What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

HFE principles and tools could be brought to bear on systemic issues like reducing delays accessing health and social care. Poor clinical handover practices have been associated with range of errors and treatment delays and delays in pending tests. Research is also inconclusive about interventions to improve handover. We will use the Cube which is an STSA tool that looks at problems from a systems perspective and apply it to clinical handover in the acute hospital setting. The tool will analyse current handover practices to understand the gap between national guidelines and practice on the ground and inform improvements for local testing. A guide will also be produced to show how to use such HFE and STSA tools in the healthcare context. This project will integrate with a wider research collaboration between the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) and HFE academics and practitioners exploring the integration of HFE into healthcare.

What does your project aim to achieve?

• Improve patient safety by building knowledge and understanding of the reasons for the gap between current practice with clinical handover within our acute hospital setting compared to national clinical guidelines
• Explore the value that HFE principles and tools can bring to systemic issues like reducing delays accessing health and social care through poor clinical handover
• Identify system issues that may not be making it easy for those working in healthcare to implement this safety practice
• Suggest improvements in clinical handover by using a HFE tool (STSA) to identify where in the system is most relevant to gain most leverage on change

How will the project be delivered?

Our research collaboration brings together a unique range of stakeholders: policy makers, implementers, patient partners, systems thinkers, clinicians, healthcare workers  – all with an understanding of HFE and systems thinking and a passion to improve. We have limited funding however and this Q Exchange funding would greatly add to our ability to provide rich analysis of the issue of clinical handover in the acute hospital setting and to develop a guide for healthcare workers to do such analysis themselves. HFE STSA always look to where in the system is most relevant to gain most leverage on change. Thus suggestions for improvement will also be included.

How is your project going to share learning?

We will disseminate all findings openly and publicly through the HSE network, through a special interest group in Ireland called the ‘Safety in Health Systems’, through the Q Exchange, and other QI forums and through the HFE community in Ireland and internationally.