The NHS European Office has responded to an EU consultation on patient safety. Read a summary of the response.

The consultation, which closed on 20 April, covered a range of patient safety related issues including priority areas for action, leadership, education and the role of health professionals, patient safety information and reporting and learning systems and patient safety research.

Next steps

The European Commission intends to bring forward proposals on patient safety later in 2008, which could have significant implications for the NHS in areas such as education and training of staff, data collection, and the way that local NHS organisations address patient safety issues. This work could lead to the development of patient safety standards and indicators at European level.

The NHS European Office will continue to follow developments in this area. If you would be interested in keeping in touch with these issues, with the possibility to feed in views at future stages, please contact helena.bowden@nhsconfed.org