Welcome to our new Education blog

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first of many short blog articles aimed at improving and challenging our understanding of how we can better support our global efforts to enhance healthcare quality and safety. 

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first of many short blog articles aimed at improving and challenging our understanding of how we can better support our global efforts to enhance healthcare quality and safety. 

My name is Paul Bowie and I’m the recently appointed Education Editor here at ISQua.  A key part of this role is to help our Fellows and wider membership keep up-to-date with the latest evidence and thinking around how we can make healthcare safer and enhance the patient experience. 

Oh, and we can’t forget our workforces.  We need also to better focus on how to support their everyday work to make things as easy and safe as possible for them.  In this way we can look after their wellbeing as well as that of our patients, service users and their families and carers. Coming up in future blogs we can expect to:

  • Explore the complex issue of how to make work procedures, such as checklists, guidelines and clinical protocols, work successfully in healthcare while acknowledging many of the challenges surrounding their use.
  • Make the case for focusing more on improving the quality and safety of primary care services. Arguably, related efforts in terms of guiding policy, and related educational and national initiatives in this sector often lag behind the attention given to hospital-based care.
  • Introduce the Human Factors discipline and profession and outline how beneficial it is for our quality and safety improvement efforts to embed key principles and approaches from this important science discipline.
  • Challenge our progress over previous decades in making tangible gains in improving patient safety. Is it time to abandon some of our deeply-held beliefs and assumptions about how we go about this, and embrace a different way of thinking about this hugely complex challenge?
  • Outline different ways of thinking about the complexity of ‘human work’ in healthcare and introduce novel approaches to help us do this as part of our improvement endeavours.

And there will be much more to come!

For example, challenging the idea and helpfulness of terms such as ‘medical error’ and ‘situation awareness’, which are an everyday part of our healthcare language, especially in the patient safety field.  Taking a ‘systems approach’ to understanding everyday problems and challenges, especially those related to our efforts to reduce risks and improves the design and functioning of health services delivery and introducing a “systems thinking” mindset as a core part of our ongoing efforts to analyse and learn more meaningfully from when things go wrong.

We will, of course, highlight key contemporary advances in the published evidence base so we can keep up-to-date in our improvement thinking and approaches, and this may also serve as a basis to foster debate and challenge the status quo.

Perhaps you wish to challenge or agree with some of the arguments made or have ideas for future blogs? Please let us know in the Discussion Board/Comments Section, we’re keen to hear your voices!

Thank you.

Paul

Education Editor

Further reading:

Paul O’Connor, Caoimhe Madden, Emily O’Dowd, Dara Byrne, SinÉad Lydon, A meta-review of methods of measuring and monitoring safety in primary care, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 33, Issue 3, 2021, mzab117, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzab117

Carlos Aceves-González, Yordán Rodríguez, Carlos Manuel Escobar-Galindo, Elizabeth Pérez, Beatriz Gutiérrez-Moreno, Sue Hignett, Alexandra Rosewall Lang, Frontiers in human factors: integrating human factors and ergonomics to improve safety and quality in Latin American healthcare systems, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 33, Issue Supplement_1, January 2021, Pages 45–50, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzaa135

Ken Catchpole, Paul Bowie, Sarah Fouquet, Joy Rivera, Sue Hignett, Frontiers in human factors: embedding specialists in multi-disciplinary efforts to improve healthcare, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 33, Issue Supplement_1, January 2021, Pages 13–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzaa108

Paul Bowie, Ian Davidson, Suzanne Anderson-Stirling, Manoj Kumar, The need for certification of safety investigators and learning reviewers in Scotland’s health service, IJQHC Communications, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2023, lyad004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijcoms/lyad004

Jeffrey Braithwaite, Robert L. Wears, Erik Hollnagel, Resilient health care: turning patient safety on its head, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 27, Issue 5, October 2015, Pages 418–420, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzv063

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Nourhan Kawtharani

Nourhan, a quality and safety coordinator with eight years of experience in ambulatory healthcare in Lebanon, aims to deepen her understanding of the systemic and holistic approach to healthcare through this fellowship.

She aims to identify gaps and develop tailored interventions that address specific contexts rather than applying general solutions. Engaging with diverse professionals and perspectives during this educational journey will expand the application of these concepts across different cultural settings.

Nourhan emphasizes the importance of promoting a culture of continuous learning and improvement within healthcare institutions, considering it a vital leadership responsibility to integrate quality and safety initiatives into the organizational culture.

