CHFG Ambassador Profile: Joe McCloud

As I write this, I am sitting in the corner of an operating theatre observing team behaviours, after a difficult list that led to complaints and accusations between team members that raised concerns about safety. So it seems it is the right time to reflect on how I came to be here and my journey into human factors.

Like many surgeons my first experiences of HF were via commercial organisations offering non-technical skills training (thank you to Trevor Dale at Attrainability), as well as the incredibly moving and inspirational video “Just a routine operation” from Martin Bromiley, which undoubtably has done more to raise the importance of HF in healthcare than anything else.

I managed to persuade my trust to allow us to be trained in, and then deliver HF training to multidisciplinary teams in theatres, and then I went on to become a patient safety incident investigator. This in turn demonstrated to me that HF was so much more than behaviours, communication and teamwork, and I found myself seeking out more knowledge. This led to the NHS Education Scotland website and the webinars run by Paul Bowie and Helen Vosper as well as Steve Shorrock’s Humanistic systems website and other resources, and I learnt a little (tantalising) amount about the principles of systems thinking. I managed to get the trust to run a day on patient safety and I was really pleased that Martin Bromiley came to talk as the highlight of the day.

Another trip to the executives at my trust to ask them to pay for more training led me to the Postgraduate Certificate in patient safety at Oxford University, and I was interviewed for the course by Lauren Morgan, at the time the course director. I started the course and then covid hit, and a year or so later the tables were turned and I interviewed Lauren for a patient safety consultant role for our trust!

Lauren came and injected so much energy, expertise and experience, and I learnt a great deal from her. She demonstrated the importance of HF in environment design, equipment procurement, systems of work and so much more, and her clear teaching style and use of everyday objects to show the importance of design was invaluable for our teams. She has provided mentorship and support to all the members of our patient safety team and provided compassionate leadership in sensitive maternity reviews. It was a pleasure to work with and learn from her, and I was really pleased that she made a guest appearance at the Oxford course when I finally completed it after Covid disruption. I’ve now also completed levels 3 and 4 of the national patient safety syllabus. I have also experienced severe imposter syndrome when I was asked to join a panel discussion at the HSJ patient safety congress with HF experts from aviation and rail!

So where does this leave me now? For about 5 years I was the trust lead for HF, but a lone voice in a busy and complex acute trust of 8,000 employees, where very few have the time, headspace and understanding to appreciate the value of HF, (and I had little provision in my job plan for it) I have moved in to an operational role where I hope that my modest knowledge will be better used, particularly as we embark on an ambitious new build and a major county-wide reconfiguration of services. Certainly, it seems that being attached to an operational team means I am more able to be involved in key decisions. I continue to teach on HF and I am involved in patient safety investigations, as well as being faculty on the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons course, which is now mandatory training for surgical trainees in my region.

My next ambition for further development of HF would be to ensure all colleagues have had some training in the principles of systems thinking to empower them to identify and make key improvements to their working lives and the safety of patients, and this is another battle to fight!