Suzette Woodward

Shifting our efforts towards prevention and a more proactive approach to safety.

Review of patient safety - update.

Opinion piece: Patient Safety Review by Dr Penny Dash

I read the review of patient safety by Dr Penny Dash . You can find it here: I made six pages of notes as I read it and have a few comments as you can imagine. I think the best thing for me to do at this stage is provide some high level key…

Book alert

This has just arrived on my desk. I cannot wait to read it. and another I am in the middle of but loving...

Harvard president receives standing ovation during commencement.

NHS medical negligence liabilities hit £58.2bn amid calls to improve patient safety Public accounts committee called the record sum ‘jaw-dropping’ and criticised inaction to reduce errors in a damning report

This will fuel calls to restrict access to justice. But what should be a priority is preventing harm in the first place, improving the response to incidents, and offering truly authentic apologies.

As with a lot of patient safety stuff, there is a danger of making safety II thinking and implementation far more complicated than it needs to be. No wonder we have not achieved as much as we hoped.

Safety II thinking - should we try to embed across healthcare?

Decades of learning

Following on from my blog titled "an organisation with a memory' it is worth us dipping in to things we have tried over the years. There are a number of tools and techniques that are used in the safety-I approach.  These include, Heinrich’s triangle, the swiss cheese model, ‘5…

Fortunate enough to work with a great group of colleagues & discuss how to create #psychologicalsafety in the perioperative environment.
➡️ journals.lww.com/co-anesthesi...

#ptsafety #medsky #nurseky #psychsafety
@tomgeraghty.bsky.social @curiousbecks.bsky.social @amycedmondson.bsky.social

An organisation with a memory

In many ways the year 2000 was the start of the safety movement as we know it today.  There are many safety scholars out there who will cite the work as far back as the late 1800s that helped our thinking in patient safety and the brilliance of our anaesthetic…

‘I begged them, my daughter was dying’: how Taliban male escort rules are killing mothers and babies The need for women to be accompanied by a man in public is blocking access to healthcare and contributing to soaring mortality rates, say experts

Thinking again of the women of Afghanistan - such desperate, awful straits

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Two front pages of the Economist. The first is dated October 25, 2024 and says “The Envy of the Workd” and has dollars bill rocketing into the sky in celebration of the US economy. The second front page is dated this week April 5th. It’s headline is “Ruination Day” and pictures Trump sawing a hole in the group the shape of the US.

22 weeks apart.

Automaticity

Systems of thinking relates our approach to risk and decision making (Kahneman 2011). It is argued that there are two systems of thinking that people are engaged in through the course of their daily activities. System 1 - automatic, intuitive, effortless, nonanalytic System 2 -…

Teams

The way people work together is central to the safety of healthcare.   Behaviours of individuals at all levels can play a role in the lead up to incidents or in the prevention of incidents.  Teams are people who are used to working with one another, often the same people.  This is…

Today we repaired 14 hernias. Started on time, finished on time. Even stopped briefly for lunch. One operating theatre, no expensive technology.

Last list for a while as all extra sessions to reduce waiting lists have been stopped for now due to lack of money. #nhs #waitinglists

Personalisation

When we fail, we do three things: Personalisation – we think it is all our fault Pervasiveness – we think it is going to affect every bit of our lives Permanence – we think we are going to feel this bad forever In 2016 I came across a radio interview with Bob Ebeling.  Bob was one…

Human error and zero harm

In safety today there is a view that error is somehow preventable and that when people make mistakes all we need to do is tell them to stop making mistakes and possibly sanction them if they do.  However, I know it is an obvious statement, but not everything we do will go…

In an extraordinary display of public support, heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers from all over Europe and Canada are posting in support of Ukraine in response to the Oval Office meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy, and Vance.

Workarounds – good or bad?

One of the ways we try to maintain safety in our everyday work is to do a workaround.   Workarounds in healthcare are common, sometimes planned, sometimes not, but in the vast majority of occasions well meaning.   Often a workaround is a method for overcoming a problem…

Amanda Pritchard quits as NHS England chief executive in shock move Exclusive: Departure follows meetings with Wes Streeting and unusual criticism from two Commons committees

NHS England’s next CEO faces immense challenges trying to improve care after the last 15 years.

But caring for the carers is vital.

The NHS *is* its staff, its people. The discretionary effort. The quiet acts of kindness.

Rebuilding morale is imperative.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

You're probably reeling, like me, from Trump's onslaught on Ukraine & from the horrifying spectacle of two superpowers trying to carve up a sovereign country.

Please, I beg you, use your voice. Write to your MP. Express your views on social media. Share this piece. Act.

Thank you.

#SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦

And these are the mass graves, in a forest outside Izium, where occupying Russian forces dumped the bodies of the civilians they murdered.

445 bodies were retrieved by the Ukrainian troops who liberated Izium.

To witness this scene, in a European country in 2025, shook me to my core.

These are the makeshift memorials to some of the children who died.

This is my dear friend Andrii, a neurosurgeon from Kyiv.

We're standing outside a block of flats in Izium hit by a Russian missile. All five storeys collapsed onto the basement below, where hundreds of residents had sought shelter. 54 people, including children, were killed.

This is Jenya, the anaesthetist who helped stabilise Mykola.

In Bakhmut last year, he treated between 6,000 & 7000 casualties, including children.

“Something died inside me. Too much horror. I stopped being able to feel,” he said.

"It is hard to keep on, but we will because we have no choice."

‘We have a rule when we hear the sirens: if you’ve started operating, you don’t stop’: 24 hours with doctors on the Ukrainian frontline Like the soldiers they battle to save, combat medics in Ukraine are under constant attack. Three years after the invasion, one NHS doctor bears witness

We need facts as never before.

3 years after Putin invaded Ukraine, I spent 24 hours with combat medics on the Ukrainian frontline.

Their courage, compassion, dedication & skill are astounding.

Please read & please never stop standing up for Ukraine. 🇺🇦

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

Ability to disclose

Don Norman wrote the Design of Everyday things in 1988. It is a brilliant book which is underrated in the area of safety. If you do work in safety I would encourage you to read it. A little taster. Don was once asked by a computer company to evaluate a new keyboard.  He spent…

Seeking a scientific and pragmatic approach to safety culture in the North American construction industry Safety culture remains a key concept in occupational safety management. In the North American construction industry, regulators are growing increasing…

Great article on “safety culture” with relevance to healthcare.

Despite decades of discussion and constant calls to improve it, are we clear in what it is and what it means?

TLDR: is it time to abandon the concept of “safety culture”. Probably.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Email screenshot with identifiable details redacted. Text- Thanks, Rhea. It's been a pleasure to experience working in truely psychologically safe space. Now that l've experienced it, l'm not sure I ever have before.

This email from a senior medical consultant hit me hard.

How can we establish #PsychologicalSafety when it's never been there for so many of us? 💔

#OperateWithRespect