The Film “The Trouble with Handovers” has been made to highlight the vital importance of clinical handovers to patients’ safety.

We follow the story of David, an elderly man with dementia, after he develops pneumonia and a crush fracture in his thoracic spine. David and his partially – sighted wife have been coping OK at home with support of their daughter. But an admission to hospital goes badly wrong due to important information being lost at various handovers between staff.

The Patient Safety Federation (PSF) is made up of, run by and funded by the healthcare organisations of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Its members collaborate to address those wider patient safety issues of particular relevance to them, bringing to bear on these a multi-agency and multi-disciplinary approach.

The No Needless Ignorance (NNI) workstream is one of ten work streams under the PSF and consists of clinicians from different backgrounds with a common vision who have come together to create this innovative piece that can be used right across the NHS to illustrate how handovers between services can go wrong. Giving clinicians the opportunity to reflect on individual day to day practice and therefore improve handovers and communication to ultimately affect patient safety.

‘Training doesn’t have to be boring’ is the message behind a new DVD that aims to increase safety during lifeboat operations.”

“The film will grab seafarers’ attention about a complicated subject“, Walport’s maritime training producer, Jill Tinsley told SASI.  The film certainly makes an impact. The opening narration takes place over footage of a familiar scenario: a lifeboat being recovered following a drill.  Then the lifeboat plunges suddenly and terrifyingly into the sea, showing just how badly operations can go wrong.

Focus producer Ian Ward said:

“This was one of the most challenging projects we have undertaken.  Many seafarers’ lives have been lost during lifeboat drills in recent years, so we had to be sure our crew could work safely within a lifeboat being deployed from a container vessel.

“But even more importantly we simply had to produce a DVD for seafarers that would help ship owners prevent more loss of life.  Time will tell if we have achieved that.

“Walport is a great client to work with and we were delighted with their professionalism and commitment to achieving high standards of production.”

Focus is contracted by the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency to maintain their very sizeable archive of video footage of incidents attended by their Search and Rescue helicopters.  We also have the job of licensing and making the footage available to news organisations, broadcasters and programme makers around the world.

This rescue story is just the latest example of footage of an incident, which we received from the Portland-based helicopter, edited and uploaded it within minutes to a secure web area for BBC TV Plymouth to use in their nightly news programme ‘Spotlight‘.

The 29 year old man was taken to hospital by the Portland SAR helicopter after being winched to safety from cliffs at Portland in Dorset. It took the Portland Bill cliff rescue team and the Coastguard Rescue helicopter nearly an hour to rescue the man, who sustained serious ankle injuries.  He was found in an awkward location which made the rescue very complicated for the teams involved.

MCA Press Officers provide news releases about incidents, and now regularly use Twitter to alert news providers and other interested organisations.

The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency asked Focus to produce a video programme that covered the Agency’s entire UK-wide operation, describing the ways in which their Maritime Response Control Centres handle the coordination of Search and Rescue missions when ships get into trouble. You can watch the whole programme athttp://www.mcapodcasts.co.uk/mcavnrs/index.htm

With more people holidaying at home this year, the truck in front of you as you drive to your UK holiday will remind you to ‘Dial 999 and ask for the Coastguard’.

It’s an interesting partnership between the UK’s major food retailer and the Coastguard – one of the 999 emergency services.

HM Coastguard consists of courageous and dedicated professionals and volunteers who, as well as operating a fleet of Search and Rescue helicopters, cover the entire UK coastline with teams of volunteers trained for cliff and river rescues.  Each year, these committed people save hundreds of lives.

The full story of the Tesco/HMCG partnership is covered in the latest edition of the MCA Video News Podcast which is produced and operated by Focus Business Podcasts, the UK’s major specialist in business and public service podcasting.

HM Coastguard is part of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency.