It's world Patient Safety Day and every healthcare provider has the opportunity and responsibility to build a #patientsafetyculture.  This has been our mission at OneVault and here we share a few ideas you can focus on and implement to improve your patient safety culture today.

Good Systems of Governance

First and foremost, good systems of governance are THE foundation for driving a culture of patient safety. Having accessible procedures, guidelines and training to support staff. The ability to easily collect, analyse and respond to incidents, feedback and clinical data. Undertaking practice improvement projects based on best practice methodology and driven by your own clinical data, and partnering and communicating with consumers and staff are all foundation elements every organisation should prioritise.

Leadership is Everything

Open and transparent leadership at every level of the organisation is crucial. If your staff feel the leadership team are open and transparent in their management they will feel safe to raise patient safety concerns. Have a Clinical Governance Framework that talks to your patient safety commitment, and don't hide it away in a document somewhere. Share your patient safety commitment openly so everyone who connects with your organisation gets the clear message that patient safety first aren't just a buzz words.

Encourage Reporting of Incidents and Near Miss Events

Reporting incidents and near miss events is critical to improving patient safety. Each report presents the opportunity to analyse the incident and determine the root cause and contributing factors and the opportunity to make practice improvements that could prevent future patient incidents and harm.

Sharing the lessons Learned Prevents Future Incidents

There’s little point in analysing incidents if you aren’t communicating the lessons learned. Wherever possible, share what happened and lessons learned far and wide. This is an integral step in delivering safer care and preventing future incidents. #Tip – add lessons learned to you’re the agenda of staff meetings so you never miss an opportunity. 

Make Feedback Easy and Treasure it

Feedback around your service will provide valuable insight and the opportunity to improve. Feedback includes positive and negative experience and opinions as well as suggestions. You'll learn straight from the source, what you do well and what you could do to improve. Accept it gratefully, treasure it and most importantly, act on it!

Improving From the Bottom Up

Your frontline clinical staff are the best patient safety thermometer around. Not only can they express first hand what your current patient safety culture is like on the frontlines, but they usually have the most fruitful ideas for improving it. Listen wisely.

 Learn From Others Mistakes

Each year there are many reviews on healthcare system failures right across the globe. Reviewing and implementing the recommendations from these go a long way to preventing the same problems being repeated. The Mid Staffordshire Report is a great starting point.