White Paper

Patient Safety Culture: An Effective Approach for Continuous Improvement

Improving safety culture saves lives. For years, the healthcare industry has published toolkits, hosted forums, formed organizations, and issued alerts around the harm caused by poor cultures. Despite all of this attention, few organizations have been able to achieve meaningful improvement.

This white paper outlines a proven approach for improving patient safety culture.

• Leaders must initiate the engage – input cycle by establishing the framework for success: a clear operational structure, a detailed improvement process, and concrete desired outcomes.
• Safety culture cannot be addressed only by leaders. The transformation to a robust culture of safety requires the consistent engagement of frontline teams by their local leaders and senior leaders.
• Finally, since strong safety cultures require the flattening of hierarchy in matters of safety, senior leaders must develop direct ways of receiving input and participation from frontline staff.