Implementing the Five Pledges in HCT
Pledge / We will:Put patient safety first /
- Continue our commitment to embed a positive patient safety culture throughout the organisation.
- Improve patient pathways for handover and discharge by working more closely with all our partners.
- Reduce medication errors and encourage reporting of all medication incidents including near misses supported by a medicines incident working group.
- Improve our early recognition of sepsis and embed the Sepsis Six pathway across our community hospitals
- Continue our focus to reduce category 2 to 4 pressure ulcers and eliminate category 3 and 4 pressure ulcers.
- Continue to maintain a reduction in the number of falls in our community hospitals.
Continually learn /
- Continue to monitor patient feedback via surveys, questionnaires and complaints to identify learning from trends and themes.
- Continue to monitor organisational key performance indicators for patient safety and patient experience using measurement tools, audit and surveys.
- Encourage our staff to report all risks regarding patient incidents in order to identify safety concerns and take appropriate action.
- Ensure all medication incidents are reported and reflective learning is in place to prevent future occurrence.
- Identify areas of learning and use various methods to disseminate and embed safe practice across the Trust.
Be honest /
- Continue to embed a Duty of Candour to be open and honest with patients and their carers.
- Publish safety performance data on our website for the public to see how we perform.
- Display our key safety performance indicators for patients and the public on our ward and clinic areas.
- Support and encourage our staff to report medication incidents and inform patients of errors at the earliest possible opportunity to ensure they understand why it has happened.
- Continue to ensure all complainants are offered meetings with our staff or Executive Directors to ensure an open and honest approach.
Pledge / We will:
Collaborate /
- Continue to be committed to working across healthcare via our Transformation programmes such as HomeFirst and integrated working.
- Focus on joining up care for the frail elderly through our comprehensive geriatric assessment and on-going management plan that ‘moves’ with the patient.
- Draw on our collective expertise in community healthcare to deliver learning and improvement that is shared with our partners
- Involve patients and commissioners as partners in care pathway redesign across all health services in Hertfordshire.
Be supportive /
- Increase learning when things go wrong and share learning across the organisation and partners to improve patient care
- Embed a culture of clinical supervision and reflective practice to enable staff to learn from experience.
- Develop our programme of celebrating success in order to share with staff and our partners.
- Establish an online staff portal housing key learning from serious and high level incident investigations
- Support all our teams to develop information that demonstrates improved patient care and outcomes.