Connecting Communities GM PCIE Forum 2021 Sharing Event Week of the 18th October 2021

The aim of this session will be to describe how we have co-produced a guide for patients and carers to help to address key patient safety questions and identify key points where they can make their care safer. We worked with patients, carers, general practitioners and pharmacists from across Greater Manchester.

Background: Patients and carers should be actively involved in their patient safety and empowered to use person-centred approaches where they are asked to both identify safety concerns and partner in preventing them.
Approach: We conducted three workshops with patients, carers, community pharmacists and general practitioners to develop and refine the patient safety guide. Alongside these workshops we worked with a public involvement group to develop the approach and the guide.
Results: Co-developing the patient safety guide provided insight to improve care. The approach helped to identify the main factors that influenced people’s engagement with patient safety and actions that people could do to improve their patient safety. The importance of communication, understanding roles and responsibilities, and developing partnerships between patients and healthcare providers were considered essential for actively involving patients in patient safety.
Discussion:
Using a co-design approach identified important points where patient safety in routine primary care can be improved using patient and clinician experiences with a key focus on how the guide could be used in practice. The patient safety guide is the first guide to be developed for primary care, co-designed with patients, carers, general practitioners and pharmacists.