Presented September 10, 2026 at the 2026 APSF Stoelting Conference on “SOS!: Signals of Safety… Safely across the Patient’s Perioperative Journey”
ABOUT THE SPEAKER(S)
Helen Higham, MBChB, FRCA, DPhil, SFHEA
Helen is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Associate Dean for Simulation and Patient Safety at NHSE-Thames Valley. She is the first woman to be awarded the Royal College of Anaesthetists’ Frederic Hewitt Lectureship and was also awarded the Asmund Laerdal Memorial Lecture in June 2026 in recognition of her work in patient safety teaching and research.
She is the Director of OxSTaR, the University of Oxford’s simulation and patient safety research centre, (www.oxstar.ox.ac.uk). Helen has led and supported many safety incident investigations in the NHS and has delivered national training programmes in systems-based incident investigation. She was a founding executive member and a past president of the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare in the UK and provides expert input for national committees in patient safety and human factors training and the national simulation faculty programme. She currently leads the Human Factors module on the Masters in Surgical Science and Practice in the University of Oxford.
Her research interests include healthcare systems safety and simulation-based education in healthcare with current projects focused on system-based approaches to safety in primary care, AI interventions to improve safety in healthcare, human factors in low to middle income healthcare settings and the use of virtual reality to train healthcare professionals.
Outside work she is a keen baker and a “fair weather” diver.
