Marking World Patient Safety Day (17 September)
17 September 2025
On 17 September, the Trust marked World Patient Safety Day with a series of events and important staff training sessions. Read more about our patient safety initiatives.
World Patient Safety Day, observed every year on 17 September, is a global initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to bring together patients, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public in a shared commitment to improving safety in healthcare.
In 2025, the spotlight is on paediatric patient safety – ensuring that every newborn and child receives safe, high-quality care.
Improving prescribing safety for children and young people
Ensuring safe care for patients is a fundamental priority, yet newborns and children remain especially vulnerable to patient safety risks. This year’s theme, ‘Safe care for every newborn and every child’ emphasises the need for stronger measures to protect children from preventable harm in health care.
Medication error is one of the most common themes impacting patient safety in paediatrics. In 2024, with support from NHS England’s first-of-type Digital Medicines scheme, West London’s Children’s Healthcare (WLCH), went live with digital solution Touchdose to improve prescribing safety for children and young people last year. Since the rollout, prescribing errors have been reduced by an average of 83 per cent.
Touchdose supports prescribers by automatically calculating safe doses derived from local guidelines and the British National Formulary for Children. It draws on clinical data such as age, weight, height, and indication to determine the correct medication dose, frequency, route, and duration – removing the need for manual calculations or reliance on unregulated apps. This provides a safer, more consistent approach to prescribing, which is critical in paediatrics where precision is essential, and errors can have severe consequences.
This project has been shortlisted for ‘Medicines, Pharmacy and Prescribing Initiative of the Year’ at the 2025 HSJ Patient Safety Awards.
Martha's Rule: Detecting Deterioration
Martha's Rule is a vital patient safety initiative that gives patients, their families and hospital staff a clear pathway to raise concerns about rapid deterioration.
This 24/7 service launched at the Trust as a pilot in September 2024 as part of the initial rollout of Martha’s Rule by NHS England. This is now a permanent initiative across all NHS acute trusts, in line with national guidance.
Martha's Rule is supported by our Clinical Care Outreach Teams, who won the Patient Safety Team of the Year award in the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2024.
Highlighting the NeoWONDER research trial
Watch the below video of Dr Cheryl Battersby, Consultant Neonatologist at the Trust sharing more about how the ongoing neoWONDER research study is using data to improve lifelong outcomes for very premature babies.