The recent APAC Forum, the Asia Pacific region’s conference on quality improvement and innovation in healthcare, held on 25-27 September 2013 in Auckland and attended by more than 1,040 people from 23 countries, was a great success.

Over the course of three days speakers included some of the best minds in health and quality improvement (locally, nationally and internationally) such as Maureen Bisognano, President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI); Dan Heath, American bestselling author; Glenn Colquhoun, doctor, poet and children’s writer and Hon Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia.

Successes and learnings were shared and new ideas were showcased. Topics discussed included advances in patient safety, building capacity, mindfulness-based stress reduction, how to build change, honesty and transparency in the workplace and identifying and creating leaders.

As well as taking part in the conference and presenting a posterboard, First, Do No Harm teamed up with Open for better care personnel to host a patient safety booth, providing information from a regional and national perspective: the two patient safety campaigns are working together to provide safer care. Visitors to the booth were interested in the successful Northern Region’s yellow envelope initiative, the recently completed change packages on reducing harm from falls and pressure injuries, and the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) handy guides that were available.

An extensive range of resource materials from the conference can be found at: http://apac-forum.com/session-presentations-hand-outs/

Next year the forum will be held in Melbourne, Australia, from 2 – 4 September 2014.