No matter what your role or where you work, an understanding of the essentials for patient safety is important because we all have a role to play in supporting the NHS in keeping patients safe.

Colleagues across NHS England can now complete new patient safety training modules to learn about how and why patient safety incidents happen, and what we should consider in our own roles to support the NHS to improve safety. In response to feedback from users, updates to the patient safety syllabus training include improved usability, interactivity, and navigation and a certificate of completion. There are also five new sector specific patient safety case studies covering good practice, human factors, risk, systems thinking and safety culture in the following areas: Mental Health, Maternity, Management and administration, Primary Care and Acute Care.

The new modules support all colleagues, not just those who provide direct care to patients, as everyone can have an impact on patient safety through their decisions and actions. All of our roles in health and care, from office based to hands on care, impact in some way on the safety of patients. That is why it is important that we embed patient safety in everything we do.

The training has been introduced as part of the National Patient Safety Syllabus, with an aim that the entire NHS workforce understands how we all support patient safety, and consider this in their roles, no matter where they work.

Level 1 and 2 of the updated Patient Safety Syllabus training are available on ESR, Local Management Systems, and e-learning for healthcare.

Accessing the elearning

You can access the elearning here: https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/patient-safety-syllabus-training/

Get in contact with the programme: patientsafety@hee.nhs.uk