Meet the team
Catherine Hogan
Edel Otoole
Lorraine Schwanberg
Noemi Palacios
Tiberius Pereira
Also:
- Dr Darren McLoughlin
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?
Patient Safety Together (PST) collaborates with people who work in and use our health services to co-develop resources that share patient safety learning. We use up-to-date information including incident management data and national and international evidence to learn from incidents, research and data, and learn directly from patients, service users and staff. Resources include HSE National Patient Safety Alerts (NPSA), including supporting infographic ‘What does it me for me as a patient or service user?’, Patient Safety Supplements and Patient Safety Stories. All resources are freely available to access and download (www.hse.ie/pst/).
Our ultimate challenge is to reach our key audience, the front-line and public. We want to make sure that the sometimes critical patient safety learning and resources co-developed reaches everyone whom it is relevant to, such as frontline nurses, community physiotherapists and service users. This project will boost the culture, capabilities and structures needed for learning and improvement.
What does your project aim to achieve?
A multidisciplinary team including patient advocates and staff will co-design a multimedia resource pack for healthcare services and patient advocacy groups. The pack will improve our ability to share patient safety learning by enabling us to reach people that may not be aware of the PST programme and its offerings, or have not engaged yet. It will identify more diverse ways to spread learning and help close the loop on patient safety incidents. It will also support services in planning and performance by helping embed a culture of patient centeredness, sharing of learning and patient safety improvement further.
The multimedia ‘pack’ will incorporate novel and innovative ways of reaching our key audiences including tangible material (leaflets, posters, banners) and digital resources (electronic posters, digital presentations, videos) that will showcase PST work, highlight available resources and encourage people to become involved.
How will the project be delivered?
Phase 1: Convene a project group including healthcare and social care staff, patient advocates and experts in improvement science, design thinking and human factors. Co-develop a project plan to help identify challenges, gaps, deliverables and priorities.
Phase 2: Co-design a suite of resources that will encourage people to access and explore patient safety learning resources. Identify support required and the different areas that resource packs will be provided to including additional supports for individual services.
Phase 3: Use improvement methodology to test the resource pack with services and groups. Adapt pack to address feedback and use PDSA cycles to test improvements. Finalise logistical requirements.
Phase 4: Launch the resource pack, supported by a communications campaign, including virtual and in-person sessions.
Business as usual: Evaluate the success and usefulness of the resource pack yearly as part of the overall evaluation of the PST programme. Continue to keep pack updated as required.
How is your project going to share learning?
The project will generate valuable learning by encouraging staff to use its content as a rich resource to apply relevant learning to support improvements, including closing the loop on incident reporting and review. This will encourage staff to engage further with incident reporting. Patients and service users will be supported to easily access information on quality and patient safety issues that are relevant to healthcare and keep them up to date with the latest information. The project will reassure anyone involved in a patient safety incident that by actively sharing learning we aim to prevent similar incidents recurring. By widening the audience of people engaging with the PST work the project will further expand the ability to identify, co-develop and share patient safety learning. Finally resources will be freely accessible for Q members to access and download through the existing PST website www.hse.ie/pst/
How you can contribute
- Provide feedback on our project proposal
- Support with problem solving.
- Share learning from similar work undertaken
- Share any relevant expertise or experience
Plan timeline
| 1 Jul 2024 | Call-out to staff and patient partners to join project team |
|---|---|
| 29 Jul 2024 | Establish project team, identify governance requirements, agree ways of working |
| 12 Aug 2024 | Establish working groups for different elements of resource pack development |
| 9 Sep 2024 | Engage with target users and required internal/external experts |
| 23 Sep 2024 | Issue Request For Tender for Digital Content Development |
| 21 Oct 2024 | Award contract to Digital Content Developer |
| 4 Nov 2024 | Conduct co-design workshop with key stakeholders and Digital Content Developer |
| 6 Jan 2025 | Test initial Resource Pack with group of target users |
| 3 Feb 2025 | Review feedback from target user group, agree required changes |
| 17 Feb 2025 | Test updated changes with target users group |
| 17 Mar 2025 | Finalise Resource Pack |
| 31 Mar 2025 | Incorporate oversight and upkeep of Resource Pack into PST governance |
| 6 Oct 2025 | Complete six month evaluation of users experiences of Resource Pack |
| 5 Jan 2026 | Incorporate evaluation of Resource Pack into yearly PST evaluation |
Project updates
2 Aug 2024
We are delighted to welcome Margaret Prendergast (Q Community Member) to the project team. Margaret will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to help us achieve our goal of getting patient safety learning to the right people.
Comments
Evelyn Prodger 28 Jul 2024
Congratulations on winning - such a great project which I will be following with interest.
Noemi Palacios 1 Aug 2024
Thank you Evelyn for your lovely comment.
Olivia Wall 11 Jun 2024
Every good wish with this excellent project. It factors in who to share information with and the most appropriate customised methods to use to disseminate this to the public and to front-line staff. It can only be a positive to spread the word and spread learning re: patient safety to a wider audience than may currently be seeing it. One of the unique selling points of this is the obvious link with integrated care and the ability to share/use these resources in acute and community - regardless of geographical area or specialty. Up to now this information may have been silo-ed, but this will allow an opportunity to open up channels of communication in an integrated systematic way.
I'd be delighted to chat further about a communication strategy we used in the past, in a previous project I was involved in, where we had to spread and share the word regarding patient flow.
Best of luck with it.
Noemi Palacios 11 Jun 2024
Thank you Olivia for your support and good wishes.
It is our aim to disseminate patient safety learning widely to reach everyone: front line staff and the public and to open communication channels in an integrated and systematic way. We would love to link with you regarding your communication strategy, thank you for offering your expertise, it is much appreciated.
Libby McGrane 10 Jun 2024
Congratulations to everyone involved in this Patient Safety Together initiative. This is an excellent project with rich outcomes for staff, service users and the public. Well done to all involved and best of luck!
Noemi Palacios 11 Jun 2024
Thank you Libby for your support and good luck wishes, it is really appreciated.
Caroline Lennon-Nally 29 May 2024
Congratulations to everyone involved in the Patient Safety Together (PST) initiative! Your dedication to enhancing patient safety through collaborative efforts and innovative resource development is commendable. The integration of multidisciplinary teams, patient advocates, and evidence-based learning exemplifies a holistic approach to addressing patient safety challenges. Your commitment to making critical safety information accessible to frontline healthcare workers and service users will undoubtedly foster a safer and more informed healthcare environment. Well done and the best of luck.
Noemi Palacios 29 May 2024
Thank you Caroline for your kind words and good wishes. Working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams and patient partners is essential to address patient safety challenges. We are fully committed to making critical safety information accessible to frontline healthcare workers and getting this funding will be invaluable to help us achieving this.
Gerard Grealish 29 May 2024
Great project with a great focus, anything that includes sharing of patients/service users' stories concerning adverse events, is a big win. We can learn so much from people who have gone through the system.
Wishing you the best in the vote
Noemi Palacios 29 May 2024
Thank you Gerard for your support. Definitely, we can learn a lot from service users/patient experiences and how we share that learning is crucial.
Veronica Hanlon 29 May 2024
Well done to the team on making the short-list. An excellent idea for sharing learning across our vast system and I really like the idea of using a 'multi-media' pack. Fingers crossed for you and if we can be of any help in the QPS education team, please do not hesitate to link in with us.
Best of luck!
Noemi Palacios 29 May 2024
Thank you Veronica for your support and good wishes. We would be delighted to avail of your expertise if our project is successful.
Kate Frazer 29 May 2024
Great project and well thought through.
Congratulations on shortlisting and good luck in this final stage.
Noemi Palacios 29 May 2024
Thank you Kate for your lovely comment and good wishes, much appreciated.
Juanita Guidera 24 May 2024
Congratulations to the team on the invaluable work to date on this project. The Q Exchange provides an excellent opportunity to enhance spread and sustainability. In the current reform of health services in Ireland, platforms such as this become increasingly important for members of the QPS Community to engage with each other and connect. Best of luck with the next phase.
Noemi Palacios 24 May 2024
Thank you Juanita for your support. You are so right, we need platforms like Q Exchange to help us with challenges to spread and sustain patient safety learning, particularly in these current times.
Roisin Egenton 23 May 2024
This is such a person-centred, practical approach to bringing critical patient safety learning and resources to patients, service users and the general public. And I really like how it integrates improvement and patient safety / reducing harm.
From our experience, digital accessibility is a significant consideration in the production of materials like this, particularly for reaching the right people with the right information. Happy to chat further on this, if you're interested?
Best of luck with the project, look forward to hearing updates on it!
Noemi Palacios 24 May 2024
We will be delighted to chat further and avail of your expertise regarding digital accessibility. Your insights will be invaluable to us. Thank you for your support.
Noemi Palacios 23 May 2024
Thank you Roisin for your comment and support, much appreciated.
Sean Paul Teeling 17 May 2024
Best of luck with this important work!
Catherine Hogan 17 May 2024
Many thanks Sean Paul, we really appreciate your message.
Sahana Rao 16 Mar 2024
This is an excellent project. We are using a patient safety lens to improve health inequalities and developing resources to support staff. We intend to engage patients and their families in this project.
I believe there is a lot of synergy between our projects and opportunities to share learning and resources, and would love to link up.
Catherine Hogan 19 Mar 2024
Thank you for your comment and support Sahana, it is great to hear of other similar improvement initiatives that are underway. We would love to link up to discuss and share ideas and learning. If it is suitable with you I will connect through private message.
Maureen Flynn 5 Mar 2024
This project has great potential to share learning and experiences across traditional health care boundaries and also foster relationship and integration of services.
Catherine Hogan 6 Mar 2024
Thank you for your support Maureen. Being able to share learning across traditional health care boundaries is so important and we are excited to see how this project can identify pathways to support this.
Catherine Hand 5 Mar 2024
This is an excellent project to ensure that in collaboration with service users a mechanism is put in place to share learning to reduce the risk of the same events occurring again. This is really important to our patients and also healthcare staff.
Catherine Hogan 6 Mar 2024
Thanks Catherine for your comment and support. I agree collaboration with both service users and staff on co-designing and co-developing this project is key to its success.
Beth Farren 5 Mar 2024
I think that this project is key if we want to move forward with improving patient safety and safety culture across our healthcare system. We need to start sharing patient stories and incidents that have occurred and the rich, invaluable learning from each of these stories. We learn from stories and real life experiences. The biggest challenge is making sure that the right people get this information, our frontline staff. The people beside the patients. Any initiative that is focused on that, I am 100% behind!
Catherine Hogan 6 Mar 2024
Thank you for your support Beth. We have a wealth of learning that can make a positive difference to those who both work in and use our health and social care services. So it is essential that we take every opportunity to make sure this patient safety learning reaches the right people consistently.
Comments here are now permanently closed.