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Event
Digital Health Rewired
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
untilDigital Health Rewired is where digital health leaders and their teams connect with the biggest health tech brands and brightest start-ups. Join our 2021 edition for a unique, CPD-accredited virtual experience curated across a week-long festival. Register to gain exclusive access to inspirational keynotes, lively panel debates, video case studies, lightning talks, tech showcases and networking opportunities. Register -
Content Article'Covid Oximetry @home' describes an enhanced package of care for individuals with confirmed (or suspected) COVID-19 who are at risk for future deterioration. NHS England and Improvement wrote to all CCGs and trusts to encourage the development of local CO@H projects. The 'CO@h' package of care involves the remote monitoring of the patient's condition through providing regular contact with a local health care team who will reassess the individuals symptoms (including oxygen saturation levels). This close monitoring enables the individual to remain at their usual place of residence whilst allowing early signs of deterioration to be identified and escalated quickly and appropriately. This material has been designed primarily for use across the South East AHSN network by colleagues within the Wessex AHSN, Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN and Oxford AHSN regions. Colleagues from regions beyond the South East are also very welcome to make use of this toolkit in setting up their own local approaches to remote monitoring.
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News ArticleOne of the mysteries of COVID-19 is why oxygen levels in the blood can drop to dangerously low levels without the patient noticing. It is known as "silent hypoxia" and as a result, patients have been arriving in hospital in far worse health than they realised and, in some cases, too late to treat effectively. But a potentially life-saving solution, in the form of a pulse oximeter, allows patients to monitor their oxygen levels at home, and costs about £20. They are being rolled out for high-risk Covid patients in the UK, and the doctor leading the scheme thinks everyone should consider buying one. A normal oxygen level in the blood is between 95% and 100%. "With Covid, we were admitting patients with oxygen levels in the 70s or low-or-middle 80s," said Dr Matt Inada-Kim, a consultant in acute medicine at Hampshire Hospitals. He told BBC Radio 4's Inside Health: "It was a really curious and scary presentation and really made us rethink what we were doing." Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 January 2021 See hub resource on the 'Covid Oximetry @home' project
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Content ArticleThis is the second part of webinar three in a series designed to help the NHS respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, hosted by the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. It is hosted by Sebastian Alexander, Founding Fellow of the FCI, NHS Digital, Safety, SME Apps Programme, and features presentations on the work of the National Pathology Xchange and The National Pathology Programme.
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Content ArticleThis is the first part of webinar three in a series designed to help the NHS respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, hosted by the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. It is hosted by Sebastian Alexander, Founding Fellow of the FCI, NHS Digital, Safety, SME Apps Programme, and features presentations on the NHS Digital Apps and Wearables Programme and the Kryptowire app assessment.
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EventThe New Existence Webinar Series will take an in-depth look at The New Existence framework from The Beryl Institute. Helping to link core ideas and apply practices, each session in the series will focus on a key aim and corresponding actions of The New Existence. This webinar series will help to explore how lead together into the future of healthcare. The full webinar series is listed below. Webinars are scheduled from 2:00-3:00pm ET/1:00-2:00pm CT. Participants are not required to attend each webinar in the series. Click on a title below to register for the individual webinars in the series. Care teams Redefine and advance the integrated nature of and critical role patients and their circle of support play on care teams. January 28: Redefine the care team February 25: Invite and activate partnership March 25: Commit to care team well-being Governance & leadership Reimagine, redefine and reshape the essential role of leadership in driving systematic change. April 22: Create transparency across the healthcare ecosystem May 27: Restore and nurture confidence June 24: Transform healthcare in collaboration with diverse voices Models of care & operations Co-design systems, processes and behaviors to deliver the best human experience. July 22: Co-design intentional, innovative and collaborative systems August 26: Innovate processes of care to transform behavior Policy & systemic issues Advocate for equitable institutional, governmental and payor policies, incentives and funding to drive positive change. September 23: Hardwire human partnership in the healthcare ecosystem October 28: Research, measure and dismantle the structures and systems that lead to disparities November 23: Modernise the surveys and democratise the data
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Content ArticleThe Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children is one of London’s most respected health care institutions. Despite their long history of success, hospital leaders wanted to explore new ways to improve patient safety and decrease medical errors. In their efforts to deliver the best possible outcomes, they turned to a surprising source of inspiration. It turns out that many health care errors occur during transitions, such as transporting a patient into surgery. In rapidly changing, high-stakes moments, split-second errors can lead to disastrous outcomes. Instead of studying other hospitals, the leaders at Great Ormond Street turned to Ferrari’s Formula One pit crew team.
