With so much coming out this week related to patient safety, I wanted to be sure to share a link to the Lucian Leape Institute report released on Monday, March 4th entitled Through the Eyes of the Workforce: Creating Joy, Meaning, and Safer Health Care. The report was a result of roundtable discussions with invited experts such as Rick Boothman, a leader in disclosure and transparency; Kathleen Sutcliffe, high reliability expert; Sandy Shea, policy director at SEIU Healthcare; and led by Paul O’Neill and Julianne Morath from Vanderbilt.
From the Executive Summary, 7 recommendations are made for creating an environment of safe care, driven by employees who feel valued and part of the solution for healthcare change. Here are those recommendations:
Strategy 1: Develop and embody shared core values of mutual respect and civility; transparency and truth telling; safety of all workers and patients; and alignment and accountability from the boardroom through the front lines.
Strategy 2: Adopt the explicit aim to eliminate harm to the workforce and to patients.
Strategy 3: Commit to creating a high-reliability organization (HRO) and demonstrate the discipline to achieve highly reliable performance. This will require creating a learning and improvement system and adopting evidence-based management skills for reliability.
Strategy 4: Create a learning and improvement system.
Strategy 5: Establish data capture, database, and performance metrics for accountability and improvement.
Strategy 6: Recognize and celebrate the work and accomplishments of the workforce, regularly and with high visibility.
Strategy 7: Support industry-wide research to design and conduct studies that will explore issues and conditions in health care that are harming our workforce and our patients.
Please forward to anyone you think may appreciate, and Happy Patient Safety Awareness Week!