www.patientfirstuk.com/facebook
@patient_first
Is technology the answer? SEE PAGE 2
November 2014
www.patientfirstuk.com/linkedin
Full Conference Programme SEE PAGES 4 & 5
Floorplan and Exhibitor List SEE PAGE 6
The importance of sharing It is fantastic that so many people have registered for this important patient safety conference. There is a remarkable line up of speakers over the two days so I hope you will all take something away that will make a difference in your own organisation. That aspect of shared learning and working together is key to the implementation of patient safety improvement. It goes without saying that if we work alone we can achieve a little but by sharing and working together we can make a huge difference on a regional, national or even global scale. You only have to look to the national VTE prevention programme in England to see what is achievable. In just four years since June 2010 we have seen the rate of patients receiving a VTE assessment go from just 45% to over 96% – saving many lives along the way. At NHS England, working alongside NHS Improving Quality and the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), we recently launched the Patient Safety Collaborative Programme to establish 15 local collaboratives across England. Each collaborative is led by an AHSN to bring local healthcare leaders, clinicians, patients, academics and industry together to identify local safety priorities, develop solutions, implement them and evaluate success. Local findings will then be shared nationally to ensure successful solutions can be further
developed and embedded across the country. This will be the first national patient safety conference since the launch of the Sign up to Safety campaign and I am extremely pleased to see over 150 organisations already signed up. The campaign closely links to the patient safety collaboratives as signed up organisations are asked to create a safety improvement plan, a key aspect of which should describe how they will contribute to their local collaborative. Sign up to Safety presents us with an important opportunity to work together and make a substantial and lasting difference in the prevention of avoidable harm. The campaign’s target is to reduce avoidable harm by half over the next three years – an ambitious target, but one we can achieve if we commit to working, sharing and learning together. I wish you an informative, enjoyable and productive conference that helps us all in our common ethos of putting patients first and preventing avoidable harm.
By Mike Durkin
Patient Safety Collaboratives “The biggest patient safety initiative in the history of the NHS” Says NHS England Director of Patient Safety Dr Mike Durkin talking about last month’s launch of the 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives – a response to Berwick’s report A Promise to Learn and much soul searching that followed the in-depth inquiries into the poor care and high mortality that made Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust front page news for all the wrong reasons. “Having worked closely with Don Berwick and his advisory group, it is fantastic to see the collaboratives about to begin work,” says Dr Durkin. “They will invigorate Don Berwick’s vision of bringing people together at every level, from the patient to the surgeon and the GP to the chief executive, to rapidly accelerate safety improvements in every healthcare setting on both a local and national level.”
EvENt SUPPORtERS
In a similar way, Patient First is an event for its time. The vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all parts of healthcare – not just the NHS – different professionals and varying seniorities to have the opportunity to access quality content, network and learn from peers and find the best products and services to support them in their quest to delivery safe and quality care.
Mike Durkin Director of Patient Safety NHS England
The show boasts some of the national driving forces behind patient safety among the show speakers, from: Dr Durkin, who will deliver the opening address on Wednesday 26 November; to Suzette Woodward, Campaign Director of Sign up to Safety, which under its Learn, Listen, Act slogan has a three-year objective to reduce avoidable harm by 50% and save 6,000 lives; to Phil Duncan, Patient Safety Collaborative Delivery Lead at NHS Improving Quality, the organisation coordinating the support and delivery of the collaboratives. The five-year Patient Safety Collaboratives programme is crucial. In a recorded video at their launch, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt described as the “elephant in the room” the 12,000 avoidable deaths in the NHS every year. The Department of Health says the cost of preventable adverse events is “likely to be more than £1bn” and could be as high as £2.5bn a year.
Continued on page 8