SLIPPS was a 3 year Erasmus+ co-funded Patient Safety education project (2016-2019)

This groundbreaking project lives on through continued developments and international collaborations.

Led by Professor Alison Steven of Northumbria University, SLIPPs was a collaboration of 7 Higher Education institutions and multiple Health and/or social care providers across 5 European countries: UK, Finland, Spain, Italy and Norway.

Original foundations: SLIPPs was founded on a line of research initiated by Pearson and Steven (2009,2010,2014), which later shaped the doctoral work of Tella (2015,2016). This evolving body of work, combined with the diverse expertise in patient safety, health professions education, and practice innovation contributed by project partners made SLIPPs a genuinely multidisciplinary initiative.

At the heart of the project is the recognition that learning in healthcare programmes occurs not only in academic settings but also during clinical placements. In these real-world environments, student healthcare professionals may observe or be involved in patient safety incidents of varying severity—many of which go unrecognised, undocumented, or unaddressed.

Why this matters :These experiences offer valuable insights into patient safety, learning processes, and professional socialisation. However, they often remain unexplored, resulting in missed opportunities for learning and improvement.

SLIPPS addresses this gap through the development of research and educational resources based on student experience. To support learning and research, the project produced a variety of freely available practical tools and resources for use across education and clinical practice, fostering stronger collaboration between academic and clinical settings.

Foremost among these is the SLIPPS Learning Event Recording Tool (SLERT), a unique instrument that engages students in reflective learning while simultaneously gathering data on patient safety incidents.

Widely translated and freely available, the SLERT continues to be used internationally in teaching and research.