Nourhan's commitment to patient safety and quality management includes sourcing practical resources and transforming insights into actionable knowledge to drive continued progress in healthcare practices and outcomes.

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Elom Otchi

Elom is passionate about improving quality of care and patient safety outcomes.

In view of this, he has had the opportunity to work in various capacities with various organisations including AfIHQSA, WHO, UNICEF and others undertaking research, supporting the development of national quality policies and strategies, facilitating the establishment of quality governance systems across all the levels of the health sector and building capacity of national and sub-national quality leads/teams to institutionalize the practice of quality and patient safety across the continent.

He has also worked extensively across all levels of care in the health sector of Ghana, including leading the Quality & Patient Safety program in its largest teaching hospital.

I would like to use this Fellowship as a learning platform and an opportunity to acquire the requisite knowledge, skills and competencies to complement ongoing efforts by like-minded individuals and organizations to continuously advance improve the quality and patient safety in Ghana and the continent.

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Stephen Taiye Balogun

Stephen is a Senior Programme Officer at the Institute of Human Virology in Nigeria as well as Country Representative for Health Information for All (HIFA).

Stephen plans to use this opportunity to maximise his impact by championing the cause of patient safety and quality in Nigeria and across Africa.

Stephen says "Quality and safety is a major wheel through which universal healthcare coverage can be achieved. The goal is to be a bridge in the gap between the International Quality Improvement and Patient Safety community and my country to ensure rapid spread, adoption, implementation and practice."

We are looking forward to working with both Stephen and our 2020 winner Rhoda Kalondu over the next year.

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Dr Rhoda Kalondu

Rhoda is the Head of the Patient Safety Unit at Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi and wants to use this Fellowship to learn how to establish a culture of safety and develop systems for assessment and analysis at her institution, and more widely. As well as this, Rhoda intends to develop and execute an intervention to improve patient safety in Kenyatta National Hospital.

It is one thing to institute measures and processes for improvement, but quite another to change the culture of an environment. Rhoda's ambition to lead others in this change inspired the panel.

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Dr Subhrojyoti Bhowmick

I am an MBBS graduate from Calcutta University with a Gold Medal in Gynecology & Obstetrics.

I have completed M.D in Pharmacology from IPGME& R, Kolkata and have over 12 years of experience in the field of Clinical Research, Pharmacovigilance and Medication management in Hospitals.

I have completed certification in Clinical Research Administration & Project Management from Stanford University, USA and in Patient Safety from Johns Hopkins University, USA.

I am an Assessor for National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Health care providers (NABH), India assessing hospitals for medication safety and clinical quality standards and NABH Assessor for Ethics Committee Accreditation program in India as well.

I serve as the Chairperson, Institutional Ethics Committee of Health Point Hospital, Kolkata and am associated with 2 other Hospital ethics committees as a member.

I finished my Fellowship in Healthcare Quality from the International Society of Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) from Ireland in 2017.

I have published several research articles and have also authored a chapter on “Regulations governing Clinical Trial” in the book “Fundamentals of Clinical Trial & Research”.

I am a peer reviewer for prestigious international journals like the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, CNS Drugs and Drug Safety case reports.

I am the recipient of the UK Seth Oration Award for Best Clinical Pharmacology paper by the Indian Pharmacological Society in 2009 and the “Most promising Healthcare professional in Patient Safety in India” award by the Asian African Chamber of Commerce and Industry in October 2018.

Recently in April 2019, I received the Young Quality Achiever award by Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organizations (CAHO), India for 2019 for my work in the field of medication safety and clinical research.

I have a keen interest in teaching and am visiting adjunct faculty of Pharmacology at KMC, Mangalore, India and for Healthcare technology at MAKAUT, Kolkata, India.

I was associated with Stanford University School of Medicine, in the USA as a Senior Clinical Research Associate from 2015 to 2017 and have certification in Biostatistics, Evidence-based Medicine and Medical Writing from Stanford University.

Currently, I am working as the Clinical Director of Academics, Medical Quality and Clinical Research at Peerless Hospital and B K Roy Research Centre, Kolkata.

I am very happy and thrilled to receive the prestigious ISQua Lucian Leape Patient safety Fellowship Award for 2019 and I look forward to honing my skills further in the field of healthcare quality and patient safety through my experiences during this fellowship.

I sincerely believe that successful completion of this fellowship will help me evolve as a more confident Patient safety leader in India who in turn can provide significant inputs on policy changes through NABH for the Indian healthcare system.

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