The relevance of law to patient safety education and training

In the new NHS Patient Safety Strategy, (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2019) there is a discussion of patient safety education and training. This makes the point that although safety is now better understood there are significant numbers of people who still have a limited understanding of ‘safety science’. A commitment is made to have a universal patient safety syllabus and training programme for the whole of the NHS. Health Education England (HEE) will have a pivotal role:

‘HEE will work with NHS Improvement and NHS England to produce the best informed and safety-focused workforce in the world. Developing a consistent national patient safety syllabus to apply across a variety of competence levels and address the different learning needs of 1.3 million staff in 350 different careers is an enormous undertaking.’

Developing a national patient safety syllabus will be challenging given the various health professions working in the NHS. Syllabus developers will also need to take into account the huge number of national and international patient safety stakeholders that exist, with many having competing education and training policy agendas.