It has been a very productive year for ISQua with the consolidation of what we do and the growth of new areas of activities. During the year we have aimed to implement our strategy to be the leading international organisation in the field of quality and safety.
As a membership organisation, we aim to increase the network of members worldwide with a focus on developing benefits for members so they can innovate, transform, develop and improve safe person-centred care.
We have focused on growing the membership base. Our Membership numbers for 2017 were the highest in over 6 years with 489 Individual Members and 88 Institutional Members. We thank all of you for joining and hope that you will renew to help us grow.
We have focused on 6 strategic areas over the past year:
To advocate for Person-Centred Care
To expand our external evaluation programme
To enhance our events (international conference and regional events)
To grow education and knowledge sharing
To foster innovation
To develop and support regions and the LMIC
Placing patients at the centre
The role of patients is central to our work and in all our programmes we are ensuring that remains true to our mission.
We opened our conference with Pip Hardy from Patient Voices, developed two new specialist certificates and will now move to develop a more active group to advise us.
I would like to thank Russell McGowan who stood down after two years of being on our Board as the Patient Honorary advisor.
Expanding our Accreditation programmes
The 3rd edition of the ISQua Guidelines and Standards for Surveyor Training Programmes was positively received and to date, four organisations have already been assessed against these.
In 2017 12 Organisations, 17 sets of Standards and 4 Surveyor Training Programmes each achieved ISQua Accreditation.
We have started to develop new programmes aimed at taking the concepts of standards and external evaluation to new areas of interest.
Enhancing events
Our 34th International Conference in London was a great success with over 1,500 attendees from 80 countries.
Our annual joint ISQua/WHO Scholarship was offered to nine attendees from Argentina, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sudan, Tunisia.
The conference achieved EACCME Accreditation and Patient Included status. There was 180 invited speakers, over 100 abstract presenters, 700 posters and 70 e-poster presentations.
In the post-Conference survey, 92% of the delegates who completed the survey said that they would recommend the conference to a friend/colleague and the overall response was overwhelmingly positive.
In 2017, we made a concerted effort to support regional healthcare events. This included two national Patient Safety and Quality Conference in Ireland with the Irish Royal College Physicians and the Irish Department of Health. We partnered with and had ISQua representative at many regional events throughout the year in China, Mexico, Mozambique, India, Oman, UK, Colombia, Italy Florence Rome Venice and Sicily, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam, Korea, Hong Kong, Sydney, Turkey, USA, Bosnia Herzegovina and Tokyo!
As we look forward to 2018, we have several regional events planned for South America, China and Ireland, with ISQua experts confirmed for Conferences in Turkey, Ghana, Durban, Sicily, Florence.
If you are interested in hosting a regional event with ISQua or would like to have an ISQua Expert present at your conference, please contact Eadin Murphy [email protected]
Education and Knowledge Sharing
Our three new Specialist Certificates were launched at this year’s Conference and have to date garnered a large amount of interest.
These are a range of 40-hour online courses that allow you to focus on particular areas of interest in health care quality and safety.
These specialised healthcare courses are designed to promote continuous quality improvement and help attendees gain new skills from internationally recognised experts in these areas. We look forward to beginning the certificate programmes in early 2018.
The Fellowship programme continues to develop new curricula and opportunities to learn. A challenge is to ensure that fellows maintain their continual learning and we are looking for new ways to encourage this.
Innovation
The Quality Improvement (QI) Network was successfully launched with a select number of organisations. This network provides an opportunity for these organisations to regularly engage in interactive, sharing and learning webinars.
The aim of this network is to allow the free exchange of ideas and develop partnerships to accelerate positive change.
As well as the meetings, QI Network Gold members also benefit from ISQua conference registration places, ISQua fellowship places (for themselves or their colleagues) and a specified number of expert advice days.
We would like to thank our founding QI Gold Network Partners – BC Patient Safety Quality Council, Clinical Excellence Commission and Ko Awatea.
Our innovation group is looking at developing more evidence on how to deal with the challenge of the ageing population.
Focus on LMIC and the regions with new communities of practice
Our first community of practice was established during our 33rd International Conference in Tokyo, and in 2017 it’s gone from strength to strength, with active participants from over 20 regions in Africa.
Our second community of practice, this time for Latin America, was launched in November with over 50 participants attending the first online meeting.
We have supported improvement programmes in Mozambique working with Irish Aid.
The objectives of the visit were to collaborate with the MoH to build QI capacity and to hold a workshop for trainers from 15 hospitals and the MoH. This also allowed for the consolidation of the programme of work over the previous year.
Over the past year, we have strengthened our partnership with the WHO and will be assisting in providing support for their programmes.
Board Elections
The Board elections for 2017-2019 were successfully run using a leading independent provider of online voting systems, the Electoral Reform Services.
There was huge interest in the elections with 25 candidates and over 48% of our Members taking part in the voting process. The new Board were announced during this year’s AGM on 2nd October in London. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing Board Members for their service to ISQua, Villis Marshall, David Bates, Janne Lehmann Knudsen & WC Lee; and welcome our new Board members, Shin Ushiro, Peter Carter, Bruno Lucet, Jacqui Stewart & BK Rana. Also joining the Board is David Vaughan, as our appointed Irish Board Member.
David Vaughan was appointed following advice from our lawyers that in order for ISQua to be compliant with the Irish Office of Revenue Commissioners that two Irish resident directors were required to be appointed. To rectify this matter the Board reappointed Duncan Inverarity and appointed Dr. David Vaughan as Board members (pursuant to Article 17.1 (d)).
New Staff
We sadly said goodbye to two key members of staff in 2017, Triona Fortune, who stepped down as Deputy CEO in March, and Eveline Holmes, who resigned as Education Co-ordinator in October.
Luckily we’ve also welcomed three new staff, who have made great contributions to the team and organisation – Gillian Conway, as Accreditation Manager; Caitriona Curran, who joined us as Network Programme and Corporate Support Officer; and Simon Donohoe, as Executive Assistant to the CEO.
We’re currently in the process of recruiting a new staff member for our education programme.
Looking forward
This year will be one of consolidation and as well as growth for ISQua – consolidating our foundations and exploring new ways to deliver our mission and serve our members.
We are redeveloping our website and this will be the platform to reach you all. I will give more details of the 2018 programme in the new year and wish you all a happy festive season and all the best for 2018.
