I am super excited to tell you about the programme of this years event. So many people have agreed to speak - I am a bit overwhelmed!
For the last two months I have spoken with people from around the globe. People that are passionate about patient safety, involved in research or producing technological solutions. And the programme is finally live!
We will start at 9:00 UK time with an introduction and the Australian speakers and we hope to close by 16:30 with colleagues from the US and Canada. And in between there will be specialists from the UK, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Booking is open and and these are the sessions:
1. Safety of healthcare: Is 2021 the year when patients take over?
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged most perceptions about what patients should or can do. Clinician and Health Service Researcher Chris Subbe (UK) will summarise the questions that COVID-19 have raised for patients’ safety. Doctor and Journalist Saleyha Ahsan will share her experience on how difficult it is to support a relative, even if you are healthcare professional with all the inside knowledge that goes with this.
2. Patients (and families) raising the alarm!
When things go wrong in hospital it is often patients and those close to them who notice that something is not right, but all too often they are not heard. In this session we will hear from Tracy Bucknall (AUS) who explored a large number of ways to engage patients in their own safety from medication reviews to electronic records to handovers. Rett Quinney (AUS) will talk about ‘Ryan’s Rule’: a missed deterioration of a child that resulted in legislation for Queensland that order hospital helplines for patients. This is comparable to what Lisa Booth’s (UK) team does in Ipswich: she allows patients to ‘Call4Concern’ and activate a Critical Care based outreach team. Aidin McKinney (IRL) will share here insights about what makes it easier or more difficult for patients to call about those concerns. And Abigail Albutt (UK) has identified simple questions of the ‘Patient Wellness Score’ as a way to give patients a way to express deterioration.
3. Checking it-out
Checklists are used in many parts of healthcare (and other industries where safety matters), for example at the beginning of surgical operations. Kirstin Harris (Norway) and Stephanie Russ (UK) have developed checklists that give patients assurances that everything is done as planned and give them an active role in the safety of their operation and the road to recovery. Chris Subbe (UK) has created a checklist for patients who receive powerful treatments for cancer.
4. Advocacy for safety in hospital: who’s job is it?
For this panel we will bring together different experiences on how patients who are unwell can be best supported. Health service researcher Alison Fox-Robichaud (Canada) will be joined by patient representative Alison Philips (UK), Call-4-Concern expert Mandy Odell (UK), GP and sepsis advocate Alison Tavaré (UK), and a legal expert to explore existing models and future care concepts.
5. Personal Health Records after COVID-19
Access of patients to their own records and sharing of information should constitute an important strategy for more patient-centred and safer care. Catherine DesRoches (OpenNote, USA) will share her experience of opening outpatient records to millions of patients in the USA, Michelle Kelly (USA) is a paediatrician. The parents of her patients have already access to medical notes. She has also checked the market for personal health records and identified where further developments are needed. Maria Hägglund (Sweden) published regularly in the BMJ. Her home country has given online access of clinical notes to all patients. Does this change matters? And Sarah Wright (PKB, UK) will show how Personal Health Records can be used to support care of patients in the NHS. Johanna Freyrenggli (Switzerland) will demonstrate that patients cannot just read but also write parts of their own records, even in Emergency Departments.
To close off Chris Subbe & Saleyha Ahsan will summarise the key learning points from the day from the point of view of patients, relatives, healthcare professionals, researchers and policy makers.
Will you be able to make the time? It would be lovely to see you!