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Risk assessment

The CSP has developed an unexpected effects alerts programme to support communication to members working across the breadth of physiotherapy in all four countries, to ensure minimal risk of injury to patient or workforce.

Oxygen safety in hospitals - information for nurses, midwives and AHPs published by the NPSA:

The National Patient Safety Agency issued a Rapid Response Report on 29 September 2009 to raise health care professionals' awareness of safety issues in the maintenance of equipment and provision of oxygen. See more on this report: NPSA/2009/RRR006 - Oxygen safety in hospitals

Two new wheelchair alerts
See our document download at the bottom of this page for more on these, and previous, alerts relating to the broad profession of physiotherapy.

The national reporting agencies define an adverse incident as an event which causes, or has the potential to cause, unexpected or unwanted effects involving the safety of patients, staff, users and other people and encompasses mistakes made by the practitioner.

The CSP is using the term unexpected effects to identify failure of technique or equipment when used correctly and appropriately and does not address practitioner error as complaints regarding physiotherapists are dealt with by the HPC.

England and the devolved countries have formal processes for receiving and investigating reports of adverse events, many of which result in alerts. These are logged on the national body's website and disseminated by email to those signed up to receive them, but may not be published outside the country of investigation.

An example is the Scottish investigation into an incident involving therapeutic resistant bands which is relevant to physiotherapy but was not broadcast by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and therefore only publicised in Scotland.

Those working outside the public bodies are not exposed to the same formal reporting process and the CSP programme provides an identified process and a central resource for all members to access for up to date information on alerts relating to the profession. It does not replace the reporting system at local and national level, nor does it infringe on the HPC regulatory role.

The CSP uses iCSP, Frontline and the CSP website to inform membership of alerts relating to physiotherapy. Members who become aware of alerts not included on the database are requested to contact the Léonie Dawson, Professional Adviser at the CSP with details: please email: dawsonl@csp.org.uk.

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