Patients as active partners in safety
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patients as active partners in safety? An exploration of the issues from the perspective of patients and their carers.
IRAS ID
131289
Contact name
Carole Doherty
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Health Foundation
Research summary
Our research will explore patients’ and their relatives'/friends’ understandings of safety and harm. We will also examine how their understandings are similar/different to clinicians’ perceptions and the consequent implications for defining, measuring and improving patient safety. Our aim is to deepen knowledge and inform thinking about the practical implications, arising from policy recommendations, that patients should be active partners with clinicians in managing the safety of their care.
We will adopt a single case study design embedded at three levels: interpersonal, three groups of people, patients, carers and clinicians; organisational, a single hospital trust; and institutional, the NHS at a particular point in time. Our study will take place in The Christie NHS Foundation Trust (TCFT), the largest cancer centre in Europe with an international reputation, whose practices influence cancer patients’ care worldwide. Mixed methods longitudinal data collection will be employed merging face-to-face patient and carer narrative interviews and ethnographic observation to capture the patients’ journey close to where and when care is delivered. In addition, we will employ a relatively new approach to understand incident reporting issues by asking in-patients to complete incident reporting forms which will then be compared to those completed by clinicians to identify similarities and/or differences.
By focussing on patient-clinician relationships, and by gaining patients’/relatives’ perspectives, we aim to provide new insights into the safety culture in healthcare, and to provide practical recommendations for involving patients as partners in managing the safety of their care.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/1106
Date of REC Opinion
19 Jul 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion