Title: Patient Safety in Nephrology

Biography:

Umesh Prabhu is passionate of patient safety, professional regulation, why doctors make mistakes, organisational culture and leadership and also impact of subconscious bias and Institutional racism on patient safety and staff well-being.

Abstract

Health is the wealth of the nation. To create a thriving economy every nation needs healthy people to work with skills and jobs. It is the duty of each and every nation to create an excellent healthcare which is safest and the best and is affordable.

NHS is a great Institution and each year 360 million patients are seen by 1.3 Million staff. Most staff work hard and most patients receive safest and the best care. However, sadly culture of bullying is common in NHS. Staff survey shows that 20 to 30% of staff report being bullied or seen someone being bullied in the NHS. Bullying culture is common not only in NHS but throughout the World in healthcare sector. There is complex reasons for the culture of bullying.

When I was the Medical Director of Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh FT (2010-2016) I had to deal with culture of bullying and we transformed the culture of bullying to kind caring compassionate learning and supportive culture. We reduced harm to patients by 90% over 8 years . We empowered staff to speak up and 70 staff raised concerns with me and other Directors and this helped us to transform the culture. The Trust appointed kind caring compassionate leaders to each and every department, created good team working, implemented good governance and duty of candour. Trust received 45 awards and 450 more patients survive each year and for staff happiness Trust improved from bottom 20% in 2011 to third best by 2016. In my presentation I will be presenting as to how we transformed the culture and I will be focusing on some of the nephrology cases like Diabetes, renal surgery and acute kidney injury and how we reduced harm and how we learnt lessons. Leadership is honesty, sincerity, integrity and courage to protect patients and to support staff. Happy staff – Happy patients is the culture we created to transform the Trust.