Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I begin by expressing my sincere sympathies to all women and their families who have been affected by these distressing incidents. I take this opportunity to outline to the House additional areas that are being examined and developed following on from the recommendations of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance. Those recommendations set out an extensive and challenging agenda to develop the capabilities of our system in the area of patient safety. Work in this area is being overseen by a broadly representative implementation steering group established by the Minister for Health and Children last June. Work to implement the commission's recommendations includes the introduction of standards for better, safer health care, the HSE's directorate of quality and clinical care's work to establish national programmes for specific chronic diseases, and the development of the serious incident management team within that directorate.

Progress is also being made in other areas. In the area of service user involvement, the HSE and my Department have completed consultation on a proposed guide for service users that will prompt patients to engage assertively in their own health care and to ask questions designed to ensure their care is safe. Regarding health information, a Bill to be published this year will provide the legislative and information governance framework for safeguarding the confidentiality and privacy of health information while facilitating its more effective use. This legislation is a fundamental prerequisite to modernising the delivery and planning of our health and personal social services to significantly improve the experience and outcomes of service users. Also in this area, work is being progressed on laboratory information management and HIQA published GP messaging standards in April 2010, with preliminary testing to commence July or August.

In the area of education and training, the ISG has endorsed and agreed to promote in Ireland the use of the Australian patient safety education framework and associated WHO patient safety education curriculum guides. Actions on foot of this decision include ongoing liaison with regulators and educators about implementation of the recommendations; engagement with the training schools and bodies; the completion by undergraduate medical schools of a self audit on current practices in this area; clear reference to patient safety included by An Bord Altranais in the newly approved requirements and standards for post-registration and continuing competence nursing and midwifery education programmes; and a patient safety education on-line training programme that has been commissioned though HSE's medical education training revenue funding programme and that will be available to all medical training bodies in the coming months.

Medication safety is a core area of patient safety, particularly as adverse drug events are the most frequent single type of adverse event. The Irish Medication Safety Forum is now well established and working to improve communication and collaboration between the various bodies and health professionals with a role in medication safety. A mapping exercise of Irish medication initiatives to identify and exchange information on the volume and breadth of medication safety initiatives ongoing throughout our health services has been completed by the forum.

Arising from this, a number of initiatives have been undertaken and are ongoing at local and regional level throughout our health services to improve medication safety. Some specific examples include the development of clinical pharmacy services in many hospitals, the EU safety vest project, the development of e-learning medication safety initiatives in certain hospitals, the Mental Health Commission audit of antipsychotic prescribing in Irish in-patient psychiatric units and many others.

The Irish Medical Council published the seventh edition of the guide to professional conduct and ethics for registered medical practitioners in November 2009. In this edition of the guide, the council has provided clarification on a number of specific areas, including consent, confidentiality, end of life care, provision of information to the public, prescribing practices and referral of patients. Increased emphasis in recent years on patient safety has also influenced the expansion of guidance on adverse events and open communication with patients. Regular meetings are taking place with all the professional regulatory bodies concerning fitness to practice issues in the newly-formed health and social regulatory forum.

I congratulate the Minister on all the initiatives she has taken on patient safety. It takes bravery and resolve to deal with these issues. No system is perfect but we need to face up to and deal with these challenges. That is what the Minister for Health and Children is doing.

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