World Patient Safety Day will be held on Wednesday, 17th September, and brings together patients, families, carers, communities, health workers, health care leaders and policy-makers to show commitment to patient safety.

A single safety incident can have lifelong consequences for a child’s health and development. That’s why the theme of World Patient Safety Day 2025 is dedicated to ensuring safe care for every newborn and child, with a special focus on those from birth to nine years old. This year’s slogan, 'Patient safety from the start', emphasises the urgent need to act early and consistently to prevent harm throughout childhood and across the life course.

Our teams in paediatrics recently held a competition to see who could develop the best patient safety initiative that would help enhance the services they provide. Three paediatric areas presented their ideas to a panel with Paediatric Inpatient's being crowned the winner for their central monitoring systems idea. This suggested improvement means colleagues in the area are able to respond quickly to a deteriorating patient. This initiative is also in line with paediatric quality priorities and learning from incident actions. 

Other colleagues from across CHFT have been asked, what World Patient Safety Day means to them and why it is so important:

Governance and Risk Officers

"Shared safe and effective ways of practice, which encourages good relations and respect for all equally."

Freedom to Speak Up Guardians

"World Patient Safety Day to us means a collective response with all health professionals joining together to commit to providing safe care and a reduction in avoidable harm to the patients we care for – getting it right first time."

Colleagues on Ward 18

"Love Martha’s Rule. We like how it checks in with the patient and fits in with doing their daily routine. Particularly like how it compares the patients current feelings with their previous feelings."

At CHFT we will be celebrating this day with several activities around the Trust on Wednesday, 17th September:

• There will be two stands, one at the entrance in HRI and one in the entrance at CRH. These stands will be highlighting what we are doing around Martha’s Rule and how staff can be empowered to promote this vital piece of patient safety. Martha’s Rule fits within our ‘One Culture of Care’ and aligns not only to the ‘4 Pillars of Care’ but also to the 4 stages promoted in the Patient Safety Incidence Response Framework. Recent BBC news coverage talked about how Martha’s Rule has been expanded across England. We are extremely proud to have had CHFTs poster included as part of this coverage.
• Both sites will be lit up in orange on 17th September 2025 as requested by the World Health Organisation to promote this the day.