Newsletter 2024
Have you been trained in Patient Safety?
The Patient Safety Ambassadors programme of ESAIC
On September 17th, the world celebrates Patient Safety Day, calling for global solidarity and concerted action by all countries and international partners to improve patient safety. This year’s theme is improving diagnosis for patient safety, using the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!”
But how do you get it right? Have you been trained to improve and focus on Patient Safety? Only a few national anaesthesia curricula have included patient safety training, and training is, up to now, mostly based on individual preferences and interests.
With the “Safer Care to Safe Lives” programme, the ESAIC has developed a series of educational activities for patient safety training. With the Patient Safety Ambassadors Programme, the ESAIC will honour those safety experts who are fully trained in the “Safer Care to Safe Lives” activities.
Preventable patient harm is an important challenge in anaesthesiology and perioperative care. As a response, EBA and ESAIC launched the Helsinki Declaration for Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology (HD) in 2010. Widely recognised as a practical framework for improving patient safety, the HD has been signed by all European National Anaesthesiologists Societies (NAS) and many international societies.
The HD Follow-Up project evaluated the adoption of the HD in Europe, and a number of recommendations for education, research, policy and practice were made at the end of the report, with key possible measures including:
- Create and maintain structures for safety education both in training curricula and for established specialist anaesthesiologists.
- Promote a ‘no blame’ culture to encourage the reporting and open discussion of threats to patient safety.
- Greater involvement of patients in the promotion of safe practice.
- Establish and maintain regional networks within Europe to share practices and solutions appropriate to available resources.
The ESAIC Board, the ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee (PSQC) and its Patient Safety Partners are pleased to announce the start of a new Patient Safety programme project – the ESAIC Safer Care to Save Lives (SCSL) Ambassador’s Programme.
The ESAIC PSQC has a long-term strategy to create Patient Safety ambassadors who can champion the role of safety implementation in their own hospitals and institutions. At the same time, the strategy targets healthcare leaders to initiate change. This top-down/bottom-up approach is the most effective strategy for creating long-lasting safety reform.
The ESAIC Safer Care to Save Lives (SCSL) Patient Safety Ambassador’s programme contains the elements to achieve these goals through education, peer-to-peer networking, inter-hospital PS reviews, and the promotion of the Helsinki Declaration in Anaesthesiology, a recognised leadership statement on what is practical to improve patient safety in anaesthesiology.
Healthcare professionals who complete all the elements of the Safer Care to Save Lives (SCSL) Patient Safety Ambassador programme will be officially recognised as ambassadors for Patient Safety in a dedicated celebration ceremony at Euronaesthesia.
This programme includes the following content:
- The Essential Patient Safety Course, a series of eLearning modules for the beginner
- The Advanced Patient Safety Course, a certified course for those more advanced in their understanding
- The Patient Safety and Quality Masterclass, a deeper, faculty-lead experience covering 3 days
The Patient Safety Training Programme is a complete training path aimed at providing key knowledge on patient safety in acute settings: intensive care, anaesthesiology, perioperative care, and emergency settings. It is built on the overarching principles of the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology, the Consensus Statement of the recent Society Patient Safety Summit at the European Parliament, and the WHO Multi-professional Patient Safety Curriculum. It follows a stepwise, blended educational approach, including online on-demand and LIVE (online or face-to-face) education.
Essential Patient Safety Course (EPSC)
The EPSC is a set of online modules that provide key foundational knowledge on patient safety. It is ideal for those who are starting their journey into patient safety or who wish to build on their knowledge in specific areas.
It is a training pathway aimed at providing key knowledge on patient safety in acute settings, including intensive care, anaesthesiology, perioperative care, and emergency settings.
Advanced Patient Safety Course (APSC)
The APSC is a live course that teaches patient safety tools for acute settings. We offer modern teaching using interactive group work and innovative 360-degree videos of key scenarios, followed by debriefing, to bring examples of critical situations to life.
Statement of participants:
“Excellent course with high-quality education materials – the videos were interesting and well-made, and the manual is superb. Loved the discussion on the course with colleagues from other countries – there was a real sense of openness and honesty from all participants.”
The APSC is aimed at all healthcare professionals, patients, and stakeholders interested in patient safety in acute settings, including Intensive Care, Perioperative Care, Anesthesia, Emergency, and other settings where acute patients are treated.
Healthcare professionals attending 100% of the ASPC and who pass the course assessment will hold the ESAIC Advanced Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Patient Safety Certificate. We propose that bearers of this certificate be regarded as patient safety champions within their own institutions.
Educational targets focus on the following goals:
- Understand a fully integrated vision of the patient safety culture during intensive care and anaesthesia, applicable to all acute settings.
- Provide a framework to apply patient safety tools in different situations.
- Train the methodology to learn from errors and the importance of critical incident reporting, system analysis, corrective action implementation, and feedback.
- Offer an experience of the importance and relevance of human factors and practice resources to improve crisis situation resolution in acute settings.
- Encourage attendees to advocate for patient safety in their work environments.
- Help attendees join patient safety-related networks.
ESAIC provides the APSC as an event and as a cascade training programme in collaboration with International Training Centres (ITC). Each ITC will be formed in collaboration with the ESAIC National Anaesthesiologists Societies Committee, academic institutions, or medical centres in Europe.
A digital student manual is available as a guidebook for the live program. This book will provide support such as pre-reading and course documentation with the rationale for the course contents and concept highlights and will also be a resource for post-course use.
Patient Safety and Quality Masterclass (PSQMC)
The PSQMC is an advanced scientific workshop dedicated to learning principles and practices of patient safety, clinical risk management and quality of care. It is an intensive 2 ½ day workshop built on maximising interaction between attendees through small group learning and sessions requiring participation. While we are generally able to cover a wide variety of safety and quality-related topics, we have a diverse faculty selection that enables participants to focus on particular interest topics in their clinical settings and target their needs to maximise their learning benefit.
This course is aimed at anaesthesiologists, nurse anaesthetists, other perioperative clinicians/staff, and hospital administrators who have some experience in patient safety and are clearly motivated to be patient safety and quality champions in their departments. The focus is on perioperative patient safety.
The programme consists of lectures, simulations, and interactive workshops, during which participants will apply their knowledge through practical exercises.
Educational targets focus on the following goals:
- Provide a theoretical update on different aspects of the current state of the art in the different fields of patient safety and quality in anaesthesiology.
- Provide the possibility to train skills and learn new techniques with regard to the different required practical skills for the anaesthesiologists in the management of clinical risk, hazards and quality of care. (workshops, role-playing and full-scale high-fidelity simulations)
- Provide a forum for scientific exchange with peers and the possibility to discuss therapeutic options with key opinion leaders.
Current and Future opportunities to be trained in Patient Safety:
The EPSC is available through the ESAIC Academy for all ESAIC members with a MyESAIC account. The next international training course for the APSC is in Naples, Italy, on February 24th and 25th, 2025 (https://esaic.org/events/esaic-advanced-patient-safety-course-naples/). The next opportunity for the PSQMC is in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on November 25th-27th, 2024 (https://esaic.org/events/patient-safety-and-quality-masterclass/).
Author
- Benedikt Preckel, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
