Get PSIRF Ready with Radar Healthcare

PSIRF has a broader scope and focuses more on preventing incidents from occurring, while the SIF (Serious Incident Framework) primarily focused on managing serious incidents after they had already occurred.

The PSIRF is designed to improve patient safety and encourage a learning culture within the NHS by providing a more comprehensive approach to incident management. It includes a wider range of incidents that need to be reported, including those that do not result in harm to patients but have the potential to do so. The PSIRF also places a greater emphasis on the importance of learning from incidents and implementing changes to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

As part of the PSIRF, the PSIIs or Patient Safety Incident Investigations are carried out to improve systems. They involve investigating patient safety incidents to pinpoint both how and why they happen.

Data collection and analysis play a large part to help identify underlying system-based causes. Once identified, improvement plans are put in place to address these system issues and therefore help improve patient safety in the National Health Service.

The NHS provides tools and methods for PSII including incident mapping worksheets and contributing factors classification.

Between March 2020 and June 2022, the NHS worked with a small number of early adopters to pilot the framework in their organisations by creating Patient Safety Incident Response Plans (PSIRP). These early adopters were in each region of NHS England and worked with the NHS and one national organisation to trial PSIRF.

Early adopters include:

• Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
• London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• NHS Derby and Derbyshire CCG/STP
• Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Care UK (Independent provider of healthcare in prisons)

For a full list, take a look at the NHS website.