SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE 26TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ISQUA
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE 26TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR QUALITY IN HEALTH CARE(ISQUA)
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom. I would like to extend the traditional Irish welcome of Céad Míle Fáilte or one hundred thousand welcomes to you all to Ireland and, in particular Dublin, to this event, the 26th Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua). I understand that this is not the first time that ISQua has held a conference here – Dublin also had the privilege of hosting the event in 2000. I would like to thank your President, Professor Bruce Barraclough, who invited me here to speak to you today. I would also like to take the opportunity to extend a very warm welcome to the ISQua Secretariat who relocated from Melbourne to Dublin last year. Some of you who were here for the last ISQua conference in 2000 will have noticed many changes to our capital city in the intervening years but for all that it is a very modern, cosmopolitan city it is still a place of hospitality and full of historical and cultural attractions which I hope you will find time to enjoy. Meanwhile of course you have serious work to do as you discuss quality in health care, a subject that is your professional passion but which is also a particular passion of the public.
Henry Ford once said “quality means doing it right when no-one is looking”. Over the course of these three days in Dublin, you will all be looking at how we can embed that level of meticulous and scrupulous care into our healthcare systems and ensure that things are “done right” each and every time. You will discuss, review and debate the important issue of patient safety, and more particularly, ‘Designing for Quality’, the theme of this year’s conference. Most of us will be a patient at some time in our life, whether it is in a hospital as an in-patient or out-patient, a nursing home or a General Practitioner’s surgery. For the majority, we will receive a diagnosis and an effective treatment plan, we will recover in due course and resume our normal daily routines. But for some, things will end up differently which is why the World Health Organisation acknowledges that patient safety is now a priority for health systems around the world. The old maxim – first do no harm – comes to mind.
Health systems, procedures and facilities can and do ironically contain very real risks to patient safety, some of them avoidable, some which can be minimised and some of which are inevitable. There has been much talk recently about hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA and your work is crucial in identifying and addressing the risks in our systems and suggesting solutions to reduce, avoid or eliminate them.
In addition to actual risks, the perception of risk is also important. Albert Einstein once said “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Your work reminds us that a quality healthcare system is broader than ensuring the best scientific and medical treatment important though they are. It makes us focus on the entire healthcare environment and remind us how important the public’s experience and perceptions of our healthcare systems are. These things are directly related to their trust and confidence in healthcare staff, systems, procedures and facilities. Diminution of that trust and confidence, like diminution of quality care can have devastating downstream consequences. This is an area where we cannot afford to get it wrong and this is why the work you are doing this week in Dublin and throughout ISQua all year round is so welcome and important. For it helps inform and complements the work already in train here in Ireland to bring about a safer health and social services system which mainstreams quality at all levels and in all settings. I am sure our Minister for Health Mary Harney brought you up to date on the work of our Health Information and Quality Authority which was established in 2007 and our Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance which makes recommendations designed to ensure that quality and safety of care for patients is paramount throughout the healthcare system. The Commission’s report – ‘Building a Culture of Patient Safety’, the first report of its kind here, makes far reaching recommendations which when implemented will impact very positively on patients and their families.
Your deliberations here will also be of considerable value to us for you bring the best of international expertise to bear on problems many of us are currently facing – such as the prevention and curtailment of Pandemic H1N1 (“swine flu”) and the reduction of MRSA and other healthcare acquired infections. You bring to Dublin a wealth of information and expertise which you willingly share in order that the individual pieces of the jigsaw puzzle may be put into some kind of order from which we with your help can deduce the next steps we need to take to make patients and healthcare workers safe and keep them safe. All of us have a lot of questions but few of us have all the answers. Yet between us we have a much broader platform of ideas and experience enriched wisdom to draw on. There is an Irish saying “ní neart go chur le cheile”- we are strongest when we work together. I hope you feel that strength gather here and that you will leave Dublin full of renewed enthusiasm for this vital work of care, with new ideas and new networks of professional friendships which over the coming years will prove to be important conduits of information exchanges from which all our health services to patients will benefit. I am confident that your deliberations will help bring real improvements into the healthcare experiences of countless patients across the world. May you enjoy each other’s company, may ideas flow and may you have an enjoyable and memorable time in Dublin. Go n-eirí an t-ádh libh!