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Content ArticleNHS England and Improvement, in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), has selected the first antimicrobial drugs to be purchased via the UK’s innovative ‘subscription-type’ payment model. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) refers to the process by which microorganisms develop defences against antimicrobial drugs, enabling these microorganisms to adapt and become resistant to treatment. It’s a serious problem and has recently been identified as one of the World Health Organization’s top 13 global health challenges in the next decade. Without working antibiotics, routine surgery like caesarean sections or hip replacements will become too dangerous to perform, cancer chemotherapy will become prohibitively high-risk and certain infections will require long and complex treatment; or will no longer be treatable. Already, the microorganisms that cause many common diseases around the world – including tuberculosis, malaria, gonorrhoea, urinary tract infections and chest infections – can resist a wide range of antimicrobial medicines. Like all global challenges, leaders in the international community need to come forward and act on AMR, and the UK – with the NHS as the world’s largest single public health system – is taking the initiative. NHS England and Improvement project leads, Mark Perkins and David Glover, discuss this important step in tackling AMR.
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News ArticleThe year 2020 has been extraordinary. It would have been inconceivable 12 months ago that the process of developing and testing medicines would be a topic of intense political and public interest. The UK pharmaceutical sector has taken centre stage, with more support than ever before for Britain’s gold-standard regulatory framework. After a difficult year, this winter has seen a steady drumbeat of positive news about COVID-19 vaccines, demonstrating that the pharmaceutical industry can deliver world-leading clinical research at pace and at scale within the UK’s regulatory system. As the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic hopefully eases over the coming months and the transition period for Britain’s exit of the EU comes to an end, we must seize the opportunity to strengthen this framework. Read full story Source: New Statesmen, 14 December 2020
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News ArticleNiamh McKenna, Chief Information Officer at NHS Resolution, hosted the recent digital focussed event, ‘2020: A Catalyst for Rapid NHS Digital Transformation’. Panellists from NHS England & Improvement, Health Education England, and Microsoft, looked to dissect the rapid acceleration of digitalisation in our NHS over the last twelve months, and what this means for our sector and our workforce. The two hour event hosted over 100 attendees and live-streamed on YouTube, allowing delegates to hear about the key considerations for the impact of a new digital-first way of working. Looking at the good and the bad from the last twelve months, the panellists shared insight into digital-first training, technology fatigue on the workforce, revolutionary digital approaches from case studies on COVID-19 wards, and much more. One important topic associated with digital is the role of learning for our NHS workforce, and Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas, Head of Blended Learning and Digital Literacy at Health Education England, raised some interesting opportunities, challenges, and considerations around digital learning for the workforce: “Properly defining digital literacy is one of the first vital steps for a digital transformation strategy to succeed, we can’t continue to make assumptions like ‘Millennials are digital-natives’." “There are three groups we need to consider to properly develop an inclusive digital transformation strategy that will be effective – the digitally engaged, digitally ambivalent, and those that say, ‘I don’t do tech’. For me there’s also a fourth group, those who are actually digitally excluded. Until you understand the barriers these people have and consider how they’ll approach digital solutions, you can’t begin to create an inclusive digital strategy that will ensure everyone comes on the journey with you." Niamh's key take-away from the event was that we need to make sure we continue to embrace rapid digital transformation, use it as a catalyst to get stuff done, improve work, improve lives, and improve patient care. We must use all this data available to us to understand the good and the not so good outcomes from the pandemic to shape initiatives for our new future. A recording of this event is now available to watch on demand here, along with downloadable supportive resources shared by the panellists. Read full story Source: Health Tech Newspaper, 30 November 2020
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EventuntilThe Nursing Times awards are free to attend and will give you the chance to highlight and reward innovation in workforce planning and management that will contribute to sustaining a workforce fit for the future. The summit will take place over two days, connecting nurses responsible for the recruitment, retention and development of the workforce to meet with solution providers and workforce experts. Book tickets
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Content ArticleThis infographic is from Katie Martin's book, Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion and Unleash. It highlights four key elements as key to creating a culture of learning and innovation. Give permission Offer protection Reduce and remove policies Eliminate perfectionism. This graphic can be used to spark conversation around safety culture within health and care teams, organisations and the wider healthcare service.
