PhD Studentship in Patient Safety in Veterinary Practice

Other supervisors:
Kate White & Prof Malcolm Cobb (School of Veterinary Medicine and Science)
Prof Eamonn Ferguson (School of Psychology)

Patient Safety is a critical issue in human healthcare , with one in ten hospital visits resulting in an error of some form (WHO 2002). There is therefore a large body of research around the types of errors that occurr and how these are related to healthcare workers attitudes to error, the evaluation of prevention strategies and organizational culture. While there is a large data base on the topic in human medicine it is extremely under researched in veterinary practice. There is very little published data describing the type of errors that veterinary teams witness or contribute to, or how these errors are handled and linked to attitudes and beliefs about illness, risk perception, error awareness and consequences and animal welfare. This studentship will therefore aim to investigate the types of error in veterinary practice,assess the veterinary healthcare team’s attitudes to these errors and trial a number of interventions, targeted at problematic areas.

It is widely accepted that patient safety and medical error is most effectively studied by psychologists in combination with clinicians and we would aim to apply theory and principals from cognitive, health and occupational psychology to this issue. This studentship will therefore be supervised jointly by the School of Psychology and SVMS. Attitudes can be measured extrinsically and intrinsically and this study will draw on both approaches initially using a survey (such as a version of the Operating Room Management Attitude Questionnaire (Flin et al 2002)) and interviews. A quantitative evaluation of the types of error occurring will also be performed. Based on these results, one or more interventions such as surgery checklists will be trialled (using clinical associate practices) and perceptions and usefulness evaluated.

This study will result in some definitive figures describing the safety of the veterinary practice environment for patients. Any interventions successfully trialled will be potentially implementable in all practices, offering scope for further research. The outputs regarding attitudes will be an interesting addition to our own professionalism, leadership and clinical governance teaching.

Applicants should have a psychology or veterinary degree or a degree in another appropriate subject with a minimum of a 2.1 undergraduate degree, or a minimum of a 2.2 degree and a master’s degree. The project will involve working with veterinary practitioners and veterinary teams to collect data. Good communication skills and team working are therefore essential.

There may also be potential for the successful candidate to use their PhD work towards chartership in occupational or health psychology depending on having the appropriate MSc and agreement with British Psychological Society with respect to the focus of the work and supervisor availability.