Sharing learning and data to improve safety during transitions and handovers of care Bradford District Care Trust

Bradford District Care Trust is an integrated mental health service provider that provides care in community and social care settings, as well as inpatient mental health wards. The nature of the work means there are multiple organisations and professionals involved in supporting the patient and carer, and therefore multiple handovers of information that can potentially increase risks to patient safety.

Working with the Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Academy, this project involves investigating how the Safety Measurement and Monitoring Framework can improve patient safety and provide assurance across the interfaces and transitions between ervice teams. In particular, the project will involve testing the framework on the handover between acute wards and community therapists for mental health care, and the transition of children from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to adult mental health services.

The project team will work with service teams to look at the safety measures that are currently used and how these may be improved. Past incident data will be reviewed to identify more robust ways of generating shared learning. Safety measures used on pathways will be assessed to explore the possibility of standardisation and the introduction of new measures.

The aim is to improve safety at transition and handover of patient care, standardising practice where possible, testing reliability, and moving towards a systematic review and increasing use of anticipatory measures of safety. Working with staff, patients, carers and families, the team will look to understand how they can effectively contribute to day-to-day safety monitoring.

Contact: Professor John Wright, Clinical Director, Improvement Academy, Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science