The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has concluded the second edition of the Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety (AELPS).
The event was hosted in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the US-based MedStar Health.
The objective of this specialist training is to encourage effective and transparent communication between caregivers, patients, and patients’ families in order to reduce patient harm while under medical care. The programme is designed to teach participants through discussing case studies and taking part in various practical demonstrations.
Participants included Qatar-based faculty and health science students from Weill Cornell Medicine - Qatar, University of Calgary in Qatar, College of the North Atlantic - Qatar, and Qatar University, as well as members of staff from the MoPH, experts from Hamad Medical Corporation, and Sidra Medical and Research Center.
The first phase of the five-day programme was targeted at faculty and addressed how to effectively teach students best practices on patient safety, as well as encourage their students to pursue open and honest communication with their patients and each other.
The second phase, tailored for students, aimed to equip participants with specific strategies that can be used to reduce harm to patients through a range of interactive and hands-on exercises.
Maha El Akoum, research and policy development officer at WISH, said: “There exists a strong evidence base surrounding the effectiveness of inter-professional collaboration in improving co-ordination, communication and, as a result, patient safety, quality of care and patient outcomes. For the second year in Doha, the AELPS has trained a future generation of patient safety leaders from different backgrounds with the aim of bridging the gap between research and practice.”
Huda Amer al-Katheeri, acting director of healthcare quality and patient safety department at the MoPH, said: “I am very confident that everyone attending this training can be a change agent toward the improvement of quality and safety of patients. I believe that we must all work together to achieve this goal, and I am hopeful that each participant will leave this training with lessons they can pass on to others and contribute towards avoiding patient harm.”
David Mayer, vice-president of Quality and Safety for MedStar Health, said: “What WISH has done by partnering with MedStar Health is to bring a patient safety model to Qatar that is changing the world, so to speak. The programme is educating the next generation of leaders on how to provide high-quality safe care, be it to students or graduate physicians or faculty who have been practicing for 10-15 years.”
