Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that Mental Health Trusts have guidance and support to learn from deaths in the NHS.

In March 2017, the National Quality Board published ‘National Guidance on Learning from Deaths’. The guidance sets out how National Health Service acute, mental health and community trusts should review, investigate and learn from the deaths of patients in their care, and gives particular emphasis to the deaths of individuals who had a learning disability or mental illness.

To supplement the national guidance, on 22 November 2018 the Royal College of Psychiatrists published guidance specifically for mental health trusts to ensure that opportunities are not missed when reviewing the deaths of patients who had a severe mental illness. The guidance, including a mortality review tool, was commissioned by NHS England and is a key output of the Government’s national Learning from Deaths programme. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/improving-care/campaigning-for-better-mental-health-policy/care-review-tool-for-mental-health-trusts