World Patient Safety Day 2025
Healthcare Improvement Scotland is marking the World Health Organisation’s annual World Patient Safety Day.
Our purpose is to drive the highest quality care for everyone in Scotland and our vision is one where people can access safe, effective, person-centred care when needed.
This year we’re looking at safe care for every newborn and every child. This theme emphasises the urgent need to act early and consistently to prevent harm throughout childhood, and the benefits throughout life.
Across our organisation, we are involved in various areas of work to ensure the best possible healthy outcomes for babies and children.
A consultation is now underway on new standards, which will set clear expectations for how maternity care should be delivered in Scotland.
The standards aim to promote consistency and improve the quality of maternity services across the country, by involving women and birthing people in the consultation process.
Excellence in Care have recently published new measures on the Care Assurance and Improvement Resource (CAIR) dashboard for school nurses, health visitors and family nurse planning. These aim to assure high-quality care for children.
We carry out inspections of maternity services set within the acute setting in Scotland. Currently this includes obstetric-led or consultant-led hospital or maternity units. The focus for our inspections are the factors that contribute to the safe delivery of maternity care.
The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is a national quality improvement programme that aims to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm. Our SPSP perinatal and paediatric programmes seeks to improve safety for women, birthing people, babies, children and their families.
We recently hosted a webinar for staff working in maternity and neonatal services, and those looking to learn more about Quality Management Systems. The webinar looks at Scotland’s evolving approach to perinatal safety through a quality management lens.
We published perinatal guidelines, which cover screening and treatment for women or birthing parents who are at risk of, or experiencing, a mental health condition during pregnancy or within the year following childbirth.
The guideline is for health and care staff working with pregnant and postnatal women and birthing parents across primary care, secondary care, social care and the third sector.
We have also looked at the issue of preconception health. Published earlier this year, the 15th Citizen’s Panel asked the public for their views around preconception health and care. Preconception health is an important area as it can influence fertility, early child development, and can prevent harm to future generations.
Although we are highlighting this work for World Patient Safety Day, our organisation is working every day of the year for the best outcomes for all.