Patient Safety: Safety in Hospital Environment Symposium was held at Royal Hospital on the 26th of January 2010. This symposium was an extension of a safety conference held in Saudi Arabia in the month of October 2009.The event had many goals: First was to raise patient safety awareness among healthcare providers at the Royal Hospital.
Secondly, it was an occasion to bring departments to work together toward achieving common safety goals. Also, it was a perfect opportunity to come together from across health-institutions around the country to learn from each other about critical issues that affect our day-to-day operations, and to thereafter work together toward a common goal - Patient safety. This was indeed an opening door to learning what is going on at a national level, feature current and best practices that are making a difference, and to identify challenges and solutions that can continue to improve patient safetyMost of our speakers were from the Royal Hospital and from others across health institutions in Oman who were willing to work collaboratively with us to uncover many patient safe risks and to make recommendations on how best to reduce these risks. Although the initial focus was on raising awareness, we recognized an overall lack of patient safety information and awareness across many hospitals.
I am extremely pleased that the symposium was well attended with 165 participants. Among them there were 14 doctors, 105 nursing staff and 40 paramedics including physiotherapists, laboratory technicians, radiology technicians and pharmacists.
The topics covered in the symposium ranged from the concept of patient safety to practice, the most important code of medical conduct ‘do not harm’, the culture of patient safety, safety and hospital cost, can safety be regulated, safety in nursing curriculum, the role of EMRO in patient safety, the role of MOH in patient safety, and finally the challenges of patient safety in Oman.
The symposium provided attendees information relevant to the clinical practice and some of the main issues covered in the panel discussion were: the importance of attitude when dealing with workplace safety because many safety issues are taken for granted, communication between staff and patients, need for more safety awareness training opportunities, as well as workshops for health care providers.
The feedback from participants during and after the symposium was extremely positive. Some of comments include:
Learned A LOT!!! Very interesting TOPIC! We need more of this kind of educational awareness more frequently! Thanks YOU!
What I liked the most was that, some speakers brought more statistical evidence from Oman and other countries, which made the symposium worth attending!
Each ward should identify safety focal points for staff to regulate safety
To conduct frequent kind of such activities at the Royal Hospital, so that many staff can get the opportunity to attend also. These are very useful information as a tertiary hospital. The speakers were all outstanding and the topics were excellent! Thank and well done!
Summary of evaluation
Most participants and some presenters were very positive about their experience at the symposium. 86 evaluation forms were completed. Overall learning objective of the symposium score was met by 85% and educational contents score 79%. Overall quality of speakers scored 83% (excellent)
71% of participants thought that questions and discussions was very good (scored the least) Twenty-five thought the opportunity to participate in discussion was excellent or good. Most participants responded when asked what they thought was the most useful element of the symposium, 79% said the overall quality of the symposium was very good, including everything was useful, and other responses included , the topic were relevant to practice.
From the feedback received, it appears that the symposium met the expectations of almost all participants. Most felt they learned a lot of valuable information that they can bring back and apply to their own department in a small scale to start with. Many felt that events like this one should happen much more often, and could involve even more professionals such as nurses and others to participate. They also expressed the hope that this would pave the way for more training and learning opportunities related to patient safety.
In order to improve their own workplaces, the message of the day is that it is only through unity and joint efforts that we can continue to improve health for all. We also hope that this collaboration provides a forum to unite individuals, groups, and organizations to improve communication, and, when appropriate, undertake collective action to improve safety for our patients
Recommendations taken into consideration by QMD as a result of the symposium and which were also suggested by panel members some specific measures to help address the issue of safety:
- Strengthen the reporting of adverse events at Royal Hospital (Work in progress)
- Develop a culture of no name no blame
- Improve communication among providers
- Create an environment of transparency and a culture of learning from our mistakes
- The need for ongoing and continuous awareness on patient safety at every level of our hospital
Acknowledgements
The Quality Management Department would like to extend its appreciation to all the distinguished speakers and respected moderators for their support and for the time they have spent to make the event successful. Our appreciation goes to:
Moderators
- Dr Mohamed Saif Al Hosni, Head, Division of Child Health, First Session Moderator
- Dr Noor Al Mandhri, Head, Division of Obs & Gynae, Second Session Moderator
- Dr Mohamed Ali Jaffer, Head, Division of Surgery, Third Session Moderator
- Dr Murtadha Qubtan, Head of General Surgery, Inaugural Speech
Speakers:
- Dr Amr Taman, Quality Advisor, MOH
- Dr Ahmed Al Mandhri, Deputy DG Clinical Affairs, SQUH
- Dr Rashid Al Mandhri, Head of Quality Department , SQUH
- Dr Saif Al Abri, Head, Division of Medicine, Royal Hospital
- Dr Mario de Souza, Advisor , Hospital Administration, Royal Hospital
- Mr. Juma Al Maskari, Dean, Muscat Nursing Institute
- Ms Ruth , WHO Representative
- Dr Hamed Al Balushi, Director of Hospital Affairs, MOH