The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety.
Patient safety incidents are unintended or unexpected events (including omissions) in healthcare that could have or did harm one or more patients.
The PSIRF replaces the Serious Incident Framework (SIF) (2015) and makes no distinction between ‘patient safety incidents’ and ‘Serious Incidents’. As such it removes the ‘Serious Incidents’ classification and the threshold for it. Instead, the PSIRF promotes a proportionate approach to responding to patient safety incidents by ensuring resources allocated to learning are balanced with those needed to deliver improvement.
PSIRF is a contractual requirement under the NHS Standard Contract and as such is mandatory for services provided under that contract, including acute, ambulance, mental health, and community healthcare providers.