Dr Charles Shaw passed away on December 12, 2023, in Houghton, UK, after a long and courageous fight against cancer; he was surrounded by his beloved wife, Carolyn, and family. Dr Shaw made an enormous contribution to ISQua’s creation, direction, and development over many years. He was one of the founders who met in Udine, Italy, in 1985 to create ISQua; he served 12 years on the Board of ISQua and held positions of Treasurer and President (1995-97). As President, he hired the first full-time CEO of ISQua. In 1999 he was awarded Life Membership of ISQua. Later, and until the end of his life, he was recognized by his peers as an expert member of ISQua’s Academy of Quality and Safety in Health Care (IAQS). Perhaps Dr Shaw’s most visible and lasting contribution to ISQua was his promotion of a role for ISQua in international accreditation in health care.
Trained as a physician in the UK (University of London), he spent the beginning six years of his career as medical director of the King Edward VII Hospital in Bermuda, an enjoyable but also highly formative experience for his later career. This experience exposed him to many new ideas, like hospital standards, medical bylaws, credentialing, and clinical audit. The hospital was the first international healthcare organisation to be accredited by the Canadian Council on Hospital Accreditation (CCHA). Dr Shaw became a surveyor with CCHA in 1976. His continuing interest in standards led him to seek and receive a PhD in 1986 from the University of Wales (Standards in the UK National Health Service).
Over the next years, he committed to spreading and supporting these ideas in England, Europe and the world through writing (about medical audit), developing research (for community hospitals), training in public health, and publishing a book (“Good practice in small hospitals”) which became the first standards for a UK accreditation programme. He developed quality credentials for the hospital general manager (NHS). He was a national quality assurance project manager for the King’s Fund Centre in the UK and was one of the founders of the Hospital Accreditation Programme in the UK (now CHKS). He advised the Department of Health on how to deliver Margaret Thatcher’s promise of mandatory medical audit and health service research (CASPE).
While continuing to establish the role of standards and accreditation for local health care, he also set in motion their development internationally within ISQua. Dr Shaw organized a meeting of emerging national accreditation organisations in Treviso, Italy, prior to ISQua’s annual conference in Venice (1994) as a forum to discuss the role of international standards and accreditation. It was agreed that the group would meet again the following year (Newfoundland Canada, 1995) to plan future actions in which ISQua might engage. The end result of these initiatives by Dr Shaw has led to what today is ISQua EEA’s programme of standards and accreditation for evaluating bodies.
Later in his career, Dr Shaw acted as a free-lance advisor for WHO, the World Bank and the European Commission on external evaluation, clinical governance and national quality policy and systems, supporting the development of quality programs and accreditation schemes in more than 40 countries and offering the opportunity of visiting fascinating places in every continent except the Antarctic. Dr Shaw was a remarkable, common-sense person and shared his experience to avoid being too fast or too ambitious when planning quality activities. He stressed the need for policy and for the involvement of leaders to be engaged in the creation of policy to ensure it could be implemented. He used to say: “My terms of reference are usually about technical interventions, such as performance indicators, clinical audit or hospital standards, at the provider level. But quality systems at this level have little impact without corresponding policies, leadership, coordination and change at the regional and national level.” Dr Shaw was also part of European-wide research projects and initiatives, such as the MARQUiS project, with more than 380 hospitals in Europe involved, and the SANITAS project to develop common standards for hospital safety in Europe.
Charles Shaw was not a person with conventional thinking and frequently asked questions that forced us to reflect in a wider direction, questioning the focus of congresses only in ”finished scientific studies” and asking for innovative ideas to be shared from the beginning. He also advocated for including healthcare regulators to exchange learning on standards, assessments and change management and enhancing the value of ideas, and for the participation of low- and middle-income countries in all quality forums.
Dr Shaw was an excellent companion, colleague and friend who enjoyed eating and chatting and always had a smile for everybody. In his last years, he enjoyed renovating his new home in the countryside. He fought with enormous courage, dignity, and determination to live the last years of his life in the best way possible and also recognized the excellent organization and care of his GP and hospice teams. We have lost a key quality leader and a very good friend. Rest in peace.
A Service of Thanksgiving will be held on Thursday 18th January 2024 at 2.30 p.m. at St Nicholas Church, Houghton. Family flowers only but donations, if desired, in aid of St Wilfrid's Hospice - https://www.justgiving.com/page/charlesshaw.
We would like to thank Elma Heidemann and Rosa Sunol for preparing this obituary. Our deepest sympathies go to his family and friends.
