Launch of King’s NIHR Patient Safety Centre

The King's Patient Safety & Service Quality Research Centre, was opened at a ceremony last week, attended by Professor John Moxham, Medical Director of King’s College Hospital, Acting CEO of King's College Hospital, Dame Jacqueline Docherty, and the Vice–Principal of King's, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman.

The centre (one of only two nationally designated centres) is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and has been established as part of the Government’s ‘Best Research for Best Health’ strategy to drive improvements in the safety, quality and effectiveness of the services the NHS provides to its patients and the public. The Centre will bring together NHS professionals with academic experts from a wide range of backgrounds, including management and the social sciences, to focus on investigating ways to improve the care of patients.

Professor Naomi Fulop, Director of the Centre says: "The Centre provides an exciting opportunity to apply research within the NHS to improve care for patients. Using research from a range of social sciences and expertise from both within and outside the health sector, we will be developing new ways to improve the safety and quality of care. To do this, we have brought together a team of highly experienced NHS professionals and academic experts from across the social sciences and fields such as human resource management, risk, and defence.

'We are taking a closer look at health care practices at different levels; from individual experiences of care, to the organisation of particular services, through to Trust-wide implementation of government policy. Our four research programmes cover the following areas: workforce; risk; organisational governance; and innovations

'The Centre aims to build capacity and to improve the sharing of knowledge across the health care sector, to enable patients to benefit earlier from the findings. For example, we are developing research secondments to enable NHS staff to work at the Centre to get fully involved, and to widen their experience. We have also established 5 PhD studentships – 2 funded by the ESRC and 3 funded by the Centre.

'We are establishing a PSSQ Forum which aims to bring together a community of academics, professionals, policy makers and lay people with an interest in the field of patient safety and service quality and the research of the Centre. The Forum is a both a virtual and physical entity, operating through discussions via our website and email list, and via seminars and other meetings.

The opening ceremony was followed by speeches from Stephen Ramsden OBE, Chief Executive Luton & Dunstable NHS Foundation Trust & Director of National Patient Safety Campaign who discussed: “Making the Safety of Patients Everyone's Highest Priority”, and also Professor Naomi Fulop, Centre Director, who gave an introduction to the centre.

Professor Andrew Webster, Head of Department of Sociology, University of York spoke on the topic: ‘Safe as Houses: New Technologies and the Delegation of Responsibility to Patients’ and the final talk of the ceremony “Risk Management in the Defence Business” was given by Michael Clarke, previously Director of the International Policy Institute and now Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.