On October 26, 2023, two members of WiHelP were elected to leadership positions in an EU-COST Action. EU-COST-Actions are research networks funded by the EU, in which researchers from the pan-European area jointly research relevant topics of science and technology and develop solution strategies. The EU-COST-Action CA22152 "BETTERCARE" deals with the increasingly important topic of care in the home setting and possible mistakes that family caregivers can make and the associated effects on non-professional caregivers. These effects can ultimately negatively affect family members in need of care. With current demographic trends, this is an issue that will affect an increasing number of people across Europe. The focus of this European research action is to support non-professional caregivers, which can make a major contribution to patient safety and should enable those in need of care to remain in their home environment for as long as possible. Reinhard Strametz (Head of WiHelP) has been elected Vice-Chair and Victoria Klemm (Coordinator of WiHelP) has been elected Coordinator of the Training Schools. Thus, Victoria Klemm is not only the first female, but also the first young researcher at RheinMain UAS to hold a leading position in an EU-COST-Action. For Reinhard Strametz, this is the second EU-COST Action he is leading as Vice-Chair and a way to consolidate his work in the ERNST consortium (European Researchers' Network Working on Second Victims).

WiHelP welcomes this initiative and congratulates on this success!

From August 28th to 30th 2023, the most important congress on quality of care and patient safety in health care, organized by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), took place in Seoul.

Hannah Rösner and Victoria Klemm were able to present two projects of the WiHelP: Safe@KCH, a project between the WiHelP and the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe, Malawi, was established within the framework of the funding programme Clinic Partnerships of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Else-Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation (EKFS), implemented by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The project was able to bring about some positive changes for patient safety at KCH, for example through the sustainable procurement of patient identification bracelets in Malawi. These and other positive developments were presented at ISQua 2023 together with two delegates from Malawi.

Also presented were the results of the SeViD project so far, which brings new insights into the Second Victim Phenomenon (SVP) in Germany with its first national cross-sectional studies.

We are pleased to have successfully presented two projects in Seoul.

Hannah Rösner and Victoria Klemm at the EHMA conference
From June 04th to 07th 2023 the conference of the European Health Management Association (EHMA) took place in Rome. Around the topic of sustainable management, new research results were presented there in the context of workshops, abstract sessions or key note lectures followed by a discussion round.

Hannah Rösner and Victoria Klemm were on site as members of WiHelP to participate in the exciting offers on the one hand and to present their own results on the other hand. The topic of their presentation was the Second Victim Phenomenon in Germany, where they summarized the previous results of Prof. Reinhard Strametz' SeViD studies.

Dissemination of results is an important step to be able to implement measures against the Second Victim Phenomenon, which is why the participation in this conference was a good contribution to this.

The WiHelP congratulates them on their successful presentation!

On May 16, 2023, Victoria Klemm, the institute coordinator, was awarded the prize of the "Betriebswirtschaftliche Gesellschaft Wiesbaden" (Economic Association Wiesbaden, BGW) for outstanding academic achievements. The laudation for Victoria Klemm was held by Prof. Reinhard Strametz. The institute directors Prof. Reinhard Strametz and Prof. Silke Arnegger congratulate her warmly on this achievement. Click here for the official press release of RheinMain University.

Plusminus reported on 10.05.2023 about the dramatic situation of the workload of young physicians in German hospitals. The working hours are so high that a large proportion of those affected can only keep themselves fit for work with the help of medication, and more than half report burnout symptoms in surveys. As an expert in patient safety, Prof. Dr. Strametz was interviewed on this subject by WDR in Cologne. The video report is available in the media library under the following link.

On May 11th, 2023 the Austrian Platform Patient Safety and the association Second Victim invited to the Action Day Second Victim in the historic van Swieten Hall of the Medical University of Vienna to draw attention to this important topic as well as possible solutions and best practice examples. WiHelP was also represented by Prof. Reinhard Strametz, the director of the institute, and the two research assistants and members Hannah Rösner and Victoria Klemm. While Prof. Strametz informed with his introductory lecture about the basic problems of the Second Victim phenomenon, Hannah Rösner and Victoria Klemm were able to present the first results of the SeViD-A1 study among Austrian pediatricians, which was conducted in cooperation with the Second Victim Association and the Austrian Society for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The "Collegial Help" (KoHi) project of Elisabeth Krommer was also reported on, a best practice example of how Second Victims can be systematically supported. WiHelP is not uninvolved here either, in that the scientific evaluation of the project was carried out in Wiesbaden.

The event was rounded off by an exciting panel discussion with representatives of the various interest groups in the health care sector, in which different perspectives and possible solutions were clarified. What is clear is that in order to deal with this important health care problem, joint efforts and a lot of public relations work are needed to create sufficient awareness. The Second Victim Action Day in Vienna was a successful start to this.

f.l.t.r.: Hannah Rösner, Victoria Klemm, Prof. Reinhard Strametz, Dr. Eva Potura

The European Researchers' Network Working on Second Victims, established in 2020 as EU COST Action 19113, met on 09.05.2023 at the EU COST building in Brussels to drive further actions at European level aiming at improving mental safety of health professionals across Europe, following the adoption of the world's first definition of second victim. Best practice approaches from other high-risk sectors such as aviation, law enforcement or rail transport were also analyzed. The initiative, led by Prof. Dr. José Mira from Spain and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Strametz from WiHelP, has now been joined by researchers from 29 EU countries and 38 countries worldwide.

On 27 and 28.04.2023, the second meeting of the German-speaking Network for Patient Safety Research (DNPF) took place at the Frankfurt House of Logistics and Mobility (HOLM). Prof. Reinhard Strametz, as a founding member of the DNPF and institute director of WiHelP, invited various patient safety researchers to Frankfurt. The meeting was dedicated to the work of the Frankfurt poet Goethe "Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Poetry and Truth): How can scientific findings be better implemented in practice?

After a short round of introductions and a summary of the events of the past year, the participants of the network meeting entered directly into a lively discussion about why there is still a lack of implementation of scientific findings. Constructive, solution-oriented approaches were developed on how the implementation could be improved.

There were also several exciting presentations, which introduced research topics of individual participants and offered an exciting exchange.

Prof. Reinhard Strametz summarized the network meeting appropriately: "What we hoped for was a constructive exchange across institutions, disciplines and professions - and we succeeded".

In addition to Prof. Reinhard Strametz, Hannah Rösner, Eva Neckov and Victoria Klemm were also involved in this network meeting as members of WiHelP. WiHelP is pleased to have hosted this important network meeting.

The director of the Wiesbaden Institute for Healthcare Economics and Patient Safety (WiHelP) completed his habilitation in anesthesiology yesterday on the topic of "Employee Safety in Clinical Acute Medicine with Special Appreciation Employee Safety in Clinical Acute Medicine with Special Appreciation of the Second Victim Phenomenon" and the associated teaching qualification for the field at the Department of Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt. The research work submitted for the cumulative habilitation dealt with research into the second victim phenomenon by creating and validating suitable measuring instruments and empirically investigating the prevalence, symptomatology and course of this phenomenon in German-speaking countries. In this context, worldwide first surveys on the awareness of the term per se were conducted and certain risk factors and barriers to implementation were identified together with researchers from leading health care institutions in Germany and Austria. This work will enable evidence-based and needs-based resilience building services for health professionals, who have been exposed to severe stresses not only since the COVID19 pandemic. The WiHelP congratulates Prof. Dr. med. habil. Reinhard Strametz for this academic honor!