Programme Director

NHS Education for Scotland

Professor Paul Bowie is a Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors specialist, safety scientist and medical educator with NHS Education for Scotland based in Glasgow, where he is Programme Director (Safety & Improvement) and Director of the Safety, Skills and Improvement Research Collaborative (SKIRC). He has worked in the National Health Service in Scotland for over 25 years in a range of quality and safety advisory roles.

He gained his doctorate in significant event analysis from the University of Glasgow in 2004 and has published over 110 papers on healthcare quality and safety in international peer-reviewed journals and co-edited a book on safety and improvement in primary care. Paul is also Honorary Professor and a PhD supervisor/examiner in the Institute of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow.  He is Honorary Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of General Practitioners, and a Registered Member of the UK Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

In his NHS role, he leads on the educational development and implementation of innovative research and evaluation approaches to improving the quality and safety of patient care and the wellbeing of the healthcare workforce, based on systems thinking and human-centred co-design principles and methods.  A key focus of this work is leading the development of a national plan for integration of Human Factors concepts and practices in priority areas of healthcare in Scotland.  He has specific research and education interests in primary care safety and improvement, safety culture, learning from events, systems thinking, barrier management, peer review of small-scale QI project activity, embedding fundamental Human Factors theory and methods in all levels of healthcare education, and exploring how Human Factors can add value to existing approaches to quality improvement and patient safety.

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