Our processes allow us to very quickly identify and respond to risk factors, safety issues and supply disruption that has the potential to cause harm. By focusing on quality and safety, we are making it easier for the NHS to put patients first.
Contact Us
For any queries or questions on Patient Safety please contact:
Patient Safety Team
You can also submit a product complaint.
The Patient Safety function within NHS Supply Chain sits within the Resilience team of the Supply Chain Directorate. As patient safety is a defining principle of how we do business, the patient safety function’s success relies upon working cross-functionally across the entire business.
The Patient Safety team is made up of two registered nurses. Their clinical experience spans over 50 years and covers clinical areas such as emergency medicine, cardiology, general, orthopaedic, gynaecology, ENT surgery, theatres and anaesthetics, critical care, rehabilitation and elderly medicine, Paediatrics and neonates, GI, and acute medicine. As nurses, they understand human anatomy and systems, products, how they are used, and the general effects and desired clinical outcomes required from the products we sell to the NHS.
Latest Patient Safety News
Enhancing Patient Outcomes and Supporting Mental Health Through Diagnostics
Riddhi Karia from the Care Pathway Team discusses our commitment to patient safety and diagnostic accuracy.
Safer Sharps
NHS Supply Chain has a vital role in promoting the safe procurement, use and management of sharps within healthcare settings.
The Collective Little Things NHS Supply Chain Do To Make Products Safer For Patients
Tracey Cammish, our Patient Safety and Clinical Intelligence Lead, writes about a recent patient safety issue with suction catheters.
ePatient Safety at NHS Supply Chain
Risk stratified and clinically assured frameworks
Working in collaboration with our category experts, all new products are clinically assured as fit for purpose, safe and meeting end user needs.
Our assurance framework ensures that each procurement is underpinned by evidence, and expert input from a wide range of stakeholders.
This includes patients and users, as well as national clinical expert bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT).
Essential specifications and human factors design
Our collaborative due diligence process takes a holistic view of specification development – considering factors such as technical and physical requirements, safety standards and human factors.
Human factors describes all of the different elements that can have an impact on the delivery of care. It can include anything from our environment to the way a product is designed, and even our own personal knowledge and experience.
To improve safety it is essential that human factor and design principles are embedded into the specifications for devices. Focusing on how products are actually used plays a vital role in ensuring that products and devices will have a positive impact on patient care.
Information for Clinical Choice
Providing all of the technical information in one place makes it easier to select the right product. The criteria are provided in the form of a Product Matrix and Support Document.
See our Useful Links section for ‘Information for Clinical Choice’ documents, which can help us to:
- Share safety insights and improve a detailed understanding of the products provided.
- Empower clinicians to overcome the challenges of choosing the right product for their needs.
Designed by registered clinicians, the documents are the result of direct engagement with healthcare providers who are using the products to treat patients.
Our clinicians also work closely with resilience teams, patient safety, category managers, suppliers and clinical experts within the NHS. This ensures that any patient safety risk that could be caused by a product being unavailable is minimised.
All of the available options are assessed to understand the impact and the mitigations available to ensure patient safety at the point of care.
Working with national stakeholders
We have a responsibility to share knowledge, to enable and support system responses to patient safety issues. This helps to align NHS Supply Chain patient safety intelligence with the wider system.
We work closely with our colleagues at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), NHS England Patient Safety team and Health Service Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB), amongst others.
Supporting national supply chain resilience, patient safety is a key part of our resilience function. We ensure that the ‘so what’ clinical impact of supply disruptions is heard, and considered as part of the resolution process.
Managing product complaints or safety concerns quickly when they arise
We respond quickly, assess and deal with issues effectively, and learn lessons for the future.
Each complaint is reviewed against a scoring matrix, which helps us to understand exactly what (if any) safety risk is associated with it, and determines how we deal with it.
Complaints may reach us from a number of routes. We have a team of clinical experts in house who work closely with our NHS partners, supporting the flow of information in relation to safety concerns.
Care pathway leads are the clinical interface between organisational health care professionals and procurement teams. Their primary focus is customer and patient need.
Supplier relationship management
We allocate resources to the right relationships in order to engage in effective joint business planning and collaboration.
Having a structured Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) framework and approach enables us to drive a holistic and structured way of working with suppliers.
This approach helps to deliver growth, value and innovation, and minimise risk. Having strong relationships with suppliers means we can work closely with them to share intelligence on patient safety incidents and work together swiftly to respond.
Learning lessons for the future
Proactively, the intelligence we gather that is linked to product supply disruptions also feeds the intelligence linked to framework renewals. This ensures that resilience is embedded in new frameworks.
We are continuously learning and growing that intelligence, which in turn is growing the resilience intelligence we have within NHS Supply Chain.