National patient safety incident reports: 13 October 2022

Analysis of the patient safety incidents reported in England to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) up to June 2022.

The data

Every year we publish official statistics on patient safety incidents reported to the NRLS. The National patient safety incident reports (NaPSIRs) set out the number of patient safety incidents reported to the NRLS and describe their patterns and trends. The data include all patient safety incidents reported by NHS organisations in England.

This is the second NaPSIR publication to be published annually, rather than six-monthly, and the data will now continue to be published on a yearly basis going forwards.

This publication includes reports covering incidents reported to June 2022, and occurring between April 2021 and March 2022.

Two sets of data and analysis are presented in the NaPSIR data report:

  • the number of reports made to the NRLS by quarter, using data based on the date that the report was received
  • an overview of patterns and trends in incident reports using data based on the date that the incidents occurred.

NaPSIR commentary

NaPSIR up to June 2022

’This workbook includes data from the COVID-19 pandemic. Incident reporting has been impacted by wider changes in healthcare activity triggered by the pandemic. We thank staff for their efforts to support patient safety by continuing to report incidents during this challenging time.

Official statistic compliance

We produce the national patient safety incident report official statistic publications in accordance with the code of practice for statistics. The documents below describe our compliance with the code.

Supporting documents

Supporting information on patient safety incident reporting and the NRLS, what this data is, the methodology, and why we publish it.

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.

Contact us

If you have any queries in relation to the data contained in the workbooks please contact us.

Related content