Human Factors and Safer Births
Open Seminar
11th May 2017
Institute of Engineering
Birmingham

This one-day event, the latest in our series of open seminars, provided an opportunity to focus on the challenges facing teams involved in the delivery of maternity services, in response to Better Births and other national maternity & neonatal initiatives. It explored how a human factors approach can support the reduction of preventable harm to mothers and babies and help develop resilient teams and organisations.

We had an incredibly informative and interactive day with a  stellar line-up of contributors.

Martin Bromiley opened the session with a video of the NHS maternity care awareness raising campaign, follow this Video link to view the film, we also ran footage throughout our exhibition which can be viewed here

Keynote speaker Professor Mark Radford kicked off our discussions on looking at future opportunities in improving outcomes in maternity care.  If you would like to view his slides please click here.

In the afternoon we had the pleasure of welcoming two Keynote speakers Dr Tony Kelly, looking at quality improvement in maternity, if you would like to view his slides please click here and Susanna Stanford representing at Patient’s perspective.

During our morning breakout sessions, we heard from the following speakers:

  • Gill Walton – Director of Midwifery and Maternity, Portsmouth Hospitals Trust.
    Human Factors – The impact on supporting complex births. To view the presentation please click here
  • Maureen Collins – Head of Quality and Governance, One to One (North West) Ltd.
    Continuity of Carer Success and Challenge, to view the slides please click here
  • Dr Emma Plunkett – Locum Consultant Anaesthetist – University Hospitals Birmingham and Birmingham Women’s Hospital.  Learning from excellence: from idea to implementation,  please click here to view her slides
  • Heart of England Foundation Trust Maternity Team – Ann Abbassi, Justine Jeffery, Louisa Davidson
    Taking a Human Factors approach to redesigning the category 1 cesarean section pathway: A case study. Slides to follow shortly.

During the afternoon breakout sessions we heard from:

  • Kevin Stirling -Programme Manager – Laerdal Medical – Helping babies breath: Implementing the evidence from this innovative global alliance, please click here
  • Maria Dineen – Managing Director – The Effective Investigations Company
    “Learning, Accountability and Proportionality” – How to ensure we learn the right lessons for our serious incidents and implement the right changes for improvement, the view the slides click here
  • Gill Phillips – Director – Nutshell Communications Ltd, creator of ‘Whose Shoes’
    Maternity experience is integral to ‘Patient Safety’- how the inclusive #MatExp community is building positive change, please click here to view the slides.
  • Dr Matt Hill – Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Regional Patient Safety Lead SWAHSN – Safety culture assessment – practical lessons about the teams we work in. Please click here to view the slides and survey overview

For a full programme of the day please click here

Thank you to all those who participated in such an inspiring day.

This event was sponsored and supported by West Midlands Academic Health Science Network