Robert Galloway

Professor Robert Galloway MOStJ, MBBS, BSc, MFAEM,  MRCP, FRCEM, PGcMedED, MAcMedED, Emergency Medicine Consultant, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust & Honorary Clinical Professor, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Rob is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and dual trained in Intensive Care with his  medical interests  in improving patient outcomes through changing ‘systems of care’. This encompasses the  use of human factors and developing expertise in risk taking,  to novel approaches to patient pathways, to reforming how we treat our colleagues,  with new rostering systems which values our staff.

His impact on changing NHS practices resulted in him being made a member of the order of St John and named as a Top Ten NHS Wild Card Influencer by the Health Service Journal  - but since then he has had very little influence.

His passion is education, running human factors and patient safety courses inside and outside of  UHSussex NHS Trust  and leading for undergraduate A&E teaching at BSMS

He has had several roles outside of the NHS – being the medical director of the Brighton Marathon for ten years and  is the medical advisor to Brighton and Hove Albion FC.  He works in the media writing a column every two weeks in the health section of the Daily Mail and frequently speaks on TV and radio about health-related matters. He wrote a book, under a pseudo name, Dr Nick Edwards, about working in A&E which has sold over 500,000 copies “In stitches the highs and lows of life as an A&E Doctor”.

He used to have a social life, hobbies such as mountain walking and a personality. But he  is now happily married  with five kids and is more likely to be found watching Peppa Pig and being a taxi service,  than socialising or walking up a mountain. 

Reducing medical errors; learning from take outs and pubs and not just the pilots

His talk on human factors takes a different approach to the standard approach most view this subject.

Sadly  “human factors”  gets a bad press as many people think it is some politically correct, box ticking, woke nonsense taught to us by non medics who have never been in a hospital or seen a patient and so don’t understand the reality of what we do.

But the stark reality is that humans are not designed to manage complex medical issues and when put into these situations,  our human interactions, observations skills and cognitive decision making can be flawed. But with some tweaks to our ways of thinking and working, this can be changed to improve patient outcomes and staff satisfaction and wellbeing.

The session shows the importance of changes in practice from a clinicians' and patient’s perspective, gives some key tips staff can use to improve care and reduce error and ends with a discussion on how the cultural change can be embedded into organisations. 

The talk is part of an accredited human factors course that he runs for NHS and private organisations and for more information, he can be contacted at drrobgalloway@gmail.com