Doctor Informed: beyond medical knowledge. A BMJ podcast series for hospital doctors

Summary

Medical expertise is fundamental to the practice of medicine. But other skills and knowledge are important too. Doctor Informed gives the inside story on the evidence about giving the best care and having positive relationships with patients and colleagues.

Content

Latest episodes

Reflecting on a crisis 

It can be hard to look back, especially if difficult decisions and compromises were made, including ones we did not completely agree with, or if there could be criticism of the way we responded. We ask how individual doctors, teams, and organisations could respond to and recover from major problems? Guests: Annelieke Driessen, a THIS Institute fellow and medical anthropologist. She is a research fellow at the University of Oxford and honorary assistant professor in medical anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has spent hours listening to and understanding patient experiences of ICU during the pandemic; and Dominque Allwood, Chief Medical Officer at UCL Partners, and Director of Population Health at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, who focuses on creating positive change in healthcare.

"But it’s always been done that way"

In this episode Clara Munro is joined by Graham Martin, director of research at THIS Institute. They discuss the dreaded phrase "But it's always been done this way", and why failing is the path to success, and the true importance of listening.

Everyone’s going to make a mistake

Medicine is complex, and as a doctor you won't always do the right thing - but you can prepare yourself for when mistakes happen, both emotionally and logistically. In this episode, Clara Munro is joined by Susanna Stamford, a patient who was on the receiving end of a mistake, which catalysed her interest in patient safety, and Anthea Martin, from Medical Protection, who dispels some myths about saying sorry.

The blame game 

Blame culture, no blame culture, just culture - there are many terms which are used to describe the environment in which individuals and teams work, the feel within a team and an organisation. In this episode we'll explore what they mean, why blame can be detrimental to patient safety, and give some tips on how to investigate problems without throwing blame around. Guests in this episode: Joselle Wright - Deputy Director of Midwifery, Gynaecology and Sexual Health at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust; Susanna Stanford, who became involved in patient safety after experience of a spinal anaesthetic failing during a c-section in 2010. She is an ambassador for the Clinical Human Factors Group.

Learning to listen

This episode explores listening. As a senior clinician, how can you make the space in your work to be a good listener, when what you hear might not be what you want to hear? Guests: Megan Reitz, professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult Business School, and John Higgins, research director at The Right Conversation.

Why is it so hard to speak out about patient safety?

This episode explores the concept of a voiceable concern – identifying what counts as a concern, and what counts as an occasion for voice by an individual, is not a straightforward matter of applying objective criteria- for example how do you tell if you're witnessing poor practice, or just something that lies outside your area of understanding? Or how do you know if the common practice in this particular ward is actually an outlier when looking at other hospitals? Guests Mary Dixon-Woods, director of THIS Institute, and a Health Foundation Professor of Healthcare Improvement Studies in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge; and Zoe Fritz, consultant in acute medicine at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, she is also a Wellcome Fellow in society and ethics at THIS Institute, investigating how we communicate and record uncertainty around diagnosis.

Who is responsible for patient safety?

As clinicians, we're all taught that patient safety is everyone's responsibility - but on the ground it can be hard to know how to most effectively report concerns, especially if you're not sure how those concerns will be received. In this episode Clara Munro is joined by Ayisha Ashmore, and they ask "who is actually responsible for patient safety?" To answer they are  joined by 2 guests: Bill Kirkup, independent investigator who has worked on the reports into failings in Mid-Staffordshire, and Gosport; and Henrietta Hughes - GP, and the NHS's first guardian, Henrietta championed the creation of freedom-to-speak-up guardians in the English NHS, to ensure that clinicians are able to freely speak out.