Patient Safety Tips
Build a culture of safety.
Building a culture of safety takes effective leadership,
an open culture and implementation of high quality systems
of care. This culture becomes the foundation for reducing
errors and improving patient safety.
Patient safety can
flourish only when hospital leaders actively listen,
and when health care practitioners and
staff discuss patient safety issues.
To build such a safety culture from the
top-down, start with these steps.
- Create a rigorous method for detecting flaws, analyzing
problems and achieving meaningful results.
- Encourage everyone in the hospital to report safety information
in a thorough, timely fashion.
- Make sure there’s no possibility
of reprisals against those who make reports.
- When a safety report is submitted,
make meaningful changes in procedures. Let staff members
know the hospital’s
response to the report. Feedback will encourage others
to contribute to the process.
- Provide learning aids for hospital
workers, keeping them informed of safety issues and your
institution’s
progress against guidelines (such as those in this website).
- Conduct regular walks through your institution, including
all patient care areas, pharmacies and laboratories. Speak
to your front-line staff about safety issues. Learn their
concerns and their suggestions first hand. Make them part
of your safety team.
- Ask about adverse events or near
misses – and the
issues that may have led to these events, and ways to mitigate
them.
- Learn if medication reconciliation techniques can prevent
adverse drug events.
- Explore if a rapid response team can prevent avoidable
deaths.
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