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There should be processes in place for learning from critical incidents and from excellent care.

There should be mechanisms to disseminate national safety alerts from groups such as the Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group (SALG).⁶²

Inpatient pain services should maintain a prospective database of activity and outcome data and this should be used for quality improvement and early recognition of potential harm.^{66, 35, 72}

Analgesic guidelines, including those for specific analgesic techniques, should be widely disseminated and easily accessible.^{35,63, 64, 65}

All guidelines should be dated and regularly reviewed. All guidelines should have a clearly documented author and review date and be published in line with local clinical governance policies with appropriate oversight.

Guidelines for the management of side effects and complications including inadequate analgesia should be available.

Where good evidence exists, consideration should be given to procedure specific analgesic techniques.

Where possible, guidelines should be shared locally, between hospitals and nationally.

The IPS should actively engage in benchmarking against national standards e.g. GPAS, CSPMSUK, ACSA, RCoA Audit Recipe Book.^67,68,69,71

Where possible, the IPS should encourage engagement in research in acute pain medicine, including recruitment into well designed national and international multicentre studies.⁷³