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The Making it Safer Together (MiST) Paediatric Patient Safety Collaborative is an alliance of children’s health care providers. We share a goal of continually reducing healthcare associated harm, through a process of sharing our areas of concern, safety data, and providing mutual support to learn from one another’s practice in these areas. We also actively support the development standard approaches to key practises and procedures in order to embrace human factors science and particularly to promote resilience though the elimination of unnecessary variations that create opportunities for errors to occur as staff move from one appointment to another. A list of current members can be found here.

The MiST collaborative was established following a meeting of senior clinicians and managers in the autumn of 2013, who came together to discuss how a UK model of the successful Solutions for Patient Safety network in the USA could be established. The current membership is largely drawn from tertiary children’s centres. However, the aspiration is that as MiST grows and develops it will reach out and work with any centre delivering paediatric clinical care that share our vision.

The collaborative is an open forum for the sharing of ideas & methodology for enhancing patient safety. We welcome collaborators from all branches of healthcare.

Over the first 3 years of operation we focused on following the model established by Solutions for Patient Safety and encouraged our members to share their safety data so that we might identify and learn from those demonstrating the very best practice. This approach was very successful in some areas, especially the reduction of central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI).

In the current NHS climate, the burden of gathering data, in some areas of interest, has outweighed the benefits that it has to our goals. We have therefore refined our approach toward a focus that harnesses the collaborative energy and enthusiasm of our membership to champion, communicate and drive positive change.

Over the last two years our meetings and communications have naturally developed into highly energised, brain storming sessions. We have focused on sharing collaborators areas of concern and facilitating opportunities for them to meet and mobilise their combined expertise to leverage and move on national agendas. This is exemplified by the leadership we have provided with resurfacing a UK drive to develop a standard approach to paediatric track & trigger systems and also the first steps toward agreeing standardised infusion concentrations for paediatric infusions.

We have also recognised the need to work proactively to support all of those working in children’s healthcare and have begun to develop discussions and engagement around activities and programmes that will develop and promote a culture of proactive care and support for colleagues, in order to ensure they are in the best place possible to deliver the best care they can to our patients.

If you have any thoughts or feedback regarding our work programmes, suggestions or new areas we should discuss , or would like to join our collaborative please contact us directly here.