The long and winding road to NHS patient safety culture development

John Tingle introduces the concept of patient safety in the National Health Service (NHS) and the issues surrounding this. He provides some essential context, discussing themes and significant patient safety policy development events. The overarching theme of the chapter is that the NHS has a sophisticated patient safety framework but unfortunately the policies and practices within it have not sufficiently permeated down to the key sections of the workforce. Major patient safety care quality crises appear on a too regular basis. The NHS is patently poor in some areas of lesson learning from past patient safety crises and in changing practices. Tingle also argues along with others that the health regulatory governance system which includes patient safety is too complex, fragmented and duplicated in places. He argues for the reform and rationalisation of NHS organisations that have a health quality and patient safety remit. The government is active in policy-making in this area and reforms are on the horizon. The NHS could make more positive progress towards developing a patient safety culture he argues; there have been some positive steps forward towards this but much more could be done, and progress is too slow.