Patient safety
Blog post
26 results found
Is using virtual technology an effective way to spread improvements?
Date published: 08 March 2012The meetings and learning sessions in the Pass It On Collaborative (part of the Safer Patients Network) were all held virtually, rather than face-to-face. Joy Whitlock, part of the mentoring team, looks at how technology was used and whether or not t...
The problem with SUIs
Date published: 06 March 2012Until we trial independent investigations for the most serious of incidents (ie quality not quantity of investigations is critical), SUI reports will disappear into a filing cabinet and will still fail to capture the real lessons, says Martin Bromile...
What’s paperwork got to do with healthcare improvement?
Date published: 26 January 2012We need to recognise that improving paperwork goes hand in hand with improving systems of care, and is a collective responsibility. Improvement interventions can live or die due to the quality of documentation – and the same, tragically, can st...
Our focus on patient safety in 2012
Date published: 25 January 2012When it comes to patient safety, have we become too complacent? Perhaps we don’t even recognise that certain practice, processes and systems may be unsafe or allow staff to make mistakes all too easily, says Jane Jones.
Next steps for the quality improvement community in Scotland
Date published: 18 January 2012It feels like quality improvement programmes are everywhere in healthcare just now. Everybody wants to embed it in daily practice, so that quality improvement is ‘just how we do things here’. But is it truly embedded where you work? Pr...
Interesting article on human factors and patient safety
Date published: 11 January 2012Martin Bromiley signposts an article he has seen on human factors and patient safety.
Poor performers or a poor system?
Date published: 18 November 2011When it comes to patient safety and errors made by healthcare staff, we can’t investigate and learn, and we can’t be open with patients, if we don’t understand what has happened and why professionals made sense of situations that su...
Simulation to improve quality: save time, save lives, provide insight
Date published: 07 October 2011Martin Bromiley gives his thoughts following a day at a simulation centre providing training to a large teaching hospital. On the day of his visit year 5 medical students were being trained. The ‘patient’ for the scenarios lay in bed in a...
Quality improvement? It’s all Greek to me
Date published: 14 September 2011Topun Austin blogs about why it's important to keep quality, safety and efficiency at the top of the healthcare agenda during difficult economic times.
Who at the very top is responsible for patient safety?
Date published: 05 August 2011Following the launch of the outline of the new NHS Commissioning Board, Martin Bromiley discusses where he thinks the responsibilities of patient safety lie.
Ignoring an alarm bell – negligence, not caring, or victim by design?
Date published: 27 June 2011There’s a good deal of human factors science behind the design of alarms and we’re trained to respond consistently, says Martin Bromiley. So why is the response to alarms on hospital equipment not always consistent?
Can Standard Operating Procedures work in healthcare?
Date published: 17 June 2011In this blog post, Martin Bromiley reflecst on standards, guidance, guidelines and ‘professional judgement’.
Patient safety: what’s to be learned from road safety?
Date published: 09 May 2011As in healthcare, road safety accidents are rarely headline-grabbers. Road use has the same deceptive familiarity as healthcare, and everyone has had a prang or two. So what lessons can patient safety learn from road safety? Mary Dixon-Woods examines...
A call to arms
Date published: 20 April 2011Topics at this year's IHI Forum were varied and the report card on the surface appears to be good; we are making progress, there is much to learn and now we need to spread the good message, says Peter Lachman.
A human factors approach?
Date published: 31 March 2011What do we mean by a 'human factors approach'? Martin Bromiley examines this in his latest blog post.
Training for the future: from 20th century medicine to 21st healthcare delivery
Date published: 24 March 2011The future of the NHS is at stake, or so the media tells us, and medical leaders are raising concerns and asking whether there will be an NHS in the future. For those in the front line the changes seem inevitable. We therefore need to look at ways we...
Every (improvement) system is perfectly designed to deliver the results it gets
Date published: 17 March 2011We know that we still need to improve quality further and faster, so the real question we need to be asking – and answering – is how can an improvement system be perfectly designed to deliver improvement in quality and safety at scale? Jo...
Reflections from Northern Ireland
Date published: 17 March 2011With Northern Ireland in the midst of an election campaign; facing real cuts in spending on health and social services next year (unlike England’s stand-still position on health) and with a wickedly voracious local media, life is very tough for...
Who will deliver? The challenge of reducing cost and improving quality and safety
Date published: 21 February 2011As we move into new challenges in the NHS, the question remains whether we will be able to reduce cost and improve quality and safety at the same time? The evidence is not clear, yet the belief from political and NHS leaders is that this is the only ...
Healthcare, aviation and the clinicians’ revolution
Date published: 15 February 2011Is healthcare is ready to learn lessons from any safety critical industry, especially about safety and human factors? Martin Bromiley discusses the issue in this blog post.
Landing patient safety: the Safer Patients Initiative story
Date published: 03 February 2011As we publish the evaluations of our Safer Patients Initiative, Stephen Thornton examines how the patient safety landscape has changed over the last decade.
What is a safety culture?
Date published: 10 January 2011What do we mean by 'safety culture'? Martin Bromiley examines the term in this blog post.
Learning to listen: parents speak out at IHI Forum
Date published: 13 December 2010It's not often that one has an experience that enhances the meaning of one’s vocation. This happened to a group of paediatric patient safety experts during a session on paediatric patient safety at the IHI Forum, which has just ended in Orlando...
Patient safety: the importance of learning from failure
Date published: 09 December 2010In his first blog post, Martin Bromiley explains how he came to be involved in the Clinical Human Factors Group and gives his stance on patient safety.
Patient safety - a report from the Risky Business conference
Date published: 22 November 2010Peter Lachman reports from the 2010 Risky Business conference, designed to enable healthcare professionals to hear of and learn from the successes, and at times failures, in business, sport, creativity and industry.
The importance of quality and safety on the frontline
Date published: 10 November 2010Stephen Thornton blogs about a relative's experience of a Foundation Trust hospital, reminding readers of how important it is to the Health Foundation to continue encouraging and supporting those who remain committed to changing the patient experienc...
