Post by Peter Brennan OBE, MB BS, MD, PhD, FRCS (Eng, Irel, Glasg, Edin)

Prepared for practice? A National Cross-Sectional Survey of Patient Safety, Human Factors, and Medico-legal Training in UK Medical Students and Resident Doctors We've just had the above study (which had over 1200 responses) accepted for publication. It was led by a fantastic team of medical students and resident doctors with a Professor of Law and me as senior authors. We found that despite frequently encountering patient safety-related human factors (HF) including tiredness, hierarchal barriers to speaking up, time pressures & other issues, UK Medical Students & Resident Doctors are only moderately prepared and supported to address them. Most respondents lacked clear institutional guidance on the legal implications of error, and nearly 50% did not know where to seek support. In a healthcare environment with complex techniques and equipment, working with unfamiliar teams and doing shifts that can impact on sleep and well being, the importance of human factors recognition and training cannot be underestimated. It is so important to constantly strive to improve patient safety and reduce the incidence of preventable medical error. Various things can also be done to improve morale and team working. Will share a link to this study when it is published. Umar Rehman BMBS, BSc, MSc, MClinEd (Dist),MRCS MAcadMEd, FRSPH, Mohammad Sarwar, Luke Mattey BSc (Hons), AFHEA, Amel Alghrani, Anna Chiara Corriero, Dr Ricky Ellis MBChB PhD DPM BSc MRCS MFPM, Naveen Cavale FRCS(Plast)