You're Invited: Third International Incident Disclosure Conference
July 15, 2016 at 3:48 PM
Following the success of the first and second International Incident Disclosure Conference in Sydney in 2012 and in York in 2014 we are delighted to announce the next bi-annual event will be organized by the Vrije Universiteit (Free University of) Amsterdam (Prof. Arno Akkermans), AMC/University of Amsterdam (prof. Johan Legemaate) and NIVEL (prof. Roland Friele), hosted at the AMC in Amsterdam, October 20 and 21st, 2016.
“Open disclosure is the open discussion of adverse events that result in harm to a patient while receiving health care with the patient, their family and carers.”
An adverse medical event greatly impacts patients’ physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. Medical professionals’ conduct after an adverse medical event can influence the severity of this impact. The way in which they communicate, how they explain what has happened and whether or not they empathize with the patient and/or their loved ones can have a long lasting effect. At the same time, an adverse medical event can be a traumatic event for the medical professional as well. Research has shown that disclosure may re-establish patients’ and relatives’ trust in the system, support clinical processes being made safer, and prevent organizations and individuals from entering into time-consuming complaints resolution and expensive legal processes.
While incident disclosure after adverse events is widely endorsed, incident disclosure remains limited in practice. The propagation of disclosure as professional norm is a start – but to secure caretakers properly disclosing incidents to patients and their families, disclosure has to be organized. Therefore, this year’s Incident Disclosure Conference will be dedicated to operational strategies in incident disclosure. On the 21st and 22nd of October we welcome all stakeholders and interested parties to explore strategies in organizing incident disclosure. National and international speakers will present their research on progress in policy and practice reform.
We will approach the central theme “operational strategies in incident disclosure” from three angles:
- Incident disclosure and patient perspectives
- Incident disclosure and the prevention and support of second victims
- Incident disclosure and legal barriers and solutions
We are pleased to announce prof. Michelle Mello and Kris Vanhaecht as speakers on the 21st of October. Michelle Mello is a leading empirical health law scholar of Stanford Law School. Kris Vanhaecht is assistant professor in Quality Management at KU Leuven and has been working since 1998 in the field of care process improvement and quality control.
--Berber Laarman
