Hospital at Home and Safety Collaborative Workshop

Please describe the event you attended. 

On Thursday, July 17, 2025, I held a two and a half hour Microsoft Teams workshop, gratefully supported by the technical expertise of fellow ACRC PhD student, Deniz. This event brought together twenty individuals including academic researchers, NHS clinical and program leads, patient safety specialists, and importantly, Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) contributors who have lived experience of Hospital at Home (HaH) care. The main objective was to test and improve a draft patient-facing safety toolkit. This toolkit aims to help patients, caregivers, and staff have open and timely conversations about risk and responsibility when acute care moves into the home.

What drew you to attend this event?  

I organised this event to improve my facilitation skills, bring together people from various fields, and encourage collaboration in this area. After attending the NIHR Virtual Wards conference in Leeds in June, I had exciting talks with stakeholders from different backgrounds, including technology developers, safety researchers, and palliative care nurses. That experience highlighted how, as new care models grow quickly, collaborative teamwork across sectors is essential. This workshop was a clear step toward pursuing that shared vision. 

How was your experience attending the event? What were the highlights and key moments?  

Watching clinicians, PPI contributors, and researchers work on the same drafted toolkit showed how diverse expertise reveals blind spots. For example, participants noted that patients are often too unwell on day one to take in long checklists. We proposed a staged delivery of information, and how the staff and carers could be better involved to better flex to patients' cognitive load and recovery progress. Language matters here, and a PhD researcher questioned the how well placed ‘safety’ was here, suggesting a focus instead on ‘minimising risk’. This prompted a broader discussion about what safety means across different disciplines and healthcare services - what it may grant you access to, and what it might restrict. We also explored using simpler examples and reframing escalation routes so patients are absolutely clear about what support is available for them.

How was this event relevant to your research, interdisciplinarity and the ACRC Academy?  

The ACRC Academy supports solutions that cut across different sectors for ageing and community care. HaH represents that goal by extending beyond hospital barriers, combining social and clinical objectives, employing digital monitoring to help individuals safely recover in their home. By incorporating principles for patient safety into a co-designed toolkit, the workshop advanced my project on understanding how safety is put into practice, not just defined, in hybrid care models. More broadly, it demonstrated the Academy's interdisciplinary ethos, in which policy provides guidance, research offers evidence, and patients demonstrate what works in real life.

Any lessons learnt / best practices that you’d like to share 

The workshop revealed five practical lessons for creating a safer HaH experience that can be applied to future projects. First, using plain language and simple visuals made information easier to understand. Second, timing is crucial, providing guidance in small, well-paced segments will help patients/carers to absorb information when they were ready. Third, well-established channels are essential to ensure that everyone, especially those from underrepresented groups, can voice their concerns about their care. Fourth, pairing each piece of self-care guidance with an identified clinician shows that responsibility is shared, not just placed on patients. Finally, connecting discharge plans to local community resources can help extend safety beyond clinical recovery to include social wellbeing.

By continuously improving this toolkit, we aim to create a scalable, co-designed resource that identifies and mitigates risk and supports patients and carers. Hosting this workshop reaffirmed that these tools can only be built with input from the people they serve, and it made me keen to host more in the future! Please reach out if you’d like to explore the toolkit or share additional insights.