Prevention is Better than Cure (PDF)

Ian Leistikow is a non-practicing physician. He was the coordinator of the patient safety program within the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, from 2003 to 2011. This program comprised for example the introduction of Root Cause Analysis (RCA), proactive risk analysis (HFMEA), research on handoffs, research on patient participation and a video game on patient safety (www.airmedicsky1.org). He has set up various patient safety related trainings, has published multiple articles about patient safety and is co-author on a book about RCA. In December 2011 he published his PhD thesis on how the Board of Directors can lead patient safety improvements. His thesis is condensed into an article which was published in BMJ in July 2011. In 2014 he published a Dutch book on learning from Sentinel Events, which was widely recognized in the Netherlands. Since April 2011 Ian works as senior inspector at the Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate. There his tasks include judging the quality of sentinel event analysis reports from hospitals and coordinating the Dutch national set of quality indicators for hospitals. Ian is member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare. He is also one of the initiators of GetUpGetBetter (www.getupgetbetter.com), a series of international healthcare quality competitions, that is currently being developed.