National patient safety incident reports
Data workbooks on all patient safety incidents reported in England to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS).
September 2023 update:
Contents
- Data workbooks and commentary (official statistics)
- Data published before September 2016
- Upcoming publication dates
- Our patient safety incident reporting data publications will be changing with the adoption of LFPSE, from mid-2021 onward
- How we use incident reports submitted to the NRLS to improve patient safety
- Related content
We publish annual official statistics on incidents reported to the NRLS. Prior to the 29 September 2021 data, these official statistics were published every six months.
The National patient safety incident reports (NaPSIRs) set out the number of patient safety incidents reported to the NRLS and describes national patterns and trends. NaPSIRs were previously called Quarterly Data Summaries (QDS).
As well as the NaPSIRs we also publish Organisation patient safety incident reports which set out the number of patient safety incidents reported by each NHS trust.
Data workbooks and commentary (official statistics)
- National patient safety incident reports: October 2022
- National patient safety incident reports: September 2021
- National patient safety incident reports: September 2020
- National patient safety incident reports: March 2020
- National patient safety incident reports: September 2019
- National patient safety incident reports: March 2019
- National patient safety incident reports: September 2018
- National patient safety incident reports: March 2018
- National patient safety incident reports: September 2017
- National quarterly data on patient safety incident reports: March 2017
- National quarterly data on patient safety incident reports: September 2016
Data published before September 2016
Reports published prior to September 2016 are available on the archived NRLS website.
Upcoming publication dates
September 2023 update:
We are now publishing this data and the organisation patient safety incident reports (OPSIR) once a year rather than every six months. The next publication is due in September 2023.
We have made this change to support us to improve the official statistics outputs and offer data users and patient safety stakeholders a better resource. The annual publications will cover the most recent financial year of data (eg in September 2021 we will publish data for April 2020-March 2021).
We will continue to publish NRLS reporting data every month which includes the reported degree of harm.
For any queries about these changes please email NRLS.DataRequests@nhs.net
Our patient safety incident reporting data publications will be changing with the adoption of LFPSE, from mid-2021 onward
Due to the development of a new Learn from patient safety events service (LFPSE) the type of data we routinely publish on patient safety incident reports will be changing. This will affect the ability to compare data over time. None of the changes alter the responsibility and accountability of healthcare providers to report and learn from patient safety incidents. For further information see our information sheet below.
Information on changes to patient safety incident reporting data publications – September 2020 – Information on changes to patient safety incident reporting data publications in line with the adoption of PSIMS
How we use incident reports submitted to the NRLS to improve patient safety
You can find details of how we identify issues and risks by reviewing patient safety incident reports, and the action we take as a direct result to protect patients from harm on our ‘Using patient safety events data to keep patients safe‘ webpages.
The pages include information and case studies on what we’ve done to address ‘rare and under-recognised’ safety issues identified through the NRLS and other sources