Risk & Safety

Our aim is to use research to both understand and improve the safety of healthcare and other industries. Members of the group have worked extensively in many clinical contexts and in other industries. We are closely linked with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and with the Oxford Academic Health Science Network. Our work is currently focused on three broad areas:

(i) Improving the safety and quality of healthcare. With colleagues at Oxford Healthcare Improvement we are working to improve the safety and quality of mental health and community services and to build the capacity for improvement and organisational change in the NHS. We are focusing in particular on care provided by parents with very sick children and the reduction of self-harm in hospitals. We are also working with colleagues in Bradford Institute for Health Research to improve transitions from hospital to home for older people.

(ii) Safety strategies and models. Safety in healthcare has been approached in a largely uniform manner but safety is actually managed and achieved very differently across contexts. We are assessing how safety is being measured and monitored in healthcare and how safety strategies might be developed and implemented in different clinical contexts.

(iii) Learning from failure. The NHS has suffered many serious failures in recent years. We played a role in the creation of the Health Service Investigation Branch and continue to develop methods of analysing and learning from safety issues.  We are also assessing the broader role of regulation in the NHS.