Summary
To mark this year’s World Patient Safety Day (WPSD), the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) will be running a series of blogs and Talking Heads on key surgical and dental topics in this area. These have been provided by patients, families and carers, alongside members of the College’s Patient Safety Group, College Council and the wider College fellowship. The College’s eleven Surgical Specialty Boards (SSBs) have been asked to provide blogs on how patient involvement in their individual specialty has helped to drive up standards of care.
The blogs will provide examples of how patients and carers can play vital roles in making decisions about their own individual care and also how they can enhance the safety of the healthcare system as a whole by contributing to strategic decisions at organisational level.
Two blogs will be released on each day of the College’s week-long WPSD campaign, starting on Monday 11 September and leading up to WPSD on Sunday 17 September. Members and Fellows will have access to these through the College website following the campaign.
Content
RCSEd blogs
- Who World Patient Safety Day 2023 Engaging patients for patient safety
- Giving-back
- Harper Lee's law campaign
- Truth and compassion
- The privilege of working with medical students: a World Patient Safety Day blog by Eddie Mcgill
- Shared decision making an essential step in optimal patient care
- Enhancing patient safety in cardiothoracic surgery The role of patient involvement groups in the UK
- Engaging patients for patient safety patients are given new voices by NHS England
- Team based quality reviews
- Exploring the crucial role patients play in enhancing surgical research
- Remote PSA monitoring for prostate cancer patients using digital platforms. A safe and efficient follow-up alternative to traditional face-to-face outpatients
- Patient participation for safe service re-design
- Co-creation with stakeholders in information production is key to high quality patient-centred care
- Engaging patients for patient safety. Dentists can elevate the voice of patients
RCSEd commitment to patient safety
Upholding patient safety and ensuring the highest possible standards of patient care have been at the heart of the College’s activity since it was founded over 500 years ago. The Patient Safety Group supports and coordinates all the College’s Patient Safety initiatives. We have a multidisciplinary membership drawn from all the faculties of the College and including representation from both the wider surgical team and patients themselves.
Over the years, the College has worked hard to develop numerous resources to help improve patient safety. These have taken many forms and include:
- Patient, Carer Support: The Patient Safety Group has worked hard over the last few years to develop high quality, innovative and accessible resources to support surgical and dental patients and their carers. It is hoped that these resources will help patients to better navigate surgical care and empower them to be advocates for their own health.
- Training Courses: These include the highly successful NOTSS Programme, PINTS Course and DeNTS Course, which aim to educate the whole peri-operative team in the non-technical skills which underpin safe operative surgery and dentistry, and the innovative ICONS workshop which was developed with patients to provide training in sharing the complex decisions involved in informed consent.
- Web-based Resources: These include the Surgical Ward Round Toolkit which aims to reduce errors and improve safety on surgical ward rounds.
- Patient Safety Webinars: This very popular 10-part series featured contributions from renowned world experts in the patient safety arena drawn from a wide range of disciplines.
- Let’s Talk Surgery Patient Safety Podcasts: These experts have also contributed to the College’s podcast series allowing more in-depth personal discussion on key Patient Safety topics. All sessions were recorded and remain available to College members and fellows on the Education section of our website.
- Surgeons News Articles: The Patient Safety Group has published a large number of articles in Surgeons News covering a broad range of patient safety topics.
- MSc in Patient Safety and Clinical Human Factors: We have also worked with the University of Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Surgery On-Line Programme to develop an MSc in Patient Safety and Clinical Human Factors. This 3-year part-time programme supports any graduate health care professional in using evidence-based tools to improve the safety of everyday health care systems.
- National Campaigns: These include the very successful LetsRemoveIt campaign, running since 2017, to reduce bullying and undermining, and its resultant detrimental effect on patient safety, in the surgical and dental workplace. A large range of resources have been developed to help in this area and the College were instrumental in forming the anti-bullying alliance with other national bodies.
- National Guidelines: The College have also developed several national guidelines to influence healthcare policy & improve the working environment, such as Improving the Working Environment for Safe Surgical Care and Improving Safety Out of Hours.
- Staff Resilience and Wellbeing: We also recognize that staff resilience and wellbeing is a major factor in helping to ensure safe patient care. Improving surgical team wellbeing and mental health has been a major focus for the College over the last year. The College Trainees’ Committee has taken the lead in this and the Patient Safety Group have been proud to support them in this endeavour.
- The Committee have run very successful wellbeing weeks over the last three years. These raised the awareness of the importance of wellbeing amongst all members of the surgical team and included various activities such as daily webinars, virtual workshops and sessions on cooking, mindfulness, yoga, art and how to make work fun. CPD points for the webinars in the series were provided, underlining the importance that the College places on this subject.
- The College’s 'Moon and Back’ campaign, launched in 2021, encourages all members of the surgical team to take time out of their busy schedules to focus on their mental health.
- We are also proud to be able to endorse the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Wellbeing Charter for Doctors which describes the principles that guide the wellbeing of doctors and the shared responsibilities for wellbeing of the medical profession.
Please visit the College’s website and social media channels for more information on all these patient safety resources. It is great to be able to share these with you and to help raise awareness of the importance of patient safety in our everyday surgical and dental practice.
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