Junior doctors have their role to play in improving patient safety. Dr Laura Dobson describes a major resource available to strengthen understanding
As a medical student, the phrase “patient safety” never really entered the curriculum. It was only when I landed on the wards as an FY1 doctor that I realised just how important patient safety is in everyday practice as a junior doctor. As students we learn about the pathological, physiological and epidemiological basis of disease, and how to manage conditions and their complications. But very little is taught on how to learn from mistakes, and how to prevent these same mistakes that happen year on year in the NHS.
It feels terrible to be involved in an incident that threatens patient safety. Mistakes are usually not the result of an individual but of a system within which one works. Preventing error and reducing harm to patients by improving systems is the cornerstone of patient safety theory.
My experience of teaching in patient safety as a junior doctor has been centred around that provided at generic skills days. Really effective teaching has been where doctors are able to reflect on real events and think about how events could have been avoided and systems put in place to prevent situations occurring. Being taught by a clinician who knows how it feels to be a junior doctor is key to delivering the message.
When we graduated and took the Hippocratic Oath of “first do no harm”, I’m sure most doctors underestimated the importance of this
As patient safety lead for BAMMbino, my aim is to try and improve junior doctors’ understanding of patient safety and thereby engage junior doctors in taking part in measures to make the NHS a safer place to be treated. BAMMbino has been busy this year.
Firstly we looked at the wealth of resources pertaining to patient safety and tried to simplify the world of acronyms out there by producing a glossary and resource list for juniors, which is available via our website alongside a “handover SMARTkit”, developed for juniors that are looking to improve handover practices at their local hospital.
We partnered early on with the Department of Health, the BMJ and the NPSA to deliver the Junior Doctors: Agents for Change event in June 2009 and repeated the success of that conference this year. Spurred on by the conference last year, our working group has conducted a survey questioning more than 500 junior doctors of all different grades on their attitudes towards several different aspects of patient safety, and the results of this will allow us to look at an area upon which we will focus our efforts next year.
When we graduated and took the Hippocratic Oath of “first do no harm”, I’m sure most doctors underestimated the importance of this.
Doing harm to our patients is commonplace, but we’ve all got a role in improving the situation. We’re always looking for more enthusiastic doctors with a passion to make a difference in BAMMbino and our working groups. If you’re at all interested, take a look at our website, email us or, even better, come along to one of our events and contribute to the debate.
- About the author: Laura Dobson is a Cardiology ST3 currently working at York Hospital and a member of the BAMMbino board.