Clinical Safety Plan Update

The Clinical Safety Plan has replaced the surge plan and the surge plan is no longer being used.

Maintaining clinical safety when demand exceeds available resources requires us as a Trust to alter our clinical response model to ensure those patients with the greatest clinical need are prioritised and actions taken are the minimum required to prevent harm to our patients.

The new plan has three levels, Moderate pressure, severe pressure and extreme pressure plus a Business as Usual level, The four levels have different actions to ensure we can maintain clinical safety as much as possible. The actions are specific for EOC, ECAT and operational leadership and clinicians.

As the number of patients waiting for either remote clinical assessment or a face-to-face response increases the level of organisation clinical risk increases. It must be remembered that the actions contained within the plan should increase clinical safety specifically for higher acuity patients. However, in implementing actions, the risk is moved to other areas, and as such they should be implemented with continual oversight.

Once the operating picture has stabilised for a period of at least an hour, actions should be removed, unless the look ahead identifies areas which may require escalation again.

Published 16th December 2022