Dr. Samantha Machen

Sam completed an undergraduate Masters of Nursing Science (MNurSci) degree at the University of Nottingham before working as a qualified intensive care nurse at the East Midlands Major Trauma Centre in Nottingham. She later completed a MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science in International Health Policy and worked in the pharmaceutical industry in health economics and patient safety.

She was awarded a Health Foundation Improvement Science fellowship to complete her PhD at University College London. Sam’s PhD focused on safety science and used ethnographic methodology to understand systems of work for medication safety and explored how professional and organisational culture affects the governance of safety. Sam has presented her research across the U.K. and worldwide and is a contributor to multiple peer-reviewed journals on patient safety, culture, and research methods.

Sam has an honorary research status with UCL and leads the teaching on their Patient Safety MSc course for MSc students focusing on quality and patient safety. She currently works for University Hospitals Sussex as Deputy Director for Patient Safety and Learning – working exclusively as the Head of Patient Safety Incident Response to translate and lead PSIRF across six different hospital sites across the Sussex coast.

Most recently, her research focus in safety has been focused on how organisations can thematic review incidents using systems-based classification codes to ensure adequate system – not person – focussed learning. This template was synthesised by Sam and has been applied to many different areas of the NHS successfully.