Post by QiMET International

Leadership as Practice (L-A-P): An Innovative Patient Safety Leadership Approach to Improving Hand Hygiene in an Emergency Department Congratulations to Dr Ashish Karn for delivering pioneering frontline research in Nepal translating Leadership as Practice (L-A-P) into measurable patient safety improvement. The challenge remains stark: • Healthcare-associated infections affect ~7–10% of hospitalised patients globally, higher in resource-constrained settings • Up to 50% are preventable with effective infection prevention What this study demonstrates is the shift systems need: Rather than top-down compliance, L-A-P grounded in Joseph Raelin’s work positions leadership as something that happens in practice, between people, in real time. In this model: • Leadership is shared, not hierarchical • Behaviour is shaped through peer influence and interaction • Accountability becomes collective, not individual The outcome: 👉 Sustained improvement in hand hygiene compliance 👉 Staff ownership of infection prevention as part of their role 👉 Culture change achieved without additional resource burden Presented as a published paper and poster at RCEM Conference 2026, this work is a clear example of how embedding leadership into daily clinical practice delivers real patient safety gains. #RCEM2026 #RCEMConference #EmergencyMedicine #PatientSafety #InfectionPrevention #QualityImprovement #ClinicalLeadership #GlobalHealth Prakash subedi Remig Wrazen Lisa Fox dayaram lamsal dr Harsha Indrasena Raelin, J.A. (2020) Toward a methodology for studying leadership-as-practice, Leadership, 16(4), pp. 480–508. World Health Organization (2022) Global report on infection prevention and control. Geneva: WHO. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023) Healthcare-associated infections progress report.