Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how they categorise surgical harm in reference to the outcomes of surgical fires; and what plans they have to categorise harm based on the areas most affected by such a fire.

Any unexpected or unintended incident which could have, or did, lead to harm to one or more patients can be recorded on the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, to support local and national learning. This would include surgical fires and burns. Providers are encouraged to foster a positive safety culture among their staff, and ensure an appropriate local focus on incident recognition, recording, and response.

Recording onto LFPSE is a voluntary process, except where reporting to NHS England fulfils duties for other statutory mandatory requirements, such as reporting notifiable incidents to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the regulations of which are available in an online only format. NHS England shares all such data with the CQC. Notifiable incidents include events resulting in serious harm or the death of a service user, and therefore the most serious surgical fires or surgical burns are subject to mandatory reporting. However, providers are encouraged to record all patient safety incidents, irrespective of the level of harm, to support local and national learning.

As such, all recorded patient safety incidents, including surgical fires and burns, are categorised according to the level of harm thought to have resulted, as well as being linked to various other categorical items of data, such as the location of the incident and when it occurred.