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Patient Safety, Human Factors and PSIRF Insights for Healthcare Organisations
Featured Articles.
Start with our practical guides to PSIRF, human factors in healthcare, systems-based learning, patient safety investigations and healthcare governance.
Healthcare risk management and patient safety: why yesterday’s controls may not protect tomorrow
Yesterday’s successful control may not protect tomorrow’s patient. Steve Franklin explores ergodicity, complex systems and Taleb’s risk principles, with practical implications for PSIRF, healthcare risk management and board assurance.
Steve Franklin
18 hours ago
Unauthorised access to health records: why punishment alone is not a patient safety strategy
Recent NHS record-access cases demand accountability. This article asks what system owners, boards and digital leaders must do before a breach creates another victim.
Steve Franklin
5 days ago
Are Our Chimps Running the Organisation? Emotional Decision-Making, Human Factors and Learning Culture
When something goes wrong, does the organisation ask what it needs to learn, or how quickly it can show that it has acted? Steve Franklin explores whether our emotional “Chimps” are shaping leadership decisions.
Steve Franklin
Oct 19
Healthcare risk management and patient safety: why yesterday’s controls may not protect tomorrow
Yesterday’s successful control may not protect tomorrow’s patient. Steve Franklin explores ergodicity, complex systems and Taleb’s risk principles, with practical implications for PSIRF, healthcare risk management and board assurance.
Steve Franklin
18 hours ago16 min read
The NHS Quality Strategy 2026: What Does It Mean for Patient Safety and PSIRF?
On 14 July 2026, NHS England published the new Quality Strategy for NHS-funded care in England on behalf of the National Quality Board. It describes a 10-year approach intended to make quality the organising principle for NHS-funded care. The strategy applies across the system, not only to NHS trusts, and places safety, effectiveness and experience at the centre of how quality should be understood, managed and improved. At first glance, some of this will feel familiar. Safety
Steve Franklin
Aug 2610 min read
Who Controls the Past? Investigation, Patient Safety and the Power of the Pen
What does George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four have to do with healthcare investigations? More than you might think. Investigators hold the pen, shaping how events are understood and what organisations learn. Exploring PSIRF, Human Factors and Safety-II thinking, this article examines the power of investigative narratives, the risks of confirmation bias and premature closure, and why meaningful patient safety learning depends on curiosity, evidence and systems thinking.
Steve Franklin
Aug 126 min read
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