Patient Safety in Diagnosis

The reduction of diagnostic errors is one of the most important factors in driving patient safety and preventing avoidable harm to patients within the hospital environment.
Selecting the right tests for a particular patient promptly, carrying them out quickly and accurately, interpreting the results correctly, and acting on them at once are all vital steps in minimising avoidable harm. This category invites entries from any service that has developed initiatives to improve the safety of the diagnostic pathway, and from pathology services which have attempted to improve patient safety by looking for and implementing measures that have increased turnaround time and/or improved the accuracy of results.

Specific entry criteria



The judges will be looking for examples of excellence in the following areas:

• Innovation - the quality and originality of the idea;
• Results - demonstration of clear and measurable outcomes;
• Potential - the contribution the work is likely to make to the wider development of patient safety interventions in their local healthcare colleagues
• Sustainability - evidence that the initiative is embedded within your diagnostic environment