King's Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre
King's Patient Safety & Service Quality Research Centre is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). It was established to drive improvements in the safety, quality and effectiveness of the services the NHS provides to its patients and the public. The Centre brings together NHS professionals with academic experts from a wide range of backgrounds, including management and the social sciences, to focus on investigating ways to improve the care of patients. For more information about our research, visit the Who we are and Programmes sections.
Patient safety and service quality
Patient safety concerns the ways in which care can cause harm, and how that harm can be prevented. Service quality concerns the wider experience of care, including whether services are timely, effective and responsive to what patients need.
The Centre studies both together, because a service that is safe but slow, or quick but unreliable, still falls short for the patients who depend on it.
Publications and press releases
Browse the Centre's latest publications and press releases.
Publications set out the findings of individual studies and the methods behind them. Press releases summarise key results for a wider audience, including NHS managers, clinicians and the public.
Join our mailing list
Anyone who wants to receive King's PSSQ news can send their email address to the Centre and ask to be added to the mailing list. Subscribers receive updates on research, events and publications as they are released.
Sharing an address is voluntary, and readers can ask for their details to be removed at any time. The aim is to keep the mailing list focused on news that matters to people working to improve patient care.
Subscribe to our research newsletter
Subscribe to receive King's PSSQ news by email.
The newsletter brings together the Centre's news in one message, so subscribers do not need to check the site for each update. It is a simple way to keep up with research activity across the NHS.
Our aims
We aim to improve the care patients receive in the NHS.
How our aims become research
The Centre's aims are put into practice through research that looks closely at how NHS services are delivered. Studies examine where care can be made safer, where services can be more consistent, and where patients' experiences point to something that could be better.
To see how these aims shape the Centre's work, read about the team and its approach on the Who we are page.
Feedback, glossary and site map
Readers who have comments on the research or on this website can send feedback through the Feedback page. Comments help the Centre decide which topics to explain more clearly and which pages need updating.
Technical terms used across the research are explained in the Glossary, and the full list of pages is available in the Site map.
Website titles and navigation guide
Every page of the Centre's website carries a title element, the short name that appears in a browser tab and in search results. Clear titles help readers recognise each page, whether they are looking for a research programme, a member of staff or a list of publications.
Consistent page titles also make the site easier to navigate. When a title matches the content beneath it, visitors can judge quickly whether a page answers their question before they open it.
Where to find our work
The website is organised so that each part of the Centre's activity has a clear home. Visitors can move between research, people and learning without losing track of what the Centre is trying to achieve.
The grid below points to the main areas of the site, each of which expands on the themes introduced on this page.
Programmes
Read about the research programmes, their questions and the methods used to answer them, on the Programmes page.
Staff
Meet the people who carry out the research, from clinicians to academic specialists, on the Staff page.
Events
Find meetings and workshops where research findings are shared with NHS colleagues, on the Events page.
Training
Learn about the courses that help NHS staff apply safety and quality methods in their own services, on the Training page.
King's Patient Safety and Service Quality (PSSQ) Research Centre
Latest news and events from the Centre
This part of the website is where the Centre shares its latest updates, from research findings to the events and training it runs for NHS staff. Each update shows how the work connects to safer, higher quality care for patients.
Visitors who want to follow new developments can read the news here, then visit the Events page for upcoming meetings and the Training page for courses.
How the Centre works with the NHS
The Centre brings NHS professionals and academic experts into the same research teams. Clinicians bring knowledge of day-to-day services, while academics bring methods for measuring change and testing whether it works.
Because the teams draw on management and the social sciences as well as clinical practice, the research looks at how organisations behave, not only at individual treatments. This wider view helps explain why a good idea succeeds in one hospital and struggles in another.
