A huddle board, perhaps displayed on a staffroom wall, can be created if there is a particular safety issue that needs focusing on, or to use as a tool for monitoring overall patient safety. 

Huddles can take place next to the huddle board and this can help team members visualise the aims to achieve, barriers to overcome, steps being taken to make the improvements and progress being made, as well as aiding the celebration of successes. It is important to make sure that they are updated regularly to keep the information current and meaningful.

The huddle board could consist of the following points:

• Clearly state the patient safety improvement goal and what needs to be achieved. For example, where a community pharmacy aims to improve the management of hospital discharge medicine changes received by telephone messages into the pharmacy, a goal could be: 100 per cent of these messages are reviewed by the pharmacist within 24 hours of receipt
• Create a visual way to track progress. For example, a graph of the number of hospital discharge telephone messages received and the number of pharmacist reviews of these each day
• Acknowledge reasons why the goal may be difficult to achieve and record any obstacles to be overcome. For example, a lack of a communication system for recording and following up telephone messages
• Record the action plan. What is going to be done now? What is going to be done in the future? What has been completed? For example, hospital discharge information telephone messages will be recorded in the hospital discharge message book, which is reviewed and documented by the pharmacist every day at lunchtime
• Celebrate successes. What has been achieved? For example, this month 100 per cent of hospital discharge telephone messages were recorded in the hospital discharge message book and reviewed by the pharmacist within 24 hours of receipt.