Achieving and Maintaining Safety in Healthcare Requires Unwavering Institutional and Individual Commitments

In 2000, “To Err Is Human” brought to light the fact that the estimated number of people dying from medical errors occurring in hospitals exceeded those that die from motor vehicle accidents (MVAs), breast cancer, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) - three causes receiving far more public attention. The report prompted the gradual adoption of safety processes developed in the nuclear and aviation industries. However, sophisticated engineering solutions to operations are not enough. High and low mortality hospitals have similar processes and procedures, but low-mortality hospitals are more proficient at recognizing and managing serious complications as they unfold. This ability to rescue a deteriorating situation (resilience) reflects a healthier safety culture. Organizations move within the safety space in the direction of either more or less resilience depending on the fluctuation of their safety culture. Improving resilience requires transforming learned safety practices into a “habit” in conjunction with accepting accountability. Personal accountability means commitment to safe practices along with effective and transparent reporting of near misses/close calls and adverse events (AEs). Institutional accountability means putting safety first by ensuring the availability of appropriate resources, role leadership modeling, and effective management of sentinel events (SEs) to reduce harm occurrence and re-occurrence. This requires a more robust root cause analysis (RCA) process to guarantee that action plans produce strong and effective corrective measures. Synergistic coaching interventions include instilling the awareness that failure can and will happen, mapping team talents, and assessing gaps. These interventions will optimize group expertise, reaffirming the concept of institutional and personal accountability. The unending performance of drills will sustain the group resilience under both expected and unexpected conditions. Given the strong correlation between practice environment and outcomes, sustained improvement of the safety climate will produce more robust safety behaviors and ultimately better outcomes.