Quality and Patient Safety

St. Vincent’s University Hospital has set a single organisational goal which is to ensure the safety of all our patients by eliminating avoidable harm. We are focusing on this goal because the best clinical outcomes cannot be achieved without establishing the safest possible environment for both our patients and our staff.

Six patient safety goals

The Department of Quality and Patient Safety provides the expertise and data to support all our staff in planning, delivering and evaluating our clinical care programmes – with a particular emphasis on six international patient safety goals.

• Goal 1: Identify patients correctly
• Goal 2: Improve effective communication
• Goal 3: Improve the safety of high alert medications
• Goal 4: Ensure correct site, correct procedure, correct patient surgery
• Goal 5 Reduce the risk of healthcare-associated infections
• Goal 6 Reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls

These goals are underpinned by a robust patient safety and clinical risk management programme. The hospital promotes a proactive safety culture by encouraging the reporting of all adverse events and/or near miss events. All reported incidents are analysed, reviewed and disclosed to patients in accordance with the HSE National Open Disclosure Guidelines. Analysis allows the hospital to learn and to continually improve the quality of our care.

We are fully committed to being totally transparent with the quality and safety of the care that we provide. We are a Joint Commission International (JCI) accredited hospital, the only Level 4 hospital in Ireland to undergo this three-yearly independent assessment of the quality of care that we provide. We fully support the Health Information and Quality Authority’s (HIQA) role as the regulator and inspector of acute hospitals.

Send us your feedback

St. Vincent’s University Hospital would like to hear from you if you think we have done something well or if you have suggestions on how we could do something differently. We actively listen and respond to complaints, concerns, suggestions or queries to help make patients’ experiences as easy as possible so please get in touch.

Useful contact details

tel: (01) 221 4211/3348

Useful links

• Joint Commission International
• HIQA
• HSE
• Department of Health