Literature Review On Safety Culture

Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency

Communicating and reporting are the first steps to change and improving our Safety Culture. Let’s keep moving the needle of Safety awareness in the right direction.

A culture of Safety has been proposed as an effective safety and essential core mechanism appropriate patient care. It is involved in effective teamwork, reduced side effects, as well as continuous learning, behavior based safety reporting errors. A number of research reports have established the connection between culture and safety management practices, such as errors. Display and side effects of the study and reduce mortality, including other patient safety culture has found associations between patient outcomes (Weaver, Dy, Lubomski, 2011). The number of tools can be used to assess the health safety culture within the organization. The most widely used in medical research and patient safety culture assessment developed by the Agency for

As the safety field has evolved, there is a growing recognition of the role that organizational leadership plays in prioritizing safety, through actions such as establishing a culture of safety. It has been suggested that leadership is defined as one of the most significant facilitators for establishing and promoting a culture of safety. 1 Research and practice from the Center for Creative Leadership suggests that collective leadership is more effective in creating direction, alignment and commitment, particularly in organizations that face challenges of uncertainty and complexity.2 Moreover, Hospital managers should develop and apply appropriate policies and strategies to reduce occupational stress turnover intention and consequently improve patient safety.3 However, without understanding the culture within an organization, it is difficult to improve stems and ensure that robust quality and patient safety processes are implemented effectively.

Over one million patients are injured each year as a result of errors with their medical care, and currently the frequency of serious injuries and even death secondary to medical errors is strikingly high (Satcher, Pamies, & Woelfl, 2011). These observations have led to an increase in public attention, which has catalyzed research devoted to patient safety. While there have been several studies in the United States that have pointed out hospital deaths stemming from adverse effects, which are defined as an injury caused by the medical management rather than underlying disease, there is also indirect evidence pointed to ethnic differences playing a role in patient safety. The incidence of patient safety events in hospitals occur more often in

The culture of patient safety is a multifaceted and multivariate variable in health care systems management that is often misapprehended. A definition that is used for a culture of safety speaks to a summary of organizational values views, capabilities, and thoughts that define how organizations respond to health and safety issues in organization (Sammer, Lykens, Singh, Mains, & Lackan, 2010). My experience in patient safety working at the Mandeville Regional Hospital in Jamaica as a medical doctor has been an important one. I have observed many instances where the hospital has taken precautions to safeguard the health and well-being of patients and I have also observed other instances where the safety of patients have been put at risk due

Figure 1 - Descriptions of the different types of safety culture ...................................11 Figure 2 -Safety Culture...............................................................................................15 Figure 3 - Safety Management System (SMS) Diagram .............................................17

Achieving an atmosphere of a safety-culture can be predicated upon one specific action or of a blending of several actions; further, these actions may also include multi-level changes. Devising this culture in health care is considered a core component in a list of multiple

For such a culture to flourish, nurse practitioners must know that organizational leaders will focus on solution versus assigning blame. Effective leaders use these opportunities to repair the systems that guide nurse activities. The Joint Commission suggests that organizations that follow these guidelines create a safety culture of continuous learning and improvement.

At the beginning of the paperback, Norton introduces a series thoughtful questions; “How would you define the term Safety? (Norton, 2009, p. 10) When it comes to safety, if it is not your job, then whose it? Who is responsible to ensure that the rules are followed? Better yet, who is responsible to ensure the rules are even established?” (Norton, 2009, p. 8) He goes on to enlighten that Safety and Health in the workplace is not about palpable objects or bottom lines on the balance sheet. Safety is a culture that needs to be developed and proactively maintained on a daily bases so that the people working for the institute are able to be safe from loss or injury. The principal attitude of the organization will undoubtedly triumph when determining whether an organization will cultivate a safe work environment or not. The first key point made is that Management, Leadership, and Employee involvement are all unconditionally essential for

Safety culture has taken on many varieties of definitions since the term first appeared in 1986 but a version I particularly identify with is as follows: “A set of values, perceptions, attitudes and patterns of behavior with regard to safety shared by members of the organization; as well as a set of policies, practices and procedures relating to the reduction of employee’s exposure to occupational risks, implemented at every level of the organization, and reflecting a high level of concern and commitment to the prevention of accidents and illnesses.” (Fernandez-Muniz et al., 2007, p. 628)

First of all, definitions of safety culture have been born primarily from the more basic concept of organizational culture (Weigmann et al., 2004). This presents a workable framework in which to define safety culture because of the division into two rather large categories: the organizational psychology and the socio-anthropological psychology angles (Weigmann et al., 2004). The organizational culture category entails more traditional and analytical methods than does the socio-anthropological one. Specifically, this perspective presupposes that organizational culture can be broken down into smaller units that are empirically more measurable and manipulated (Shein, 1991) cited from (Weigmann et al., 2004). It would seem then that organizational culture would be more useful to the researchers ' purposes than the socio-anthropological approach. This is not to minimize the later approach; rather, it allows for comprehension of each approach more clearly when studied together.

The Cambridge dictionary defines a safety culture as “the way that a company or organization thinks about, plans for, and manages the safety of it employees and customers, especially when their safety is considered to be one of the most important things”. According to OSAH.gov a safety culture has the “single greatest impact on incident reduction of any process.” There are many indicators to a successful safety culture within an organization such as, Management/ Leadership commitment; Communications, Employee involvement; Hazard Assessments and a Behavior Based Safety Program are keys to success.

Safety culture has been described as the product of the values, attitude and behaviors of employees and employers in connection with workplace Safety. Since Human Resource Management and its related practices and policies attempt to influence and capture employee attitudes and values, ‘Safety Culture’ fits well with the orientation of this text. As such, ‘ Safety culture’ is an expression and product of management’s and employees attitude and values notwithstanding a range of concerns regarding the validity of the construct. NOPSEMA recommends the adoption of a common definition and model of safety culture across the industry, as a means of improving the rigour of safety culture improvement strategies and increasing their likelihood of success.

A reporting culture is one that flows down from management as well as up from employees. Continual improvement is necessary for any company to succeed. Lessons learned that are communicated to employees and incorporated into safety policies and plans ensure continued improvement. To gain a complete understanding of the safety and health of the work environment employees must be encouraged, supported, and rewarded for reporting hazards, near misses, incidents, and errors. (Radici, 2011) Through this encouragement a complete picture of the company’s safety culture can be identified and improved measures presented to employees.