporting following an incident; the average days between an incident occurring and being submitted to the RLS for the period April 2008 to September 2008 is 57 days: the average time elapsed in the Trust over the same period was 11 days.
Consistent, high reporting, provides organisations with more opportunities to learn from incidents and improve safety. Research has found that high reporting is associated with other indicators of a strong safety culture.
Speaking about the release of the organisation level data, Martin Fletcher, Chief Executive, NPSA, said: “We believe that an organisation with a high reporting rate is much more likely to have a strong commitment to patient safety and high safety standards.”
