Meeting of the Parliament 02 March 2017
I would like to make progress, please, Emma. I am sorry, Presiding Officer—I mean Ms Harper.
The strategy would include comprehensive training for all care staff, employment of technology and a full suite of marketing and awareness-raising materials to help older people to stay safer in their homes or in any setting in which they receive care. Put simply, falls prevention is one of the most important steps that we can take in promoting patient safety.
The final area that I would like to cover is mental health—specifically in relation to the work of the programme. The inclusion of mental health is of course welcome, but it stands alone as a separate thread. To my mind, that stand-alone nature does not take account of the fact that there is a causal relationship with every aspect of patient safety. It is right that we should focus on physical safety, but there has to be an element of mental safety for patients as well. At the moment, the patient safety programme focuses on restraint and seclusion and an understanding of risk factors, but it should also focus on prevention of mental ill-health, as a vital aspect of improving patient safety.
In the work on safety in maternity, for example, the programme should look for dissemination of best practice, sharing of knowledge and roll-out of specialist perinatal mental health support teams across all our health boards. After all, one in five mothers will experience mental ill-health as a result of pregnancy, yet only five health boards have dedicated perinatal mental health teams.
Similarly, in cases in which mental ill-health is a factor in patient care, the risk assessment of patient safety must include the likelihood of self-harm or suicide. That is why it is fundamentally important that the safety programme dovetails with the nascent mental health strategy and the successor to the suicide prevention strategy.
We should be justifiably proud of the patient safety programme, because it sets an international standard, as I said, and is groundbreaking in many ways. I come to the chamber not to bury it, but to praise it, and I want it to be enhanced.
I move amendment S5M-04324.3, to insert at end:
“, and believes that action to reduce harmful and avoidable incidents would be strengthened by ending the NHS recruitment crisis, following warnings from frontline professionals that shortages pose a risk to patient safety, developing a national falls strategy and delivering a step change in mental health services.”
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