The Incident Decision Tree is a key component of the National Patient Safety Agency’s (NPSA) drive to help the NHS move away from asking “Who was to blame?” to asking “Why did the individual act in this way?” when things go wrong.
The Incident Decision Tree has been created to help NHS managers and senior clinicians decide whether they need to suspend (exclude) staff involved in a serious patient safety incident and to identify appropriate management action. The aim is to promote fair and consistent staff treatment within and between healthcare organisations.
The Incident Decision Tree is a web-based tool and is simple to use. Depending on the nature of the incident and the amount of information gathered, it usually takes 30 to 60 minutes to work through.
The Incident Decision Tree complements the NPSA’s Root Cause Analysis toolkit and the two can be used in parallel.
Please note that previous versions of the Incident Decision Tree (V1.4.5 through 1.6.2) are no longer supported.
Unfortunately, due to the differing technologies used in the new web based tool, it is not possible to transfer saved data from previous versions of the software.
