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At the second annual Patient Safety Learning conference, held on 2 October 2019, we interviewed Tom Kark QC. QEB Hollis Whiteman and Verita, Tom joined a conversation with Ted Baker and Dr Elaine Maxwell on the topic of 'Leadership for patient safety'.

This podcast, is the first in a series, produced by Catalysis, about how to change organisational culture. This episode focuses on board engagement and the support a board needs to offer management during cultural transformation. 

A careful planning for a pandemic, like COVID-19, is critical to protecting the health and welfare of entire humanity. Hospitals play a very critical role within the health system in providing essential medical care to the community, particularly during the crisis. But hospitals are complicated and vulnerable institutions, dependent on crucial external support and supply lines. During the current outbreak, an interruption of these critical support services and supplies would potentially disrupt the provision of acute health care by an unprepared health-care facility. Any shortage of critical equipment and supplies could limit access to the needed care and have a direct impact on healthcare delivery and panic could potentially jeopardise established working routines. In such scenario, even a modest rise in admission volume can overwhelm a hospital beyond its functional reserve. Even for a well-prepared hospital, coping with the health consequences of a COVID-19 outbreak would be a complex challenge for sure.   WHO hospital readiness checklist shows the key actions to take in the context of a continuous hospital emergency preparedness process.

In 2020, all NHS organisations were instructed to name a single executive board member as their senior responsible person for tackling health inequalities. Across the NHS, there should now be over 450 dedicated health equality named leads in healthcare organisations. This report published by the independent NHS Race & Health Observatory in collaboration with The King’s Fund sets out recommendations to help ensure senior NHS officials responsible for improving health inequalities are able to make a difference.

In healthcare, telling stories brings benefits to both storytellers and audience members, but also presents risks of harm. A reflective storytelling practice aims to honour stories and storytellers by ensuring there is time to prepare, reflect, learn, ask questions, and engage in dialogue with the storyteller to explore what went well and where there are learning and improvement opportunities. Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC) is a pan-Canadian health organisation focused on improving the quality and safety of care in Canada. The HEC Patient Engagement and Partnerships team have co-developed these recommendations on how best to meaningfully share stories from those leading, providing and receiving care at Board meetings. This Case Study outlines the process HEC used to co-develop storytelling recommendations, focusing on a trauma-informed approach to create safe spaces for preparing, learning from and reflecting on stories, to clearly articulate their purpose, and to ensure the locus of control for storytelling rests with the storytellers.