Our role
Our guidelines make evidence based, best practice recommendations. Implementing these helps to improve patient safety and reduce the risk of harm across the health system.
Our Interventional Procedures Programme has a focus on patient safety and considers if procedures are both safe and work well enough for use. The programme gives advice on how to safely introduce new procedures into practice.
Led by a senior responsible officer for patient safety, our Patient Safety Oversight Group (PSOG) provides oversight of and, where required, coordination to patient safety related matters within NICE. It includes representation from our key guidance producing, implementation support, and communication teams. PSOG was established in 2021 based on learning and recommendations from the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety (IMMDS) review.
Current priorities
To strengthen our contribution to patient safety, we will:
- Continue to work with regulators and professional organisations to reinforce the use of our guidance and respond in a coordinated way to respond to arising patient safety concerns where appropriate.
- Build and develop new relationships with key partners in the health and care system such as the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, Care Quality Commission, Health Services Safety Investigations Body and Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations Programme, to support the timely exchange of information important to promoting patient safety.
- Communicate to promote better understanding of our role as a system partner in patient safety.
In addition, we are:
- Working with partners Professor Jane Blazeby at Bristol University Centre for Surgical Research and West of England Academic Health Science Network to understand how our interventional procedures guidance with special arrangements recommendations are being implemented in clinical practice. These recommendations are made where there are uncertainties around the safety or effectiveness of an intervention. Under these recommendations there is a need for any risks to be clearly explained to the patient and there is an emphasis on informed consent between the patient and their senior medical team.
- Giving specialist advice to support the consideration of patient safety within new programmes of work at NICE such as Early Value Assessment.
What’s new?
We’re working with the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) and other partners to consider how patient safety-related recommendations can be more consistently developed and implemented at a healthcare-system level.
To consolidate our approach to patient safety oversight, we’re actively thinking about how we will apply the principles of a Safety Management System (SMS) within NICE. You can find out more in this short explainer video.
Contact us
You can contact the patient safety team at: patientsafety@nice.org.uk.