International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, Paris 2012

17 May 2012

Went to most brilliant talk at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Paris today. The speaker was Dave Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Southlake Regional Health Centre in Ontario, Canada.

Dave was an astronaut with NASA who did 3 missions. Charismatic? Yes but with experience grounded in life and death situations. Just fantastic!

He drew telling translational comparisons between NASA missions and healthcare from the view of leadership, followership, teamwork and quality and the need for a relentless commitment to all four, and, the need to identify and stop normalising deviance in what we do and to stop playing in health the blame/shame/name game. We need to rather help people to learn.

We will visit him, learn more and let you know!!!