Patients need to be recognised for the contribution they can make to offering solutions to system failures and to be given more active encouragement to raise concerns without fear of recrimination.

We actively promote being open with patients and families and apply the Duty of Candour but we need to consider effective educational strategies to support patients and carers to be equal partners in our patient safety strategy.

Relying on incident reporting systems to measure patient safety will currently rule out the involvement of our patients as they don't have access to our system and have to rely on other mechanisms to raise concerns.  It is therefore important that user complaints are viewed as an aspect of our patient safety intelligence and measurement.

In line with the Nursing and Midwifery Strategy we will develop services that support and recognise carers and family members’ contribution to patient care.  Case note reviews or stories presented by patients or carers will provide valuable information into the effectiveness of our systems from a user perspective.

Providing patients and carers with knowledge of what to expect of the healthcare system should help them to understand when things are going wrong and to alert staff to take prompt action.