Patient Safety Training Resources for the NHS

In October 2021, Health Education England, NHS England and NHS Improvement, The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and eLearning for Healthcare published new patient safety training materials as part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy.

Completion of the training will help to ensure health and care services are as safe as possible for patients and service users, and elements of these resources are expected to be completed by all NHS employees, even those in roles which are not patient facing.

The training materials can be found on the eLearning for Healthcare hub.

The training has five levels, which build on each other. The first two levels ‘Essentials for patient safety’ and ‘Access to practice’ are now available online.

The first level, ‘Essentials for patient safety’, is the starting point and all NHS staff are encouraged to complete it. Level two, ‘Access to practice’ is intended for those who have an interest in understanding more about patient safety and those who want to go on to access the higher levels of training.

The training has been devised following publication of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy which contains the National Patient Safety Syllabus. The syllabus sets out a new approach to patient safety emphasising a proactive approach to identifying risks to safe care while also including systems thinking and human factors, all of which has been incorporated into the training.

Levels three to five of the training are expected to be available by the end of March 2022.

Watch a short video introducing the new training resources below:

Access the patient safety training online by logging in or registering with the eLearning for Healthcare hub

Explore other patient safety resources on QI Central including the safe systems framework here, and our ‘Situation Awareness For Everyone’ modules here.