Mike Durkin

Dr Mike Durkin was the NHS National Director of Patient Safety from 2012 to 2017 and is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London where he is the Senior Advisor on Patient Safety Policy and Leadership at the Institute of Global Health Innovation. He has held clinical, research and teaching appointments in cardiovascular anaesthesia and critical care in London, Bristol and Yale Universities. He started his 25 year medical management and leadership career as Executive Medical Director at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in 1993 culminating as the Medical Director of the NHS across the South of England supporting a population of 16M. He was the UK National Clinical Director for Venous Thrombo-Embolism and is an appointed Expert by ISQua. He led the National Patient Safety Programme for England developing the National Patient Safety Alerting System, the 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives across England and the Q Fellowship to build a community of 5000 quality improvers. He convened the Berwick Advisory Board in 2013 to advise on improving the safety of patients in England and in 2015 he was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health to Chair the Expert Advisory Group to advise on the establishment of the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. He led the establishment of Ministerial Inter-Governmental Summits on Patient Safety which have now been held in the UK (2016) and Germany (2017), and Japan (2018). He holds Honorary Degrees and Fellowships and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in 2017 for services to Patient Safety. He sits on national and international research, policy and patient safety Advisory Boards. In 2018 he was elected as one of the 35 inaugural members of the International Academy of Quality and Safety, and to the Board of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation.