Chris Frerk Chair of CHFG was at Patient Safety Congress this year, here’s what he thought about it (all views his own…)
Patient Safety Congress -the short version:
The NHS is better at understanding what is going wrong in healthcare, but it hasn’t got the skills embedded in the workforce to start to put it right yet.
This congress felt (in a good way) like a CHFG seminar from about 10 years ago – just about every speaker on stage had bought into Human Factors and was revelling at the understanding it can bring. So all we have to do is to help them translate that understanding into meaningful change. That’s CHFG’s 5 year plan sorted out, then!
Patient Safety Congress – some of the detail:
The standout message from many of the speakers at Patient Safety Congress 2026 was that poor and degraded systems are a major contributor to harm in healthcare.
Henrietta Hughes (Patient Safety Commissioner for England) said clearly that we need to focus on human factors, ergonomics and usability.
Toli Onon, chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC confirmed that the CQCs main role was to protect and promote patient safety. The messaging about HSSIB working with(in) CQC was fairly positive, but we know there’s still a great deal of concern from many around this. CHFG is doing all we can to help make sure HSSIB fully maintains its independence.
And talking of HSSIB, Ted Baker reminded us that when trade-offs are made within the triad of quality it is likely to be safety that will lose out. With financial constraints short term investment in experience and outcomes can be seen relatively quickly, while the harm from lack of investment in safety comes way down the line.
Ted also discussed how harm is a product of systems under pressure that haven’t been managed effectively. We need safety management systems in the NHS and it will take work to create these because there is no ‘off the shelf’ kit. We have a long journey of incremental gains in safety to be made ahead of us.
Around congress and in the breakout sessions, many delegates were saying, or at least accepting, that their hospitals aren’t safe, and they were starting to recognise why.
There was a side focus on regulation. I can be fairly sure that at least this part isn’t subject to confirmation bias because I didn’t agree with all of it, but reflecting back, I’m on the way to changing my mind. The feeling from the stage seemed to be that:
- Healthcare managers should be regulated and that this would be a good thing (if done well)
- Doctors should be regulated and the GMC is doing a good job under difficult circumstances
- Journalists should be regulated (but not by the state). Here Shaun Lintern took time to acknowledge an increasing failure in relationship building in journalism and noted this as a parallel with the NHS. He also highlighted the need for journalists to better understand complexity and to be able to convey it.
Paula Sussex (Public Service Ombudsman) talked about systems change, and how culture is created by systems. There were messages describing Safety II highlighting the need for better quality recommendations based on an understanding of “Work as Done” rather than “Work as imagined”.
But what part did CHFG play in contributing to the success of this year’s Patient Safety Congress? I was just a punter in the audience this time, but our founder Martin Bromiley opened congress with a talk highlighting the importance of systems, without forgetting the value of humility in helping create a just culture. CHFG trustee Tom Reader gave the James Reason lecture at the end of day one to a packed house. Both of them were referenced positively by many other speakers in their sessions. We also had trustees and ambassadors past and present hosting and contributing to many of the breakout sessions throughout both days.
So it was two days which covering the value of system design, safety II, humility, culture, human factors, ergonomics, usability, and much more from our lexicon.
And then, in his summing up, Shaun Lintern said he was increasingly feeling like the NHS needed a Chief Anthropologist. I’m not sure if he knows but social anthropology is one of the many sciences that human factors draws on, alongside psychology, physical anthropology, engineering and systems theory. I’m with you Shaun!
And finally, if you’re hosting a conference or other event and you’d like to include a speaker who is passionate about and really understands human factors in healthcare, do get in touch with us via info@chfg.org
Chris Frerk, Chair CHFG