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Patient safety Congress 2021
October 5, 2021Compassion, learning and listening – our patient safety project manager Ayobola Chike-Michael recaps the key lessons from this year’s Patient Safety Congress.
Transforming patient safety across health and social care was the theme at this year’s Patient Safety Congress held earlier this month.
For most of us, it was the first time since the pandemic to experience a face-to-face congress, which allowed us to attend quality sessions presented and facilitated by UK and international experts across safety and patient care.
The congress was a successful platform for front line healthcare workers, patient safety professionals from Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and leaders in healthcare to discuss achievements, difficult issues, debate and share learnings about patient safety. It was a perfect place to connect physically bringing together a huge wealth of knowledge and space to reflect following the stress of the pandemic.
“ The NHS looked after over 400,000 patients who were sick with Covid19 and over 40,000 were successfully monitored via the covid oximetry@home and virtual wards pathway.”
Over the two days, there were sessions on a variety of pertinent patient safety topics, such as, ‘learning from the pandemic’ which was high on the agenda. Among many others were sessions on co-production, psychological safety, racism as a pandemic, long Covid, maternity care, lessons from Ian Paterson inquiry and the Ockendon report, sexual safety in mental health, health inequalities, tackling the backlog, digital innovation, and updates on NHS safety improvement programmes.
The National Director of Patient Safety, Aidan Fowler explained how his team responded to the pandemic through the safety improvement programmes. The NHS looked after over 400,000 patients who were sick with Covid-19 and over 40,000 were successfully monitored via the covid oximetry@home and virtual wards pathway.
Patient voice remains highly important, and staff are encouraged to create and protect the time to involve patients and evaluate work with them. It is important to place people before the process by prioritising the time for staff to have time out to reflect and recharge.
In conclusion, one of the speakers, Derek Richford aptly recapped the learning from the congress in his words to the audience: ‘Whatever your role, make sure your organisation has compassion, listening and learning at the heart of what they do.’
