Search the hub

The vast majority of healthcare is provided safely and effectively. However, just like any high-risk industry, things can and do go wrong. There is a world of advice about how to keep people safe but this delivers little in terms of changed practice. Written by Suzette Woodward, a leading expert in the field with over two decades of experience, Rethinking Patient Safety provides readers with a critical reflection upon what it might take to narrow the implementation gap between the evidence base about patient safety and actual practice. This book provides important examples for the many professionals who work in patient safety but are struggling to narrow the gap and make a difference in their current situation. It provides insights on practical actions that can be immediately implemented to improve the safety of patient care in healthcare and provides readers with a different way of thinking in terms of changing behaviour and practices as well as processes and systems. Suzette Woodward shares lessons from the science of implementation, campaigning and social movement methods and offers the reader the story of a discovery. Her team has explored an approach which could profoundly affect the safety culture in healthcare; a methodology to help people talk to each other and their patients and to listen through facilitated safety conversations. This is their story.

Cathe Gaskell, from The Results Company, presented at the recent Bevan Brittan Patient Safety Seminar on incivility in healthcare and the impact this has on patient safety. Attached are her presentation slides

The PRAISe project tests the hypothesis that, together, positive reporting and appreciative inquiry can be used as an intervention to facilitate behavioural change and improvement in the related areas of sepsis management and antimicrobial stewardship.

The PRAISe project tests the hypothesis that, together, positive reporting and appreciative inquiry can be used as an intervention to facilitate behavioural change and improvement in the related areas of sepsis management and antimicrobial stewardship.

Dr Esther Murray is a Health Psychologist working at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She has a keen interest in moral injury, the term used when people are witness to shocking or traumatic events that change their outlook on the world. In this podcast, from General Broadcast, the East England Ambulance Service Patient Safety Integration Lead talks to Esther about moral injury and how it can impact ambulance crews, as well as what we can all do to help each other.

When it comes to communication, we rely on language at the expense of the rest of our communication toolbox. However, nonverbal communication is just as important as the words we use.1 In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of face masks has become ubiquitous in many countries. Many facial expressions are the same across cultures, like happiness, sadness, anger and fear and our faces can express emotions without saying a word. Given widespread masking, this nonverbal communication has become increasingly difficult. This paper from Schlögl and Jones in the Journal of the American Geriatiric Society gives practical advice on how to communicate while having to wear a face mask to our most vulnerable patients during the pandemic.