Patient safety learning response | North Bristol NHS Trust

Information for patients and families

You may have been directed to this page because you, a family member, or someone else in your life has had care from North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) that we would like to learn from. This is because some of the care may not have gone to plan.

It is important for us to learn from the experiences of patients at NBT. We do this with a patient safety learning response.

What is a patient safety learning response?

A patient safety learning response is when we look at someone’s care to understand how and why things happened. When we understand the how and why, we can learn how to improve the care.

There are different types of learning response and they take different amounts of time. A member of staff will explain what type we are doing and how long it will take.

Should I be involved in the learning response?

You can decide if you want to be, and how much to be involved. Some people have questions about the care that we can aim to answer through the learning response. Others choose to only receive the final report. Some people choose not to be involved at all.

We value input from patients and families into our learning responses. You have a unique view of the care provided and can often fill in gaps in the information that we do not have. We all want to learn from this, to improve the care for others we see in the future.

Whether you decide to be involved or not, we recognise how difficult this time can be. We will offer you and others support where needed.

What can I expect as part of the learning response?

NBT will offer you:

A named point of contact, usually who is writing the report.
The opportunity to meet to discuss the learning response process and answer any questions about this.
The option to ask questions that can be addressed as part of the learning response.
Share the findings of the learning response.
The opportunity to meet and discuss the findings, and how we will learn from these.
Support throughout the learning response process.

Next steps

Your named point of contact should get in touch with you to talk through what will happen next. We can arrange a time that works for you. (You should write down the details of your point of contact).

Where can I find more information?

Learn Together

Supporting involvement after safety events in healthcare website:

Learn Together – Serious Incident Investigation resources

NHS England Patient Safety

NHS England » Patient safety