Safety strategies for today and tomorrow

Delivered by Professor Charles Vincent; Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford.

The most prominent and effective patient safety interventions have been targeted at the reliability of basic processes and largely followed a quality improvement model. There are however many other ways of improving safety. Effective intervention requires a portfolio of strategies which can be customised to different healthcare contexts. There are five main families of strategies are the best practice quality improvement approach; broader system interventions; risk control; improving the capacity to adapt, monitor and respond and finally mitigation. The five families can be broadly split into strategies which improve overall quality and safety and those which are primarily aimed at managing risk. These longer-term strategies need to be complemented by short term safety strategies to manage pressures and rapid change, which can be achieved by flexing resources, prioritisation and adaptive teamwork and leadership. The effective management of risk requires a broad portfolio of both short and long-term strategies which can be customised to different problems and different contexts.