We receive approximately 4,000 emergency calls
every day, and while we aim to provide a high-quality service to
all our patients, there are times when things go wrong. We value
your feedback when this happens.
Incident reporting is a clinical governance
procedure and is used to bring about changes and
improvements, which is all in keeping with our learning approach. Apart from addressing
individual incidents, this also allows us to collate information
about emerging trends and identify underlying themes.
Incident reporting
The most common subjects of the incident
reports relate to are:
- A delay in an ambulance resource being
provided
- A breakdown in communications with ambulance
staff
- The clinical care provided by ambulance
staff
If you report an incident, we will investigate
it and then provide you with a comprehensive response and an
explanation of any action we propose to take. Wherever possible, we
will try to hold local liaison meetings to improve the working
relationship we have with health and social care colleagues to
increase understanding of our respective roles and practices. Our
local ambulance operations manager or a member of the local
management team will tend to lead these meetings.
If we are unable to manage the issues you
report, we will pass them to the department responsible and let you
know what is happening.
If you wish to report an incident, please do
so by emailing all the relevant information to our patient
experiences department.
Alternatively, if you already have our
incident report form, you can send it to our patient experiences
department.
Serious Untoward Incident (SUI) reporting
We are committed to offering our full
cooperation with any serious untoward incident (SUI) investigation.
Guidance from NHS London on SUIs outlines the obligations
for trusts to work together. The guidance makes it clear
that it is the responsibility of the organisation reporting the SUI
to ensure that other NHS organisations are informed of the SUI if
it relates to them.
If your Trust is considering declaring a SUI, or has already
declared a SUI, we should be pleased to receive
notification. Please email our patient
experiences department and mark your notification
‘SUI’.
More information can also be found in our serious
untoward incidents policy (pdf, 571KB).
We can also provide information to help look into the
causes of delays in the handover of care at
emergency departments.