MRSA Action UK: Health Select Committee inquiry into patient safety
Monday, 21 July 2008 12:00 AM
On the same day MRSA Action UK submitted a paper to the House of Lords calling for a public inquiry into Health Care Associated Infections the Chair of the Health Select Committee announced an Inquiry into Patient Safety.
MRSA Action UK was very heartened to hear that the Health Select Committee is to conduct an inquiry into patient safety. We believe that among the issues to be examined are the role of human error and poor clinical judgment. In addition, the impact of the public perceptions of risk on NHS policy, and the effectiveness of Trust / Management boards in establishing a safety culture.
As the patients representative on Lord Darzi's review on the National Working Group that focused on Quality. Our Charity has constantly campaigned for safer standards within the National Health Service and Patient Quality of care. Patient Safety must be the corner stone of the NHS for the 21st Century. As the NHS celebrates its Diamond Jubilee year this great institution has provided many advantages to the health of the people of the United Kingdom. Since the creation of this institution, the pressures placed upon it have never been as great as they are today, and as medical science has progressed relentlessly so have the demands placed on our National Health Service.
The founding principles of free Healthcare for the people of the United Kingdom are still as relevant today just as they where when the National Health Service was founded in 1948. Those principles were that no one should have to worry about receiving the best medical treatment irrespective of any conditions they have. The quality of care and the safety of the patient were just as important in those days and have to be today.
The greatest asset within this organisation is not the infrastructure, or the materials within it, but that of the systems of work, and people who work in the National Health Service, and as such this asset has the ability to set the standard of care and the safety a patient receives whilst being treated within the National Health Service. As an asset its people have corresponding strengths to make this institution a national icon, but in the same breath this very same asset can posses the same corresponding weaknesses that fail those that use this institution namely the people of the United Kingdom.
It does not matter how efficiently the hospital functions; how good the training, supervision, and procedures are; and how well the best worker, Doctor, Nurse, Cleaner or Manager perform his or her duties, people cannot perform better than the organisation supporting them. Therefore, to improve and preserve the hospitals resistance to human error and related events, defence-in-depth with respect to human activities is necessary.
The National Health Service has evolved greatly over the last 60 years with the way it treats those that use this service, however the same corresponding evolution has to be applied to those that work in the Health Service. Adverse events caused by human error do leave a legacy of pain and destruction on the lives that they touch, and although we know that, you can never eliminate all adverse events we can and must mitigate the effects of the great majority of them in the future.
MRSA Action UK welcomes the Health Select Committee inquiry into "Patient Safety" and the role of human error and poor clinical judgment on the effect of patient safety. In addition, we are very pleased that the impact of the public perceptions of risk on NHS policy, and the effectiveness of Trust / Management boards in establishing a safety culture will be scrutinised by the inquiry of the Health Select Committee.
Derek Butler
Chair
MRSA Action UK
Registered Charity No 1115672
Tel No 07762 741114
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