ISQua in collaboration with Lucian Leape are launching a new Patient Safety Fellowship Programme available to all current physicians and health care providers from developing countries, or countries in transition, interested in advancing and expanding their expertise in patient safety, with resultant improvement of safety of patients in their local area.

 

This Fellowship programme is funded by Lucian Leape and will be managed by ISQua. The donation was presented by Dr David Bates (on behalf of Lucian Leape) to ISQua's President, Wendy Nicklin, during ISQua's 35th International Conference in Kuala Lumpur, to establish the Fellowship.

 

Dr Leape believes that "The key to making health care safe is dedicated and informed leadership. Nowhere is this more true than in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). Fortunately, each year, there are competent young physicians from LMICs completing their medical training who want to dedicate their careers to patient safety." 

 

This belief is shared by Dr Bates who also stated that “Patient safety represents a major issue in all countries of the world, and causes even more harm in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) than in developed ones. One of the biggest issues in LMICs is that we don’t have enough people trained in improving safety--this Fellowship is intended to help build that capacity, and will link fellows with international safety leaders.”

 

The programme is clinically oriented, designed to provide the Leape Fellow with additional training in the theory of Patient Safety Science and interventions to improve patient safety. This will include training to identify and analyse adverse events and to develop interventions to address these events at a system level. Mentorship will be provided by ISQua.

 

The Leape Fellowship programme will culminate in the development, planning, implementing and completion of an improvement project aimed at improving safety in a defined clinical area. 

 

Dr Leape says that the ultimate goal of the programme is to "provide fellows with the mentoring and additional education and experience they need to become future safety leaders in their countries."

 

The application for the Lucian Leape Patient Safety Fellowship Award opens on 6th December and closes 15th February 2019. Decisions will be released in late March.

 

For further information, and to apply, please visit https://www.isqua.org/networks/lucian-leape-patient-safety-fellowship.html