Well Met Welcomes Patient Care Conference to Cloth Hall Court

Where would you find a comedy writer, a senior editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and a voice and safety healthcare specialist sharing the same stage? At the up-and-coming two-day ‘Improving Patient Safety’ conference in Cloth Hall Court, Leeds, hosted by Well Met, the conferencing arm of Leeds Beckett University.

Improving Patient Safety: New horizons, new perspectives takes place on 15th -16th October 2019 and will be a high energy, forward looking conference aimed at sharing knowledge and creating a new vision for patient safety research and practice. Comprising of over 25 interactive workshops/breakout sessions, it will be interspersed with innovative, inspiring keynote speakers representing the patient voice, academics, policy makers and NHS practitioners and clinicians who are interested in quality and safety.

The conference has been organised in association with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (a collaboration between the University of Leeds and Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust) and the Improvement Academy, based on the Bradford Royal Infirmary campus in the Bradford Institute for Health Research. Organisers anticipate over 275 academic researchers, healthcare professionals, managers and policy makers will attend the event to share knowledge and create a new vision for patient safety research and practice.

Rebecca Lawton (PhD), Director, NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, said: “We have a wide range of speakers over the two-day conference. They range from from Adam Kay – who wrote a bestselling book called ‘This is Going to Hurt’ about his experiences of being a junior doctor, and who is now a writer (Mrs Brown’s Boys, Mitchell and Webb) and comedian – to leading academics and clinicians, who are all specialists in their chosen field. Essentially, our audience will be exposed to the full gamut of research, engagement and best practice in every area of patient care from mental health and wellbeing to caring for patients with complex medical needs.

“We chose to run the event with Well Met’s Cloth Hall Court venue because we wanted to run the event in Yorkshire, and it is is a great city centre venue with fantastic transport links. We hope that this will encourage attendees to travel by public transport to the conference.”

Clare Vidler, conference manager at Well Met, said: “We are finding that more of our clients are choosing to hold their events with us because of the convenient city centre location. It is important to us as an organisation, and indeed to our customers, that their conferencing and events are conducted in a sustainable manner.

“We’ve introduced a number of products and processes such as a completely paperless booking system. Our chefs at Cloth Hall Court have expanded their range to vegan cuisine in response to client’ requests and we have installed mineral-quality water dispensers, removing the need for single-use plastic water bottles. As a team, we are proactively looking at ways to consistently improve our sustainable conference offering.”