Blog posts

What’s it like to study our Masters in Patient Safety?

Patient safety has become an important topic at all levels of the health system.

That’s why we launched our MSc in Patient Safety. The course was designed specifically to help policy makers and healthcare professionals deliver safer care and health systems. Since launching our unique Masters programme in 2016, we’ve had many graduates go on to successfully apply their learning in their careers, championing patient safety in their everyday work.

We spoke to three Patient Safety students, Joshua Symons, William Gage and Jeni Mwebaze to find out what made them choose the course, what they learnt and how they hope it will help them in their profession.

Why sharing leadership in healthcare matters

By Dr Lisa Aufegger, Research Associate

Alongside the inherent challenges of the job itself, working in acute healthcare teams comes with another layer of complexity.

On a regular basis, staff will interact with highly specialised professionals from across different disciplines. This means that team members such as anaesthetists, nurses and surgeons need a high level of shared understanding, not only in relation to their main objective but their roles and responsibilities, too.

Shared leadership (SL) – where leadership working relationships are distributed and team members’ unique roles defined – has been proposed as a way to foster effective team performance in such situations.

Experiences of Shout-ing for Mental Health

By Lily Roberts, NHS Digital Academy Teaching Fellow

“I’m really struggling, is someone there?”

“Hi there, my name is Sophie and I’m here for you tonight. Tell me a bit about what’s on your mind.”

“I can’t cope anymore, I just want to end it all…”

While this exchange is fictional, it is a representation of a very real problem.

A Shout out for mental health

By Dr Emma Lawrance, Mental Health Innovations Fellow

These are hyper-connected times. We’re told we can get what we want – from dinner to a date – at the tap of a phone screen. And yet, even with the world seemingly at our fingertips, when we are in an emotional crisis or struggling with our mental health, it can be hard to know where to go. And hard to know what to say, when one of our loved ones is brave enough to express what’s truly on their mind.

Let’s talk about young people’s mental health

By Dr Lindsay H Dewa, Research Associate, NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken”. C.S. Lewis

Project SAPPHIRE: Making the most of precious health data

By Joshua Symons, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation’s Big Data Analytical Unit

Patient data is precious. It’s a resource that many researchers and clinicians use to improve healthcare and therefore the lives of patients and health professionals. That’s why we want to make sure it’s used in a way that’s both effective and safe.

Our Co-production Journey: From Sandpits to Bird Boxes

By Anna Lawrence-Jones (co-written with Jean Straus).

This article originally appeared on the UCL Public Engagement blog and has been reposted with permission. Visit the blog to read more about the UCL Centre for Co-Production in Health Research. 

In my former job at Cancer Research UK, I organised Sandpit Innovation Workshops that brought together researchers, healthcare professionals and innovative thinkers to come up with novel research ideas to help solve a health challenge. Normally a three-day event, sandpits are a way to generate research ideas – which are inevitably more innovative and daring in this spontaneous environment – and get them funded quickly.