Safety recommendation
It is recommended that NHS Improvement undertake a formal evaluation of banding, time and resource given to the Medication Safety Officer role across England and publish its findings and mandate minimum resources and standards.
Response:
NHS Improvement and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency jointly support the Medication Safety Officer (MSO), and the Medical Device Safety Officer (MDSO), networks. Both organisations regularly review these networks to continually improve their effectiveness; including surveying members in relation to banding, time commitment and support.
The timing of the HSIB recommendation is to be welcomed. Internal work has been ongoing to review the networks in relation to the recently published national Patient Safety Strategy, which outlines the establishment of Patient Safety Specialists (PSS) for all organisations. We therefore plan to use the lessons learnt from the establishment of the MSO and MDSO networks to influence how the PSS network is established to ensure a robust triumvirate of patient safety experts working cohesively to improve patient safety across each organisation.
The strategy outlines the need to “agree the key attributes that specialists should have on an enduring basis, what they should be responsible for and how they can be supported to perform their role. We will explore the potential for further professionalising the role, through accreditation or similar mechanisms”. This process will be extended to include a review of the MSO and MDSO roles to ensure that the expectation of all these roles is clear and unambiguous in relation to the expected level of resource and standards. As with the patient safety specialist roles we expect that the key will lie less in mandating the level of resource and more in achieving a good match between role description, skills development and expectations.
Response received on 15 July 2019.