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Content Article
Keeping staff safe during COVID-19: Risk assessments
PatientSafetyLearning Team posted an article in Staff safety
Staff safety is fundamental to running an effective health service and delivering quality care. This year has highlighted how important risk assessments are in protecting the NHS workforce, as it continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that frontline healthcare staff are more at risk of becoming infected with COVID-19. We also know the virus has a disproportionate impact on staff from minority ethnic communities, and that many NHS workers are considered “clinically vulnerable” to COVID-19. There are also risk factors that relate to gender, age, weight and many more. This can understandably leave staff feeling confused about what they should and shouldn’t be doing to look after themselves and their colleagues. On 24 June, it became mandatory for all trusts to complete occupational risk assessments of vulnerable NHS workers. In this interview, Patient Safety Learning speaks to James Duez, CEO of Rainbird. James tells us how his company developed an automated decision-making tool, able to produce individualised risk assessments so that appropriate measures can be put in place quickly. -
Content ArticleBefore the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the subsequent pandemic, the health and care system had a poor track record in adopting digital technologies at scale. However, in response to the pandemic the healthcare system rapidly implemented new tools, many technology-based, to allow healthcare to be delivered when physical contact is not possible. The approach to using digital tools in health care provision is undergoing a substantial and rapid shift. Many of the technologies adopted during the first phase of the pandemic were already well established but not widely implemented; the maturity of the technology enabled the provision of healthcare through remote consultation to be much more prevalent much more quickly. Despite this recent rapid adoption of digital technologies, the health and care system remains at the early stages of digital health, with many tools replicating physical approaches and processes rather than taking advantage of what makes digital different.
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Content ArticleFalls in Pennsylvania continue to be one of the biggest contributors to patient harm and the fourth most frequently reported adverse event. Looking more broadly, falls are also a frequent cause of patient harm across the United States and globally. Allen and Wallace conducted a review of the literature to identify international strategies and novel approaches to reduce falls and falls from injury, mainly in healthcare facilities, published in the last decade. The review revealed that while no single country has been able to eradicate patient falls, several had implemented measures showing moderate levels of success. Those struggling with a high incidence of falls may benefit from reviewing and adopting one or more of these innovative techniques.
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Content ArticleIt is estimated that across the UK, a third of healthcare improvement projects never spread beyond their particular unit, a further third are embedded across their organisation but never spread further than that, and only the final third are spread across their own and other similar organisations. Successfully spreading improvements and ensuring changes are sustained requires overcoming numerous challenges, such as: Creating an awareness of why the change is needed Ensuring those involved have a desire to support and participate in the change Knowledge of how to bring about change The skills and resources to bring about the change Ensuring processes to sustain the change This new guide from the West of England AHSN sets out suggestions to be considered for the successful adoption and spread of innovation and improvement projects.
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Content ArticleWhen SynergyHealth, St. Joseph’s Hospital of West Bend, Wisconsin, USA, decided to relocate and build an 82-bed acute care facility, there was an opportunity to design a hospital that focused on patient safety. Hospital leaders believed if a facility design process was “engineered properly,” it would enhance patient safety and create a patient safe culture; however, they found little information to give the direction. To help plan the new facility, a national learning lab was conducted, drawing from patient safety in the available literature; inviting experts from the healthcare profession and other fields, including transportation, spacecraft design, and systems engineering; and involving the hospital's board members, staff, physicians, and facility design team. In this case study, John G. Reiling describes the process used by St. Joseph to design a new hospital around patient safety, and identify and discuss safety design principles, providing examples of their application at St. Joseph’s new facility. Finally, recommendations are made for the design of all health care systems, including new facilities, remodeling, and additions.
