Promoting patient involvement in safety initiatives

Between 300,000 and 1.4 million adverse events occur each year in the NHS, and about half of those that occur in inpatient settings are preventable (Department of Health Expert Group on Learning from Adverse Events in the NHS 2000). Strategies to reduce these events have focused mainly on changing systems of care and professional behaviour, but there is growing interest in involving patients in safety initiatives. This stresses the development and use of interventions to promote and support patients' and their representatives' roles in securing their own safety in health care. This article reports the results of a series of linked studies that examined how patients might effectively promote their own safety, and to explore how this might vary by context, place or demography.