Safety culture definitions

Safety Culture:

The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the characteristics of the organization's health and safety management. Organizations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications based on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety, and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures. AHRQ defines a culture of safety as one in which healthcare professionals are held accountable for unprofessional conduct, yet not punished for human mistakes; errors are identified and mitigated before harm occurs; and systems are in place to enable staff to learn from errors and nearmisses and prevent recurrence. The leaders of organizations must set and, more importantly, demonstrate the behaviors and expectations essential to a safe and transparent culture.

• Patient Safety Culture: Patient safety refers to freedom from accidental or preventable injuries produced by medical care. Thus, practices or interventions that improve patient safety are those that reduce the occurrence of preventable adverse events.
• Workforce Safety: Healthcare workforce safety refers to freedom from both physical and psychological harm for all those who work with patients as well as those who oversee or provide non-clinical support for those who work with patients.
• Psychological Safety: Individuals' perceptions about the consequences of interpersonal risks in their work environment. These perceptions include taken-for-granted beliefs about acceptable interactions with co-workers, superiors, and subordinates, and how others will respond when one puts oneself on the line, such as by asking a question, seeking feedback, reporting a mistake, or proposing a new idea.
• Total Systems Safety: Safety that is systematic and uniformly applied (across the total process). A systems approach can help with the design and integration of people, processes, policies, and organizations to promote better health at lower cost.

Harm:

An impairment of structure or function of the body and/or any deleterious effect arising therefrom, including disease, injury, suffering, disability, and death.Harm may be physical, social, or psychological, and either temporary or permanent.

• Zero Harm: The total absence of physical and psychological injury to patients and the workforce.
• Adverse Event: Any injury caused by medical care. An undesirable clinical outcome that has resulted from some aspect of diagnosis or therapy, not an underlying disease process. Preventable adverse events are the subset that are caused by error.
• • Error: An act of commission (doing something wrong) or omission (failing to do the right thing) that leads to an undesirable outcome or significant potential for such an outcome.

Just Culture:

A culture that recognizes that individual practitioners should not be held accountable for system failings over which they have no control. A just culture also recognizes that many individual or 'active' errors represent predictable interactions between human operators and the systems in which they work. However, in contrast to a culture that touts 'no blame' as its governing principle, a just culture does not tolerate blameworthy behavior such as conscious disregard of clear risks to patients or gross misconduct (e.g., falsifying a record, performing professional duties while intoxicated).

• Respect: The treatment of others with deference in daily interactions, weighing their values, views, opinions and preferences.
• Trust: The collective expectations by the public and other clinicians that health care providers will demonstrate knowledge, skill, and competence, and will act in the best interest of both patients and colleagues with beneficence, fairness, and integrity.
• Inclusion: Positively striving to meet the needs of different people and taking deliberate action to create environments where everyone feels respected and able to achieve their full potential.

Board of Directors (governing body):

The supervisory or governing body means the highest level organization or individual overseeing the operation or management of the hospital and may include, for example, the board of directors, investors, hospital owners, deans, etc., hereinafter referred to as the supervisory team.

Hospital Management (executive team):

Executive team means the person in charge of the hospital operator who is actually responsible for the operation of the hospital, under the authority of a resolution or direction of the supervisory or governing team, and may include, for example, a director, vice president, senior manager, department manager or medical team leader.