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New patient safety frameworks are being implemented to improve the impact of incident reporting and management across the National Health Service (NHS) in England. This study aims to examine the current practices in this domain of patient safety in a sample of mental health trusts, a setting in which limitations in the current practice of serious incident management have been reported. The authors present key recommendations to maximise the opportunities to improve current incident reporting and management practice.

Ethical approval for the study was granted. A Web-based questionnaire was designed to examine current practices concerning incident reporting and management. It was refined based on consultation. Patient safety incident managers within mental health trusts in England were recruited. Twenty-nine mental health trusts responded, from a total of 51. The questionnaire study data were analysed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.

Current approaches used to report and manage incidents have been established and variation in practice demonstrated. A key finding for attention is that the training and education that investigators of serious incidents receive falls short of the recommended minimum national standard of 15 h, with a sample mean of 10.3 h and median of 8.0 h.

Recommendations at a local and national level are presented, which, if implemented, can maximise the impact of incident reporting and management practices in mental health trusts. Future qualitative research is indicated, to understand the perceptual experience and meaning behind the findings across a wider group of stakeholders.

The need to develop effective approaches for responding to healthcare incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety has been recognised in current national policy. However, research into this topic is limited. This study aims to explore the perspectives of professionals in mental health trusts in England about what works well and what could be done better when implementing serious incident management systems.

This was a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. In total, 15 participants were recruited, comprising patient safety managers, serious incident investigators and executive directors, from five mental health trusts in England. The interview data were analysed using a qualitative-descriptive approach to develop meaningful themes. Quotes were selected and presented based on their representation of the data.

Participants were dissatisfied with current systems to manage serious incidents, including the root cause analysis approach, which they felt were not adequate for assisting learning and improvement. They described concerns about the capability of serious incident investigators, which was felt to impact on the quality of investigations. Processes to support people adversely affected by serious incidents were felt to be an important part of incident management systems to maximise the learning impact of investigations.

Findings of this study provide translatable implications for mental health trusts and policymakers, informed by insights into how current approaches for learning from healthcare incidents can be transformed. Further research will build a more comprehensive understanding of mechanisms for responding to healthcare incidents.

This study aimed to examine for differences on how symptoms relating to depression and anxiety were reported by males and females with intellectual disability as part of the development of the Self‐Assessment Intervention Package (SAINT), a guided self‐help tool.

Three self‐report questionnaires were administered (The Glasgow Depression Scale – Learning Disabilities (GDS‐LD)), Glasgow Anxiety Scale – Intellectual Disabilities (GAS‐ID) and Self‐Assessment Intervention Package (SAINT) to a group of people with mild intellectual disabilities (n=36), to allow comparison of symptom reporting between genders, in particular examining the SAINT across the two groups.

Statistically significant differences in self‐reported symptoms as assessed with SAINT were found between males and females. The symptoms where related mainly to mood and self‐esteem. Overall, endorsement of self‐reported depressive symptoms was between 2.7‐3.2 times higher in female than male patients.

There was evidence to suggest differences in self‐report and symptom profiles of depression and anxiety of males and females with mild intellectual disabilities with females reporting higher in terms of symptoms using the SAINT. The SAINT is a valid tool for screening and self‐reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression in people with intellectual disabilities.

The current national patient safety strategy for the National Health Service (NHS) in England states that actions need to be taken to support the development of a patient safety culture. This includes that local systems should seek to understand staff perceptions of the fairness and effectiveness of serious incident management. This study aims to explore the perspectives of patient safety professionals about what works well and what could be done better to support a patient safety culture at the level of Trust strategy and serious incident governance.

A total of 15 professionals with a role in serious incident management, from five mental health trusts in England, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis and qualitative description were used to analyse the data.

Participants felt that actions to support a patient safety culture were challenging and required long-term and clinical commitment. Broadening the scope of serious incident investigations was felt to be one way to better understand patient safety culture issues. Organisational influences during the serious incident management process were highlighted, informing approaches to maximise the fairness and objectivity of investigation findings.

The findings of this study offer original insights that the NHS safety system can use to facilitate progression of the patient safety culture agenda. In particular, local mental health trusts could consider the findings in the context of their current strategic objectives related to patient safety culture and operational delivery of serious incident management frameworks.

Educational policy instruments such as apprenticeship levy and forthcoming lifetime skills guarantee are creating unprecedented opportunities for rapid growth in a range of work-based learning (WBL) programmes, requiring increasingly complex levels of collaboration between providers and employers. Apprenticeships require providers to assume responsibility in ensuring apprentices’ work-based managers and mentors (WBMMs) are equipped to provide effective support to individuals as they learn ‘on the job’. After six years of higher education institution (HEI) apprenticeship curriculum delivery, there is opportunity to examine existing WBMM practice to inform the design, content and delivery of a shared knowledge base via a practical interactive toolkit. By developing clearer understanding of WBMMs’ experiences, expectations and challenges, the study aims to reduce potential gaps in knowledge and skills and encourage more effective collaboration between employers and providers to better support apprentices as they progress through WBL programmes.

