The annual conference – run by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors – had the theme this year of ‘enhancing human performance’.
As part of the poster presentation sessions, Sophie shared the early work that she and Rosemary Lim have carried out to develop a competency framework for healthcare safety investigators in England.
Sophie said: “There is a drive to professionalise healthcare safety investigators but there are currently no agreed core competencies. At the conference we described the process we went through to generate an initial set of competencies for healthcare safety investigators, for later use in a consensus study.”
The draft investigator competencies span the following domains:
- personal qualities
- investigation knowledge and skill application
- effective and compassionate engagement
- investigation lifecycle management.
Andrew Murphy-Pittock, Education Director at the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), said: “As well as teaching on our in-demand patient safety investigation courses, the HSSIB education team work across a range of projects that contribute to professionalising the role of the safety investigator in the NHS. To our knowledge, this draft competency framework – underpinned by research – is the first of its kind for healthcare safety investigators globally.”
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