The Ombudsman’s Public Lecture 2020

Improving patient safety: using evidence and insight to prevent suicide in mental health care

Our Ombudsman’s Public Lecture takes place on 5 May in partnership with The Manchester Centre for Regulation, Governance and Public Law at the University of Manchester.

Guest speaker Professor Louis Appleby will share insights into how healthcare services can be made safer for people at risk of suicide. Professor Appleby will draw on twenty years of research to demonstrate:

the importance of connecting learning from ‘big data’ with the individual experiences of bereaved families
how this can be used to drive improvements in mental health patient safety.

He will also consider the value of creating a ‘learn not blame’ culture that uses learning from serious incidents and complaints to improve the quality of mental health services.

Professor Appleby’s lecture will be followed by a response from Rob Behrens CBE, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. This will include reflections on the themes we see in our casework, such as those highlighted in our Missed Opportunities report.

The lecture will be of interest to policy makers, commissioners, senior leaders and service providers working in the NHS and wider health services.

About our speaker

Professor Appleby is Director of Psychiatry at the University of Manchester and Director of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health.

He also leads the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England and the Centre for Mental Health and Safety, where he investigates suicide and self-harm at the largest research unit in this field internationally.

As the Government's former National Director for Mental Health, Professor Appleby led a national programme of reform in mental health care in England. He then became National Clinical Director for Health and Criminal Justice. From 2013-2019, he was a non-executive director of the Care Quality Commission.

The Ombudsman Public Lecture 2020 - postponed until further notice