UKHSA National Patient Safety Alerts
National Patient Safety Alerts (NatPSAs) are official notices giving instructions to NHS bodies on how to prevent risks which might cause serious harm or death.
NatPSAs are only issued for safety-critical reasons that will impact on patient safety, with strict criteria.
The threshold is ‘more likely than not of one or more potentially avoidable deaths or disability in healthcare in England in a year’.
NatPSAs are targeted at senior management in healthcare organisations for system-wide action, sent through the Central Alerting System (CAS).
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is accredited to publish NatPSAs to ask healthcare providers to take action to prevent or reduce the impact of a threat to public health from:
- communicable diseases, such as outbreaks of infectious disease, microbial contamination of products (but not medical devices)
- non-infectious hazards, such as exposure to radiation and chemicals
- supply disruption such as vaccines
In line with UKHSA’s responsibilities for public protection, the organisation will, from time to time, need to issue such alerts.
Links to UKHSA NatPSAs are provided below:
7 December 2023: Potential contamination of some carbomer-containing lubricating eye products with Burkholderia cenocepacia
7 July 2022: Contamination of hygiene products with Pseudomonas aeruginosa
4 March 2022: Potential contamination of Alimentum and Elecare infant formula food products.
11 November 2021: The safe use of ultrasound gel to reduce infection risk.
18 August 2021: Potent synthetic opioids implicated in increase in drug overdoses.
Updates to this page
Published 8 December 2021Last updated 7 December 2023 + show all updates
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Added 'Potential contamination of some carbomer-containing lubricating eye products with Burkholderia cenocepacia'.
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Updated 'Contamination of hygiene products with Pseudomonas aeruginosa'.
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Added Contamination of hygiene products with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
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Added link to Potential contamination of Alimentum and Elecare infant formula food products.
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First published.