World Patient Safety Day (WPSD) is an annual event to promote patient safety, and takes place on 17 September each year. In 2023, the theme for WPSD was “Engaging Patients for Patient Safety”. This year’s World Health Organization slogan “Elevate the voice of patients!” recognises the crucial role patients, families and caregivers play in the safety of healthcare.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration (NIHR NWL PSRC) worked with patient partners, representatives from other PSRCs, and patient safety experts around the world to deliver a virtual event to celebrate and elevate patient and family voices for patient safety.

Co-producing with public partners

What better way to elevate the voice of patients than to co-produce the whole event with patient partners?!

We recruited three public partners to join our core team to plan the event. They were paid for their time. The public partners worked alongside four NIHR NWL PSRC staff and a further member of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) staff.

The public partners were two Patient Safety Partners from ICHT (Asmahan and Mariyah) and a further public partner from the NIHR NWL PSRC Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Advisory Board and Research Partners Group (Sandra).

Influencing the agenda

The three public partners attended a meeting every few weeks to influence the agenda and consider how to ensure the event would be engaging and accessible to patients as well as others. They came up with some fantastic suggestions including:

• inviting Rosie Bartel (who had inspired one of the public partners to continue to work in patient safety) to be the patient keynote speaker;
• proposing that the event should have a live illustrator;
• recommending that the panel discussion should be international, have a public member and be chaired by an experienced patient advocate.

The three public partners came up with questions for the panellists, which were then voted on by the whole core team.

Representing the community

Asmahan (one of the three public partners), who had never been part of a panel discussion before, was supported by Lea Tiernan (ICHT) to be an excellent community representative on the panel.

“As part of a panel discussion, I raised awareness about the needs of underserved groups in our healthcare system. It is crucial to make healthcare info clear for everyone, ensuring easy access to services. I advocate for including underserved communities in healthcare decisions and respecting their unique cultures and customs.”

 

Asmahan, Patient Safety Partner and panel member.

This post is the first in a three-part series. Find out how the event unfolded as we share some of our highlights in Part 2 , or read about the impact and lessons learned from the event in Part 3.

Related