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Table 2 Examples of improvement methods and actions participants already use

From: ‘The big buzz’: a qualitative study of how safe care is perceived, understood and improved in general practice

Action or method

Selected verbatim quotes

‘Formal’ actions

Significant event analysis (SEA)

We do significant events regularly... we will meet to discuss it (PM06)

Clinical audit

We do lots of audits around [access] and check that it’s still as good as we think it is, and we occasionally have to tweak the amount of triage (PM08)

Protocols

Over the last few years with being a training practice we have tried to put a lot of protocols and systems in place to protect it (PN05)

CPD, appraisal and revalidation

Individually you are doing the best for the patient that you have and that is your responsibility, so there is a bit about professional development, CPD and maintaining your knowledge and recognising your weaknesses (GP08)

‘Formal’ and informal actions

Involving patients

We’re calling it ‘complaints, comments and compliments’ and what we’re asking, we’ll go out regularly and speak to the patients and say ‘how do you feel about how we’re doing? Is there anything we can improve on?’ How do we know we’re completely safe? I think this is maybe a way of us checking are we doing enough (PM02)

Informal actions

Raising awareness of safety critical issues

People are making others aware of what has happened and that is the way forward and we will just continue to do that, and hopefully we will get better and better at it (PM06)

Sharing information / peer feedback

I think being able to discuss things with my nursing colleague - on a Wednesday I start at one, we have an hour’s handover - I find that really useful (PN02)

Mitigation, esp. pharmacists and patients

I think there are lots of sources that stop us from falling short more of the time, to be honest (GP03)