Patient Safety Spotlight Interview with Ashley Windebank-Brooks, Head of Patient Safety at North Bristol NHS Trust

Summary

This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Ashley talks to us about the need to professionalise patient safety roles while also upskilling frontline healthcare staff to improve patient safety, describing the role that professional coaching can play. He also discusses the challenges we face in understanding how AI affects decision making in healthcare and how it could contribute to patient safety incidents.

Content

About the author

Ashley Windebank-Brooks is Head of Patient Safety for North Bristol NHS Trust, a centre of excellence in several fields of health care in the South West and one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK.

Ashley joined North Bristol six months ago having worked for the NHS for nearly 10 years in a variety of roles including contracting, commissioning, mental health and acute care. His past roles all had a focus on problem solving, learning and understanding why things happen, and how we support people to improve. Giving a voice to patients and their families is a core value for Ashley, particularly at difficult times such as following a patient safety incident.