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20 February 2017
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Press release: EQuiP Patient Safety Conference

Manpower shortage and stress on family doctors to be highlighted at major patient safety conference in Dublin

Dates: Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th March

Venue: Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin

Conference webpage: www.icgp.ie/equip

The impact of cutbacks and manpower shortages for family doctors will come under the spotlight at a wide-ranging conference on patient safety and general practice in Dublin in early March.

Speakers from across Europe and including Ireland will address the European conference on patient safety in general practice on 3 and 4 March in the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire, where general practitioners will hear from speakers on a wide range of topics including the impact of capacity issues and resources on general practice.

The theme of this Wonca EQuiP conference is "Improving Safety for Everybody in General Practice and its Interfaces," and it explores how practices can improve safety for their patients who interact with other primary care and secondary care services.

The Secretary of EQuiP, and conference organiser, Dr Andree Rochfort, said the conference is of huge importance to all general practitioners in Ireland. Dr Rochfort is Director of Quality Improvement with the ICGP.

"Work overload and the stress of meeting the daily demands of practice are a common part of many GPs' lives, with the inability to find locums, and the complexity and unpredictability of their work", said Dr Rochfort. "This conference will have open discussions on balancing patients' expectations of healthcare with its capacity to deliver, in a changing healthcare environment."

The two-day conference will discuss the safety issues that face Irish family doctors and their European counterparts, from electronic prescribing, safe care for patients with chronic disease and complex comorbidities, handling aggression at work and the safer management of test results and communications on behalf of patients. It will discuss how patients, and their communities, can be encouraged to be involved in patient safety, risk management in general practice and how primary care may reduce safety inequalities related to socio-economic status.

"This conference is a valuable and very relevant event for Irish family doctors, and brings a very significant range of experience and new knowledge to the subject of patient safety in general practice", said Dr Mark Murphy, ICGP Chair of Communications. "I encourage all doctors to attend and to take part in the open discussions and listen to the new research from our Irish and European speakers. It is of huge benefit to Irish family doctors that we are hosting this annual EQuiP conference. We can learn a lot from our colleagues about the issues around patient safety not just for us as doctors, but for our patients, our staff and our communities."

There will be speakers from many European countries including Greece, Switzerland, Scotland, Belgium, France, and Norway. This is a significant opportunity for general practitioners to learn and discuss a wide range of issues around safety in the changing general practice environment.

EQuiP is the European Society for Quality and Safety in General Practice, and is a network organisation of Wonca Europe. Dr Rochfort has been a member of the Executive Board since 2007 and Honorary Secretary since 2010.

The full programme for the EQuiP conference can be found at www.icgp.ie/equip.

Further details:

http://equip.woncaeurope.org/about

http://equip.woncaeurope.org/working-groups/patient-safety

Issued by:

Aileen O'Meara, ICGP Communications Consultant.
media@icgp.ie
01 5175311 / 087 2239830