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News ArticleWearable devices will monitor the mood of all 70 staff at a large GP practice, in a trial aimed at improving employee health and wellbeing. Staff at Amicus Health, a GP practice in Devon, will be provided with a wearable device which allows the user to log how their day is going by pressing one of two buttons. The information gathered can be viewed by employers on a dashboard, identifying whether there are particular times in the day when moods drop. Users will also be able to see their data on a personal app, allowing them to track mood triggers and patterns. On the dashboard, employees’ data is divided into teams and is not anonymised, so employers can track the mood of individuals. Asked by HSJ whether this could deter some from using it, company co-founder Jonathan Elvidge said previous trials suggested it does not. He told HSJ that during trials on construction sites, employers found it easier to take action if they were able to identify workers who were regularly reporting that they were feeling low. He said employees preferred being identified as it gave them a voice and made it easier to express how they were feeling. The device — called a Moodbeam One — will be trialled on all 70 clinical and non-clinical staff members at the practice, including 25 GPs. It will largely be down to the practice to decide how the data is used, according to Mr Elvidge. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 November 2020
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News ArticleThe first wave of COVID-19 may gave subsided in some areas of the United States, but in others it is growing and hospitals everywhere are continuing to face significant challenges. The American Hospital Association recently estimated that hospitals will incur at least $323.1 billion in losses through the end of this year due to COVID-19. Key contributors include postponed and cancelled elective procedures, lower patient volumes across all departments, and higher costs for supplies and devices. Other factors compound the financial challenges, including pressure for hospitals to implement new initiatives that foster a safer care environment for COVID-19 patients, non-COVID-19 patients, and healthcare providers. This pressure is mounting, as spikes in cases continue to appear in various regions, and as concerns grow about the flu season. The good news is that improving patient, staff, and visitor safety can actually help hospitals recover from the financial losses they are experiencing due to the pandemic. For example, enhanced patient safety leads to: Fewer costly events, such as hospital-acquired infections or conditions, acute kidney injuries, adverse drug events, readmissions, and return visits to the emergency department. Faster and more proactive identification of cost-saving opportunities, such as IV to PO conversions and more optimal management of high-cost drugs. Higher patient volumes due to a stronger quality and safety reputation. Hospitals face significant financial challenges, but they must also act quickly to ensure patient, staff, and visitor safety. Luckily, improving margins and enhancing patient safety don’t need to be competing priorities. When hospitals implement effective safety improvement approaches, margin improvements naturally follow. Read full story Source: MedCity News, 25 October 2020
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Content ArticleOn 17 November, there will be a Parliamentary launch event of the Surgical Fires Expert Working Group’s report 'A case for the prevention and management of surgical fires in the UK, which focuses on the prevention of surgical fires in the NHS'. Unfortunately surgical fires are still a patient safety issue. Each year patients needlessly suffer burns during surgical procedures which leave them with long-lasting, life-changing injuries and burdens the NHS with millions of pounds of avoidable costs and liabilities. Despite this, there is not a consistent, standardised approach across the NHS to prevent them. Kathy Nabbie, a theatre scrub nurse practitioner, shares how she implemented Fire Risk Assessment Score (FRAS) into her department.
