Risk management

Risk management involves identifying the risks that may adversely affect both patient care and everyone’s health and safety, and then controlling them. When you are working in a practice you should expect to follow established, well-explained procedures, which should include, for example:

• Repeat prescribing – monitoring and reviewing.
• Referrals – detailing the way that these are handled, particularly urgent ones.
• Messages – secure and confidential ways to pass them on.
• Follow-up – protocols for contacting patients and dealing with those who do not attend.
• Complaints procedure.

Any of these areas would provide a suitable topic for audit.

If a practice’s systems cause you serious concern, you should discuss this, in the first instance, with your trainer. Good Medical Practice advises that if your ability to treat patients safely is seriously compromised you should put the matter right, if possible, or “you should draw the matter to the attention of your employing or contracting body. If they do not take adequate action, you should take independent advice on how to take the matter further. You must record your concerns and the steps you have taken to try to resolve them”.

Are you in safe hands?

In Safer Hands, published by the RCGP, suggests a number of questions for testing the risk management system in place in your practice:

• Can it detect overdue and missing test results?
• Can it highlight if serious pathology or significant results are expected?
• Can it notify you if test results are copied to your practice from hospitals and other providers?
• Can it highlight if a patient doesn’t come back for a consultation when asked to?
• Is Significant Event Auditing in place?
• Is there a policy for supporting patients when things go wrong?

In Safer Hands, Issue 6, www.rcgp.org.uk

Bringing Good Medical Practice to life

The GMC has launched a new set of interactive case studies, ‘Good Medical Practice in Action II’. Viewers select one of four patients from a waiting room, and then sit in on consultations which deal with an ethical dilemma, such as telling a child about the complexity of their illness, and communicating with patients who cannot consent. The viewer is then invited to decide on the best course of action from a range of options, and can check their answers with official GMC guidance, at: www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/case_studies/index.asp.

New significant event audit guidance

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has launched new Significant Event Audit (SEA) guidance. General practice teams can improve the quality and safety of patient care by recording adverse incidents, such as a wrongly administered vaccine or prescription, and learning from these as a team. The new guidance shows how to conduct an SEA in seven simple steps.