2013 has seen a continued recognition of the critical role that human factors plays in safety science. But although aligned with the ‘safety agenda’, human factors offers so much more to an organisati...
The new year started with a clear warning about the impact on the NHS of rising numbers of people living with long-term conditions: the costs of delivering current models of care are increasingly reco...
The health service is awash with data – data about performance, processes, outcomes, staff and patients. There is a centrally dictated requirement to measure certain aspects of care, such as waiting t...
‘The fundamental goal of healthcare is to increase value. We must define value as the outcomes that matter to patients divided by the cost of achieving those outcomes.’ This is the central thesis of M...
Earlier this month came a report from the BBC of a porter at Northern Ireland's biggest accident and emergency department, who said he was ‘fed up watching our nurses cry’ following problems in the un...
It’s often said that the NHS isn’t an organisation but a network of organisations – a system, if you like. There are of course good and bad parts in any system, and in this and my next blog I want to ...
How are you today? I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m hopeful. Let me tell you why… Denise was diagnosed with anorexia when she was 9 years old. She’s now 16. She has been an inpatient for three years and und...
Today marks a year since the publication of the Francis report. And on the face of it, much appears to have happened. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has developed a new approach to regulation and i...
In my blog last week, I talked about the example of Kettering Hospital, who identified 43 ‘care delivery problems’ of which 6 had a direct impact on the death of a patient. Well done to Kettering for ...
Sir Stuart Rose has an impressive resumé. Credited with the transformation of Marks & Spencer during his six years as chief executive, he has now been handed the task of advising the Secretary of Stat...
