Patient Safety Now: Applying Concepts, Theories, and Ideas for Creating a Safe Environment

Over the past decade or so, we have seen a multitude of improvement programmes and projects to improve the safety of patient care in healthcare. However, the full potential of these efforts and especially those that seek to address an entire system has not yet been reached. The current pandemic has made this more evident than ever.

We have tended to focus on problems in isolation, one harm at a time, and our efforts have been simplistic and myopic. If we are to save more lives and significantly reduce patient harm, we need to adopt a holistic, systematic approach that extends across cultural, technological, and procedural boundaries. Patient Safety Now is about the fact that it is time to care for everyone impacted by patient safety, how we need to take the time to care for everyone in a meaningful way and how hospitals need to enable staff time to care safely.

This book builds on the author’s two previous books on patient safety. Rethinking Patient Safety talked about ways in which we need to rethink patient safety in healthcare and describes what we’ve learned over the last two decades. Implementing Patient Safety talked about what we can do differently and how we can use those lessons learned to improve the way we implement patient safety initiatives and encourage a culture of safety across a healthcare system. Patient Safety Now unites the concepts, theories and ideas of the previous two books with updated material and examples, including what has been learned by patient safety specialists during a pandemic.

Patient Safety Now provides the reader with a unique view of patient safety that looks beyond the traditional negative and retrospective approach to one that is proactive and recognizes the impact of conditions, behaviours and cultures that exist in healthcare on everyone. It is written not only for healthcare professionals and patient safety personnel, but for patients and their families who all want the same thing. Too often when things go wrong, relationships quickly become adversarial when in fact this can be avoided by recognizing that, rather than being in separate camps, there are shared needs and goals in relations to patient safety.

Dr Suzette Woodward RGN, RSCN, DipMS, MSc, DProf, DSc

Dr Suzette Woodward is an internationally renowned expert in patient safety who as at the forefront of safety thinking in healthcare. Suzette is a Professor of Patient Safety, now a freelance patient safety specialist providing strategic advice on all aspects of patient safety and in particular related to the latest concepts and theories on safety II, incivility and a just culture. She has worked in the NHS for over 40 years, starting out as a paediatric intensive care nurse she has specialised in patient safety at a national level for over two decades.

Suzette has held Executive Board positions at the National Patient Safety Agency and NHS Resolution and worked with health ministries across the world to help shape their patient safety strategies. Over the last six years Suzette was the National Clinical Director for the Sign up to Safety Campaign and worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Department of Health and Social Care. She has a doctorate in patient safety and is a Visiting Professor for the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College University London and Honorary Doctor of Science at the University of West London. She is author of a blog, numerous articles and two books; Rethinking Patient Safety and Implementing Patient Safety.