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Event2020 has undoubtedly played a key role in forcing NHS organisations to sit up and take note of the productivity increases and money-saving benefits that digital tools and tech can have, this event aims to share some core policy updates and best practice from across the UK. This fully immersive Securing Secondary Care Excellence: The Virtual Acute Technology Conference platform will allow you to listen, learn and engage with some key policy-shaping guest speakers, network with peers from across the NHS and meet some of the UK’s most forward-thinking and innovative commercial problem solvers. Register
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EventData and Information have been and continues to be a crucial and integral part of the health services fight against COVID-19. Data and patient information are constantly being used in new ways to help to care for people and help the NHS and social care to better understand and respond to the virus. NHS England along with NHSX are currently using data as evidence to help shape new care models and keep the public safe from the COVID-19 virus. The newly established NHS COVID-19 Data Store will provide a high-value tool for helping NHS monitor data sets and establish trends. This data can be used to look at several things such as bed capacity in hospitals or the number of ventilators available in a specific area. Our Developing new care models: The NHS Virtual Data & Information Congress will provide delegates with an interactive overview of this new Data Store and share best practices from across the UK. Key data-driven topics include; • Using health data responsibly and safely for research and innovation • Supporting vulnerable people (GP Records) • Remote patient monitoring • Security and regulation • Much more... Register
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News ArticleLondon-based HealthUnlocked has been acquired by worldwide leader Corrona. HealthUnlocked is a social network of 1.3 million patients across hundreds of condition-specific communities. Moderated by over 500 patient advocacy groups, it captures insights to better understand what matters most to these patients. Corrona, based in Massachusetts, US, describes itself as a built-for-purpose source of gold-standard real-world evidence. “By combining with HealthUnlocked, we are expanding our broad set of capabilities–ranging from highly granular and longitudinal structured data across our eight registries, to broader patient insights from HealthUnlocked,” said Abbe Steel, Chief Patient Officer of Corrona. “The HealthUnlocked communities provide access to engaged patients across the globe, allowing us to better understand the patient experience and what matters most to patients." Read full story Source: Business Cloud, 22 October 2020
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News ArticleWith so many operations put on hold when the pandemic started in March, surgeon Douglas Hartley and a team of medical veterans got to work pioneering new types of protective equipment. When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the UK, thousands of surgical procedures were put on hold. For surgeons like Douglas, who performs operations on deaf children to restore their hearing, this created a significant moral dilemma – he wanted to get back into surgery to provide this vital care, but didn’t want to inadvertently catch or pass on COVID-19 in the process. Douglas regularly carries out cochlear implant surgery, a process in which a surgeon embeds an electronic device which stimulates the hearing nerve in the ear. The scientific evidence is clear that this surgery needs to be performed at the earliest opportunity so that these children can benefit from being able to hear at a vital stage in their development. But performing the surgery as normal would have put both children and surgical teams in danger. They needed to come up with another way of doing things. The team in Nottingham had to combine creativity and science to develop a novel and safe way to restart cochlear implant surgery in a matter of just a few weeks. The team used a systematic evidence-based approach to evaluate a variety of PPE for its usability and effectiveness. During simulated cochlear implant surgery, they evaluated each type of PPE across several parameters, including its effect on a surgeon’s ability to communicate, their field of vision, and their comfort. Many of the PPE options were found to substantially restrict the surgeon’s vision during operating. That rendered them unsafe for performing this sort of surgery. Instead, they found that the combination of “spoggles” and a half-face respirator mask had consistently superior performance across all aspects of clinical usability compared with all other options. During their studies, Douglas and his team also worked with a surgical product manufacturer to develop a novel drape, basically a tent, that was designed to be suspended from a microscope covering the patient’s head and torso to provide a physical barrier between the site of drilling and the rest of the team. They found that the operating tent significantly contained the droplets and prevented them from spreading around the theatre environment. They are the first – and are currently only – group in the world to develop an operating tent design that is marked for medical use. After completing our studies, we now had appropriate PPE and a protective operating tent to permit the safe restarting of cochlear implant surgery during the pandemic. These recommendations were rapidly disseminated internationally via webinars and journal publications and quickly adopted as standard patient care by Nottingham University NHS Foundation Trust and, subsequently, embraced in other departments in the UK and across the world. Read full story Source: The Independent, 22 October 2020
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Content ArticleA rapid-learning report on the role of Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) during the pandemic has been published by the AHSN Network. PSCs are just one part of the health and care system which responded quickly to the immediate crisis from COVID-19 in March. They reprioritised their day-to-day work and took on new programmes at speed, such as promoting safer tracheostomy care. The report has been published as part of the NHS Reset campaign and gives examples of how PSCs refocused their work ‘almost overnight’ to respond to the pandemic. It illustrates some of the creative ways AHSNs supported their local systems and how this experience will be built into future patient safety programmes.
