DOHA: The Middle East Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare 2015 (ME Forum), a professional development opportunity for healthcare industry employees in the region who are driven by a desire for excellence in patient care, opened here yesterday.
Almost 3,000 healthcare professionals from Qatar and across the GCC region attended the opening ceremony of the ME Forum, a quality improvement conference for international healthcare professionals.
It’s being held at Qatar National Convention Centre for the third consecutive year, as a mix of keynote addresses from international experts and over 30 interactive workshops designed to highlight patient quality and safety improvements.
Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) Managing Director Dr Hanan Al Kuwari highlighted the developments and progress made across the public healthcare provider’s operations since the forum’s first year.
“Many of Hamad’s quality and safety initiatives have featured in this year’s poster and storyboard exhibition, including our successes in situational background assessments, risk assessments for venous thromboembolism, surgical safety checklists, and the distribution of antibiotics within an hour of diagnosis, with compliance rates in the high 90s percentage range, Al Kuwari said.
“We’ve also seen significant improvements in our PICU ward at Women’s Hospital as a direct result of our quality improvement programmes, as well as many other patient safety initiatives across the HMC system. Not only does the ME Forum allow us to showcase these successful programmes, it also gives us an opportunity to learn and collaborate on new techniques and methodologies being employed globally,” she added.
The three-day conference is being organised by HMC, the largest public sector healthcare provider in Qatar, in collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), a leading non-profit healthcare quality improvement organisation based in the United States.
Maureen Bisognano, the IHI president and CEO, gave a keynote address to the attendees. She said collaborating with peers was one of the best ways to identify quality improvements, and that through platforms such as the ME Forum these improvements could be discussed openly, then adapted and refined for individual teams and organisations.
I’m also grateful to our partners at Hamad Medical Corporation. They continue to model the commitment and leadership that health systems anywhere need to thrive. In convening gatherings like this Forum, they are helping to spread innovations and proven methods throughout the region,” Bisognano said.
The ME Forum will feature six keynote addresses and 33 workshops.THE PENINSULA