This paper discusses evolution of higher level and degree apprenticeships, explores guidance for WBMMs and investigates the influence of expectations and motivations of WBMMS. Theoretical and conceptual foundations relating to WBL programme delivery and WBMM role are analysed and discussed. Qualitative data drawn from semi-structured surveys are analysed thematically to investigate common patterns, clarify understanding and identify development areas to inform future university provider and employer practice.

The findings suggest a number of themes to improve apprentice management; further clarity of WBMMs role, greater involvement of WBMM’s for negotiated learning, unplanned experiences do add value and scope for richer mentoring dialogues. WBL value for WBMMs is broader than expected, incorporating apprentice performance and output improvements, and solving complex problems.

The research is drawn from an established university with five years of experience. However, the context in which programmes are delivered significantly varies according to providers and employers. This means factors other than those highlighted in this paper may continue to emerge as the research in this field develops.

The practical implications from findings can be used to cultivate stronger collaboration, providing a foundation of knowledge intended to provoke further dialogue regarding content for an interactive toolkit. The findings signal the need for further resources, a review of the restrictions associated with levy funding for co-creation of a more effective national apprenticeship framework.

This paper builds on a limited body of research examining employers’ perspectives of apprenticeship management. Degree apprenticeships have attracted limited scholarly attention over six years since their inception (Bowman, 2022) resulting in a significant paucity of research that focuses upon employer role. This study addresses this void by exploring WBMMs experiences, requirements and expectations, revealing new insights for providers of WBL, employers and individuals employed as WBMMs.

Fiction has the potential to dispel myths and helps improve public understanding and knowledge of the experiences of under-represented groups. Representing the diversity of the population allows individuals to feel included, connected with and understood by society. Whether women and girls with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are adequately and accurately represented in fictional media is currently unknown. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Internet and library searches were conducted to identify female characters with ASD in works of fiction. Examples of such works were selected for further discussion based on their accessibility, perceived historical and cultural significance and additional characteristics that made the work particularly meaningful.

The search highlighted a number of female characters with ASD across a range of media, including books, television, film, theatre and video games. Many were written by authors who had a diagnosis of the condition themselves, or other personal experience. Pieces largely portrayed characters with traits that are highly recognised within the academic literature. However, some also appeared to endorse outdated myths and stereotypes. Existing works appear to preferentially portray high functioning autistic women, with limited representation of those whom also have intellectual disability.

This is the first exploration of the depiction of ASD in females within fiction. There is a need for more works of fiction responsibly depicting females with ASD, as this can help reduce stigma, develop public awareness and recognition and increase representation.

The article examines how customer needs are represented within the training evaluation framework of an organisation. The authors assert that meeting customer needs on time, every time, is a route to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage, and training is a tool that organisations should use to succeed at this. Information on good practice from the National Training Awards case studies was used as the basis of the research. The authors conclude that customers’ needs/wants are often not given the attention they deserve but that there is the potential for enhancing practice. Two gaps in the evaluation process are revealed: the ability to relate customer satisfaction to organisational aims and the ability to recognise the behavioural changes necessary to achieve these aims. The authors speculate that successful outcomes are most likely to be achieved if case‐study material is analysed rigorously, if outcomes are carefully articulated, if a range of measurement opportunities are employed and if managers are closely involved in action research processes.

Despite repeated policy initiatives, progress in improving patient safety in the National Health Service (NHS) in England over the past two decades has been slow. The NHS Patient Safety Strategy (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2019), which is being implemented currently, aims to address this problem. The purpose of this study is to identify learning from the implementation of past patient safety policies and thereby suggest means of supporting the NHS in delivering the current policy initiative successfully.

The authors identified key health policies in the domain of patient safety, published since 2000, by searching the United Kingdom (UK) government website. Discussion papers from the research literature concerning these policies were collated and reviewed. The authors then used a thematic analysis approach to identify themes discussed within these papers. These themes represent factors that support the effective delivery of patient safety policy initiatives.

Within the discussion papers the authors collated, concerning 11 patient safety policies implemented between 2000 and 2017, five inter-related core themes of capability, culture, systems, candour and leadership were identified. By evaluating these themes and identifying composite sub-themes, a conceptual framework is presented that can be used to support the delivery of patient safety policy initiatives to maximise their impact.

The conceptual framework the authors illustrate, arising from this new contribution to the body of knowledge, can be translated into a novel self-assessment for individual NHS trusts to understand organisational development areas in the domain of patient safety improvement.

On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined to replace the XT and AT models that are the mainstay of the firm's current personal computer offerings. The numerous changes in hardware and software, while representing improvements on previous IBM technology, will require users purchasing additional computers to make difficult choices as to which of the two IBM architectures to adopt.