Book Chapter

Let me tell you a story

Craft, Tim

2012,2013

Overview

Part of my job is to help lead the drive for continuous improvement in patient safety and the experience of being cared for at my hospital. This is important work but it risks being complicated and overwhelmed by the number of patient safety initiatives, guidance notes, alerts, recommendations and practice statements that seem to be growing at an almost exponential rate. One of the key roles of any leader is to translate and effectively communicate issues and priorities to the rest of his or her team. For me, that means communicating patient safety priorities with everyone who works at my hospital. My challenge is to make sense of this ever-expanding body of advice and ground practice change in ways that see a genuine improvement in the quality and safety of care offered to patients. Doctors in particular often seek evidence from controlled trials, numerically powered to produce statistically meaningful outcomes. The difficulty is that this can take years to complete. Feedback from patients or their carers in the shape of individual stories can provide a rich seam of opportunity to improve that can be mined much more quickly. Anecdote has its place and I frequently use patient stories to help everyone I work with see how what they do can affect safety. Every clinician wants to provide the best and most up-to-date care for patients that they can. New procedures or therapies, however, need to be introduced carefully and safely. I often tell a story to help colleagues to understand the need for controls and governance around how we introduce new treatments into my hospital.

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Subject: Public administration / Social work
• ISBN: 9781447306948, 1447306945, 9781447306931, 1447306937