Today is World Patient Safety Day, an annual awareness day set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to promote and encourage action to improve patient safety worldwide.

The theme for these year’s World Patient Safety Day is 'Safe care for every newborn and every child' and is focusing on promoting safety from the start of life, which is encouraging to see given the prevalence of concerns across maternity and neonatal care, especially across the NHS, impacting upon newborns and their families.

Doctors, nurses, midwives, and all medical professionals have a duty of care to ensure patient safety no matter the age of the patient they are treating. Parents should also feel their concerns are being listened to if they feel "something isn’t right" with their child.

The NHS has previously been actively involved in sharing learning for World Patient Safety Day and alongside striving to improve care, the recent enquiries such as the Ockenden Maternity review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust show the importance of listening to patients and families when there are concerns and to learn from failings. This week the government announced that fourteen NHS Trusts will have their maternity services investigated, as part of the wider rapid review of maternity and neonatal care in England, this is a step forward, but families voices need to be at the centre of the review and the report should not be further delayed.

As a clinical negligence solicitor at JMW, I all too commonly see the impact of failings in patient safety having a life changing impact on a child and their family as well as the failure to listen to families concerns.

For instance, I have worked on cases where poor management of labour has left children with physical disabilities or brain injury such as cerebral palsy. We have also seen cases where parents’ concerns have not been listened to and unfortunately has led to their child not been treated in time. Of course, these cases are usually often not reflective of hard-working and experienced nurses, doctors or midwives intending to provide poor care but of the need for additional support and resources across the system.

The introduction of Martha’s Rule across all acute hospital’s in England is certainly a step forward in encouraging parents to advocate for their child’s health and treatment.

I hope this World Patient Safety Day goes further to highlight these issues across medical settings and give patients and their families the voice to raise concerns and receive the standard of care they deserve.