Simplify safety advice, report warns as harms rise in NHS in England

Patient safety specialists have called for a more streamlined approach to reducing harms in the NHS in England after an analysis found that several key indicators had worsened in the past two years.1

A report from the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London described the current system of national patient safety priorities and bodies as “opaque,” saying that it delivered numerous recommendations that health systems were unable to keep pace with. The authors called for a more focused set of patient safety priorities, with support for trusts to adopt them and to tackle common harmful practices.

The National State of Patient Safety 2024 report found that maternity services were particularly hard hit in terms of poor performance, as rates of stillbirths, neonatal …