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PATIENT SAFETY: THE END OF THE BEGINNING OR THE BEGINNING OF THE END? Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, 12th October 2017

By 12th October 2017December 12th, 2018Previous Seminars

Abstract: I last spoke to the Bradford Institute for Health Research on the topic of Resilient health care: re-conceptualising patient safety. Two years on, and along with members of the Resilient Health Care Network, we have published another book (Braithwaite, Wears and Hollnagel, 2017, Reconciling Word-As-Imagined and Work-As-Done), with three more volumes in various stages of production. Leveraging from this work, I will analyse recent developments in patient safety and discuss a number of issues crucial to understanding where we are in the perennial search for better ways to care for patients in safe, effective environments.

I will draw not only on the compendiums making up the contributions of the Resilient Health Care Net, but also on two other recent contributions of note. One is The Sociology of Healthcare Safety and Quality (Allen, Braithwaite, Sandall, Waring, (eds.), 2016). The other is recent work on applying complexity science to health care (Braithwaite, Churruca, Ellis, Long, Clay-Williams, Damen, Herkes, Pomare, Ludlow, 2017, Complexity Science in Healthcare—Aspirations, Approaches, Applications and Accomplishments: A White Paper).

The bottom line is that despite the doomsayers saying that it is proving very hard to make progress in patient safety as it is such an intractable wicked problem, it’s better to say that we are at the end of the beginning of the patient safety movement rather than at the beginning of the end. But, in the end, that will be up to each individual in the audience. There will be time for discussion at the conclusion of this presentation.

Biography: Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, BA, MIR (Hons), MBA, DipLR, PhD, FAIM, FCHSM, FFPHRCP (UK), FAcSS (UK), Hon FRACMA, is Foundation Director, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director, Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, and Professor of Health Systems Research, Macquarie University, Australia. His research examines patient safety, health care as a complex adaptive system, and applying complexity science to health care problems. He has attracted funding of more than AUD$102 million and has received 37 different national and international awards for his teaching and research.