The hub: an online community for patient safety learning

Hi, I’m Claire. I am a critical care outreach nurse in Brighton, and I also work for the charity Patient Safety Learning.

I completed a Darzi fellowship last year which had a focus on learning from deaths and serious incidents – why are we not sharing learning?

I was frustrated at how recurrent harm is persistent in our healthcare system and wanted to take a practical approach to attempt to ensure harm doesn’t keep happening.

Would you like to contribute to making care safer for others? If so, we would love for you to get involved.

What are we looking for?

For patient and families to engage and to share their experiences to inform safer care on the hub, an online platform and community for people to share learning about patient safety problems, experiences and solutions.

We want to hear examples of how the patient perspective has been welcomed, listened to and used to inform safer care and change practice.

In ‘Share’ You could upload a video, a write up, a poem, drawing, an account – literally anything that will get your passion and voice out there. We want to hear it.

We also want to hear examples where care hasn’t been safe and how you think patients and families could be part of the solution of providing safer care.

In ‘Learn’ you can find out the latest guidelines, innovative ideas and improvements to patient safety – you can comment and be part of the conversation.

You could join a community area and build on conversations around a safety aspect you feel passionate about and connect with the wider patient safety community.

What we cannot help with

Reporting incidents of concern or complaint - Care Opinion is best to deal with this.

Assist you with any medical diagnosis.

Patient Safety Learning’s the hub

Patient Safety Learning also has its role to play, and we want to facilitate the improvement of shared learning for patient safety.

As part of this, we have created the hub, an online platform and community for people to share learning about patient safety problems, experiences and solutions.

the hub allows people to learn, share and develop key ideas and techniques to improve patient safety. It fosters communities of interest and gives people a safe place to discuss issues that may be of interest or concern to them. It provides a collaborative environment for people to come together to build on improvements that have already begun and adapt solutions for local implementation.

This is one of the six foundations for a patient safe future. Read more about it in our recent report, A Blueprint for Action. Underpinned by systematic analysis and evidence, it proposes practical actions to address the foundations of safer care for patients.

How can you get involved?

the hub was launched at the Patient Safety Congress in July this year. It’s currently in beta, and we want to encourage everyone in healthcare to sign up as a member and begin using it. Your participation and feedback will be hugely valuable to us as we prepare for the full launch at the Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference on 2 October.

the hub is free of charge for use by everyone: clinicians, patients, managers, policy makers, regulators, researchers and members of the public.

We will nurture and grow the hub. We want users to find it valuable and stimulating, so we will:

• provide editorial support to source, curate, commission and develop content
• support users in their conversations and ensure that for critical elements, such as descriptions of tools for patient safety, certain quality standards apply
• support and encourage communities of interest to share knowledge and support each other
• explore ways for organisations to use and support the hub
• connect the hub to other sites to give our users the widest possible access to learning for patient safety.

Will you join us in our aim to improve patient safety by sharing your learning, learning from others and working in collaboration with others in healthcare? Register for the hub now to join this growing community and play your part in improving shared learning.

I am more than happy to help you upload any content, start a conversation or just answer any questions – please get in touch: claire@patientsafetylearning.org