In this blog post, which is the third in a three-part series, we share reflections from our World Patient Safety Day 2023 event. Before reading this post you may wish to read Part 1 which focuses on how we planned for this event, or Part 2 where we share some of the highlights from the event.

We were pleased to see over 300 views of the online recording of our World Patient Safety Day 2023 event, including people who attended the event live online, as well as discussion on social media.

Reflection workshop

After the event, we held a reflection workshop with the core team (including our public partners) to assess how well the team had followed the principles of co-production: sharing power, mutual respect, strong relationships, reciprocity and valuing all type of knowledge/skills. We also discussed communication, support and how successful the event was at elevating the patient voice and what could be improved.

The public partners felt listened to and valued as part of the core team. The regular meetings meant the group built a strong rapport, so the public members felt empowered to make suggestions. They liked having the learning experience of organising a large event, where they could see how their ideas had shaped the agenda, speaker lineup and discussion.

The co-production process was strengthened by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) Patient safety engagement manager (Lea Tiernan) supporting the Patient Safety Partners (PSPs). As part of the PSP role, Lea regularly has coaching conversations with them to support them to be assertive in meetings. Lea also coached Asmahan in the run up to her role as panellist at the event, so that she was thoroughly prepared and felt confident going into the event. Asmahan has since gone on to design a community workshop and chair PSP team meetings.

Areas for improvement

We also identified some areas for improvement.

If we had started to organise the event earlier, there would have been more time to deliver some of the other ideas our public partners came up with. For example, the public partners could have led on producing an event preview film to send out to community members to encourage them to attend.

Although our three public partners were each from ethnic minority groups, the whole core team were women, so the public partners suggested that it would be good to involve a greater diversity of public members in the co-production process. One way would be to involve other patient safety partners in coming up with questions for the panel.

Feedback and output

In terms of the event itself, one public partner said: “Found it very powerful and amazing how strong the patient voice was” and another said: “It held true to elevating the voice of patients.” A further improvement suggested by the public partners was that the event could have been more interactive, which more time for questions from the audience and using interactive tools (e.g. polls).

“It’s possible for us to raise our ambition, opening our minds to ultra-safe healthcare…I can see a real enthusiasm for making improvements in safety and incorporating the views and experiences, of patients.”

 

Dr Henrietta Hughes, Patient Safety Commissioner

One creative output from the event that was disseminated on social media was an illustration created live during the panel session by LiveIllustration.co.uk.

• Read a text description of the illustrated panel discussion, “Elevating the patient voice”.

Future events

Professor Bryony Dean Franklin said: “We aimed for our World Patient Safety Day 2023 event to inspire action – from healthcare professionals about how to involve patients and families, and for patients, who we hope feel able to share with us how we can help their voices to be heard.

“For us, we aim to centre the voices of patients and carers in all that we do. We plan to co-create future patient safety events, and help patients be heard through the research we conduct with the NIHR NWL PSRC and SafetyNet.” 

Public Involvement Lead, Anna Lawrence-Jones said: “It was great to work with the Patient Safety Partners and Asmahan to speak on a panel for the first time. It would be fantastic if all future SafetyNet events could be co-produced with public members from the start, to ensure the events are covering topics that are important to patients and in an innovative and engaging way.” 

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