Patient safety and the power of collaboration (a blog by Patient Safety Learning)

Summary

At Patient Safety Learning, we believe listening and learning from different perspectives, expertise and experiences is essential in understanding the complexities, challenges and potential solutions around patient safety issues. Reducing avoidable harm in health and social care cannot be done in isolation; collaboration is key. 

In this blog, we reflect on some of this year’s activities and celebrate people who are working together for safer care and recognising the value of different perspectives. 

Content

Background

In 2019 we launched a free online platform for anyone interested in patient safety - the hub – designed to help people share learning. Since then, the hub has had over 1.4 million visitors, and today it is a thriving, global community of people.

By connecting patients, frontline staff, managers, families, researchers, medtech companies, regulators, policy makers, patient safety partners and many more, the hub offers a unique space for people to work together to improve patient safety.

More recently, the hub has also provided an online space and support for several networks of people involved in patient safety. We are helping to facilitate deep and psychologically safe conversations among peers about some of the most challenging and inspiring aspects of patient safety. Discussions are varied, with members exploring topics like how to engage with patients and families following an incident, building a just culture, and how best to collaborate for safety.  

Celebrating collaborative working

Experts in a room

Electronic patient records (EPRs) are a way of managing clinical information with the intention of making it more easily accessible to both healthcare professionals and patients. EPR systems have the potential to improve quality and safety, patient treatment, increase efficiency and reduce the costs of healthcare. However, it has become increasingly evident that introducing EPR systems comes with serious patient safety risks.

In June, Patient Safety Learning held a virtual roundtable session with a group of experts who had been affected by EPR issues. Together, they discussed the patient safety risks and avoidable harm associated with these systems. Those collaborative conversations became a catalyst for our new report,  in which we set out ten principles that aim to put patient safety considerations at the heart of the design, development and rollout of EPR systems. The report gained interest across digital publications, social media and national news, and crucially with key stakeholders in healthcare. A great example of how the collaborative discussions from a roundtable event can help instigate further debate. 

Earlier in the year, we worked with AQUA to facilitate a workshop (hosted by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh) for Patient Safety Partners and their managers. With the Patient Safety Partner role only being introduced recently, we wanted to gather those who had rapidly become experts through experience, to share their early insights and learning.

Conversations were rich and varied, but the overall focus of the day was to start to identify ‘what good looks like’ in relation to embedding the role effectively. A number of themes were covered including recruitment and induction, role clarity, influencing and impact. We captured these conversations in a series of blogs which have now formed part of our recently published Patient Safety Partners toolkit of resources. We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the toolkit, designed to help Patient Safety Partners, their managers and anyone interested in embedding the role well.

The power of community

the hub is home to a growing number of networks for people involved in patient safety, including patient safety managers and specialists, Patient Safety Partners and organisational leaders with patient safety expertise and responsibility. These communities of interest are forums that provide peer support, sharing of knowledge, and examples of good practice from the ‘patient safety frontline’.

Building on conversations taking place in the network meetings, we worked with the Patient Safety Management Network and the Patient Safety Education Network to plan an event. In the autumn this came to fruition, and we held our first Patient Safety Symposium focused on implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) tools and methods. We also launched a new book at the event - ‘The emerging applications of safety science’, a wonderful collaboration with many contributors.

The event provided a fantastic opportunity for people to come together and have more of those energetic network conversations and share valuable insights in person. Together, attendees were able to work through, and learn how to apply those ‘how to’ tools.

It was great to have such a diverse range of participants at this event. One table featured student nurses, a representative from NHS England, a GP and a senior director from an independent trust. This was a genuine and much valued flattened hierarchy that enabled confident engagement and shared learning. Feedback was very positive with many people highlighting the value of working collaboratively on the day, and beyond.

“It was an excellent networking opportunity, and I have since been in contact with a new peer. We have shared our current Patient Safety Incident Investigation reports and provided a critical friend approach to each other.” Attendee.

Feedback on being part of the Patient Safety Management Network also highlights the impact of their regular meetings:

"The network has been an excellent platform to learn from peers across the country. I have not come across any other platform such as this. I use it as my go-to for practical problem-solving ideas and there are always plenty of them, for all sectors.” Patient Safety Specialist at an Integrated Care Board.

The collective wisdom and innovative thinking that emerges from the networks highlights the power of community when it comes to making progress in patient safety. It is unsurprising perhaps that we are increasingly being approached by NHS England and other key patient safety stakeholders who are seeking to collaborate with the networks we support. This presents valuable opportunity to feed that collective frontline wisdom into wider policy development.

Patient focused collaboration 

At Patient Safety Learning, we believe that patients should be engaged for safety at the point of care, if things go wrong, in improving services, advocating for change and in holding the system to account. 

Our editorial team has worked with many people who have been directly or indirectly impacted by unsafe care and want to share their insights to inform positive change. Their voices and experiences provide a powerful source of knowledge, and we are grateful that so many have felt able to share these with us through the hub.

With an increased emphasis on patient and family involvement in patient safety in the NHS, we are beginning to hear more examples of staff and organisations actively seeking ways to listen to the views and insights of patients. Embedding the Patient Safety Partner role will be key to enabling this. In a presentation for the hub, Lea Tiernan, Patient Safety Engagement Manager, and Armine Afrikian, a Patient Safety Partner, explain how they have worked together to develop the role at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. It provides an excellent example of how trusts can work truly collaboratively with Patient Safety Partners and support them to influence safety at a strategic and operational level. 

There are many people and organisations working hard to evidence the power of engaging patients in safety improvements and research. This year, we spoke to Anthony O’Connor, who explained the benefits of co-production and listening to lived experience, in two blogs for the hub.

We also worked with UK charity Sands, to shine a light on their listening project. Julia Clark and Mehali Patel from their research team draw on the project to illustrate the value of working with bereaved parents. Julia and Mehali explain why hearing and amplifying these unique insights is vital to developing safer, more equitable neonatal and maternity care.

In a blog for the hub, Miriam Levin from Demos highlighted the findings from their report “I love the NHS but…” Preventing needless harms caused by poor communication in the NHS. The report looked at everyday harms caused to people as they move through the NHS and try and get the care they need. Demos spoke to 2000 patients and staff about their experiences of health and care, and poor communication from the NHS came out as a significant issue for many people.

Summary

It is clear that a variety of voices, experiences and expertise is hugely beneficial when it comes to making progress in patient safety. At Patient Safety Learning we continue to proactively seek opportunities to collaborate with others, share individual and collective insights through the hub, and influence key stakeholders and policies.

Over the coming months no doubt the networks and the hub will continue to thrive, fuelled by the power of collaboration and the many voices that contribute. As people come together to address patient safety challenges, our collective understanding and knowledge around potential solutions can only deepen and refine – paving the way for a patient-safe future. 

Join the hub

Do you have insights to share around patient safety? Are you a member of the hub?

Why not join our global community today (it’s free and easy to sign up). When you’ve registered, you’ll be able to submit an article, share a resource, start conversations in the forum and collaborate with other members. You’ll also have the option to request to join the networks we support.

Related content

• Developing the Patient Safety Partner role: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust share their approach
• Patient engagement resource section on the hub
• Collaborating for safety: We need to make space for each other
• NHS England and NHS Improvement: Framework for involving patients in patient safety (29 June 2021)