Situation Awareness for Everyone
Situation awareness requires a shared understanding of what is happening. In a healthcare setting, this needs tools and techniques together with non-hierarchical information and communication.
Situation awareness takes the perspective of everyone involved in a child’s healthcare at hospital – doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, administrators, porters, families and children themselves – so that the clinical team can take the best decisions.
S.A.F.E Toolkit
Over four years, the Situation Awareness for Everyone (S.A.F.E) programme has brought together paediatric units from over 50 hospitals across England into four collaborative learning groups. The S.A.F.E toolkit introduces healthcare professionals to safety huddles and uses quality improvement methodology to embed situational awareness in to their own healthcare settings.
It’s organised into three themes that reflect how S.A.F.E has been implemented in paediatric units across the UK and its aims are:
- to reduce avoidable error and harm to acutely sick children
- to improve communication between all healthcare professionals involved in a child’s care to ensure treatment is consistent and of the same high standard regardless of postcode or class
- to help close the disparity in health outcomes for children in UK compared to other countries as well as between children’s care and adult care
- to involve parents, carers, children and young people to be better involved in their care