Developing Prospective Hazard Analysis in Healthcare: Evaluating medicine management at hospital discharge using a new Toolkit

Many industries use routinely a number of specific methods to assess risks in a proactive manner. In contrast, there is little evidence of the widespread use of such techniques in the UK&s;s National Health Service (NHS), which tends to focus on a more retrospective approach to risk management. In response, the authors developed a “Toolkit” to help the NHS to conduct proactive, structured, risk assessments, which have a systems focus. We call this approach Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA). The PHA Toolkit was developed by working closely with its potential users in the NHS. It can be applied to either existing or proposed systems, and can be used to assess a range of risks from patient safety, to financial, publicity, or patient experience risks.