News & Media

EXPLAIN – World Patient Safety Day 2025

Wednesday 17 September 2025 is World Patient Safety Day. On this day, healthcare professionals, researchers, and others work to increase global awareness and action on patient safety.

However, patient safety is a year-round commitment and is always at the forefront of the clinical trials that are managed across the UK and beyond by Clinical Trials Units (CTUs) registered by the UKCRC Registered CTU Network.

Registered CTUs devise and manage many clinical trials that collectively cover patients and participants with multiple diseases/conditions and/or injuries at all ages. 

Find out more about the work of registered CTUs here.

In order to promote a greater understanding of patient safety amongst research participants, three of the CTUs in the Network – the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit, the Centre for Clinical Trials Research, Cardiff University, and the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit – have, in collaboration with patients and their representative, produced a short animation explaining how safety is overseen in clinical trials.

Please visit the EXPLAIN project website https://explain.octru.ox.ac.uk to watch the animation. The page includes a link to request a copy of the animation for use in any research in any of six different language options. There are also explainer animations covering consent and randomisation.

Click here to find out more about the work of the Network.