In April 2009 Associate Professor Dr Michael Buist made two presentations at the UK Patient Safety Congress held in Birmingham. The Congress is the major patient safety event in the United Kingdom and serves as a forum for who are involved in improving patient safety.
The Congress had over 90 speakers from all over the world. It was organised into eight specialist streams where issues and developments could be presented and discussed. The Congress was attended by over 1200 people.
The key note speakers included Ann Keen, MP, Parliamentary Undersecretary for Health, Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, the UK Department of Health and Chair, WHO Alliance for Patient Safety and Peter Pronovost of The John Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr Buist’s first presentation took a very personal look at adverse events, using the sequence of events that lead to his own near death experience in his own hospital after being admitted with appendicitis. The presentation illustrated how unpredictable and common such events are in hospitals. The presentation was attended by nurses, physicians and patient advocates.
Dr Buist’s second presentation argued for the case for a solution to help identify deteriorating patients in the general ward environment and then to ensure that they receive appropriate and timely attention. He explained that Patientrack had been developed as a tool to do just this. He explained the high level results of the hospital trial of Patientrack at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. The results included a lower mortality rate, fewer admissions to intensive care, a reduced requirement for high dependency unit beds to treat patients suffering adverse events and a reduced average length of stay. Nurses strongly supported the use of Patientrack because it not only automated the process of calling doctors to attend patients requiring attention, freeing them to focus on the provision of care, but it lead to a significantly improved response rate. The improvement in response rates contributed to a reduction in the number of alerts being generated. It became a virtuous cycle which can lead to sustainable patient safety improvements.
To see an abridged verison of his presentation please click here