Welsh safety campaign reports success

The chief executive of the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has said patient safety is improving across Wales as a result of the 1000 Lives Campaign. The latest figures showed that over 230 lives were saved in the first year of the campaign, while 13,000 episodes of harm were prevented in the first six months. Commenting on the results, campaign director, Dr Jonathon Gray, said: “We know that small changes in working practice have the potential to make a big impact on the safety of care provided. These figures reflect the difference frontline staff are making to improve both the quality and safety of the care patients receive.” Launched on 21 April 2008, the aim of the campaign was to save an additional 1,000 lives and prevent up to 50,000 cases of patient harm across Wales by April 2010. All NHS Trusts and Local Health Boards in Wales have signed up to take part in the campaign, which places a strong emphasis on improving leadership for quality, reducing healthcareassociated infections, enhancing standards of critical care, strengthening medicines management as well as increasing the quality of general medical and surgical care. Incidents that have been averted include: prescribing errors, development of deep vein thrombosis and internal bleeding following surgery.

 “Transforming care at the bedside” has also been introduced as a pilot area, and focusses on freeing nurses from non-value added activity. This enables nurses to focus on improving care, safety, leadership and teamwork. Key developments have included the implementation of the World Health Organisation Surgical Checklist to make surgery safer, the introduction of “care bundles” to reduce the number of ventilator-associated pneumonias on intensive care wards, as well as action to reduce pressure ulcers, with one pilot ward reporting no ulcers for over 500 days.

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