Open Disclosure Week takes place on 2nd - 8th October 2023. The purpose of the week is to raise awareness of the importance of open disclosure for patients and service-users, their support persons and caregivers - all of whom have a crucial role to play in open disclosure and in improving patient safety generally.
This week is also an opportunity for services to highlight to staff their obligations in relation to open disclosure, are compliant with mandatory training requirements and, in particular, that they recognise the importance of providing the opportunities for patients and service-users to actively partner staff in the open disclosure and incident management process. We encourage all HSE staff to support this campaign and share this information widely in their service area.
The week takes its theme from this year’s WHO World Patient Safety Day -
"Engaging patients for patient safety – elevate the voice of patients"
The aim of this year’s World Patient Safety Day is to raise awareness of evidence that shows that when patients are treated as partners in their care, significant gains are made in patient safety, patient satisfaction and health outcomes. For more information World Patient Safety Day visit: World Patient Safety Day Information and Resources
Who is involved?
The National Open Disclosure staff, in the HSE’s Quality and Patient Safety Incident Management team, are planning the Themed Week and delivering promotional activities for all audiences. The team is also working to support open disclosure leads across HSE and HSE-funded services, who will facilitate activities locally. These activities will aim to continue to build on and raise the awareness of the importance of open disclosure for everyone who works in and engages with our health service.
The National Open Disclosure staff will be supporting these activities through the provision of a range of resources and promotional materials and attending events in various health and social care services across the country. The information pack below offers a variety of promotional items that can be easily adapted for individual services, to help staff to promote open disclosure in their various activities during this week.
Invitation to participate
You may have already made plans to celebrate the week or you may just be getting started. Last year, many services around the country hosted promotional stands and engagement activities, training events and competitions. If you have not already thought about how you might get your service involved, we would like to invite you to join in with the promotion and support of this important message.
How can you get involved?
There are lots of ways to get involved and we want to share positive stories and learning from across the country.
Communications Toolkit
We have developed a Communications Toolkit and a list of useful resources to support you to deliver engagement activities to recognise and celebrate the Open Disclosure Week.
Making open disclosure training accessible
The week is an opportunity for services to highlight to staff their obligations in relation to open disclosure and are compliant with mandatory training requirements.
To that end, some services will be making open disclosure training accessible to all members of staff, especially those without access to computers, by opening designated training suites, set-up to facilitate on-site training. They might be hosting face-to-face training events or promoting training events that they have scheduled throughout the year.
Making open disclosure resources accessible
The week is also an opportunity to make staff and the public aware of the resources available. These resources are available on our website and some services will share copies of them, or QR code links to them. These resources will be shared at promotional stands in accessible spaces on-site, in services. The National Open Disclosure Team supports these activities with a newsletter that features materials that staff can print for promotional stands which can be used to provide open disclosure updates for staff in team meetings or at team handovers.
If you’d like more information about these engagement activities or materials contact the National Open Disclosure Team (opendisclosure.office@hse.ie).
Social media
If you are using X/Twitter or LinkedIn to promote your activities tag us @NationalQPS on Twitter and HSE National QPS Directorate on LinkedIn so we can promote, celebrate and share your work promoting open disclosure within your service. Also we would be grateful if you could use the hashtag #OpenDisclosureWeek2023.
The National Open Disclosure Team will also be sharing promotional videos on social media featuring various people sharing their messages of support for open disclosure.