Serious incidents
Overview
Serious incidents are a small number of safety events in NHS‑funded care that cause-or have the potential to cause-significant harm to patients, staff, visitors or the public and therefore require a senior‑led, organised response to establish facts, reduce risk and share learning.
The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) replaced the old Serious Incident Framework (SIF) from 1 April 2024; PSIRF emphasises proportionate, systems‑based investigation, meaningful involvement of those affected and learning rather than blame.
For historical or examination scenarios you should also know legacy SIF expectations (for example the 2 working‑day notification to commissioners/STEIS) (GOV.UK).
Definition and scope - what counts as a serious incident? A serious incident is an event related to NHS‑funded care that results in one or more of the following:
- Unexpected or avoidable death of a patient, staff member, visitor or member of the public.
- Serious harm: events requiring life‑saving interventions or major procedures, causing permanent injury, shortened life expectancy, prolonged pain or significant psychological harm.
- Major disruption or threat to service delivery: large‑scale IT failure, significant loss of personal/organisational data, infrastructure damage or other events that prevent delivery of healthcare.
- Major public concern or adverse media attention that undermines confidence in services.
- Never events: a nationally defined subset of incidents that are considered wholly preventable if known safeguards are in place...
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