Safety investigation in healthcare (MHV205)

One of the most fundamental aspects of safety in healthcare is to learn from adverse events to improve future healthcare services. Every year a large number of patients across the world are harmed by adverse events due to for example late diagnosis, wrong diagnosis, wrong treatment, technical failure, medication errors and infections. In order to learn from these events, safety investigation is key. Investigating and learning from serious adverse events is a complex process that confronts many challenges. This course is about safety investigations in healthcare and how these can be understood and approached. The aim of the course is to give students the knowledge, skills, and analytical capacity to understand important conditions for achieving high quality safety investigations in healthcare.

The course content is based on recent research into accident and safety investigations in healthcare, but examples from other industries and sectors will be applied when relevant. The course covers the following main topics:

• Accident models and theoretical foundation for safety investigations
• Complexity of healthcare systems, technology and people
• Methods of safety investigations
• Patient and stakeholder involvement in safety investigations
• Just culture, safety investigation and organizational learning
• Simulation in safety investigations

Upon completion of this course, the students are expected to have the following knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge:

• Has advanced knowledge about the foundation for different types of safety investigations
• Has advanced knowledge about existing accident models and theories explaining causality
• Has advanced knowledge about principles, practices and processes of safety investigations
• Has advanced knowledge about safety investigation methods in healthcare and other industries
• Has advanced knowledge about how different stakeholders’ (e.g. patients, next of kin, healthcare professionals, managers, regulators) perspectives and experiences can be incorporated into safety investigations
• Has advanced knowledge about strengths and limitations in safety investigations

Skills:

• Can apply accident theories and investigation methods in health care
• Can evaluate scientific publications in safety investigation

General competence:

• Can critically analyze different theoretical, methodological and practical approaches to safety investigations in healthcare services.

Candidates with a Bachelor’s degree can apply for admission to the course