The response to adverse events can lack patient-centered-ness, perhaps because the involved institutions and other stakeholders misunderstand what patients and families go through after care breakdowns. A PFAC-designed simulation can help stakeholders understand patient and family experiences following adverse events and potentially improve their response to these events.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) started collaborating together to utilize its combined resources and knowledge to further  patient safety efforts and create safety systems in various healthcare settings.

This article discusses that just culture is balance between holding organizations and individuals accountable for implementing safe practices and change in the workplace. This is especially important in healthcare settings to decrease patient mortality and increase patient safety. Benefits of fostering a just culture include increasing effective communication and innovation across various departments.

Sidney Dekker, PhD supervises the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. In Dekker’s book, Just Culture: Restoring Trust and Accountability in Your Organization (3rd ed.), he discusses how to effectively create a just culture of accountability and responsibility. This includes learning strategies on how to appropriately approach adverse incidents such that knowledge is maximized and the negative effects are minimized.

The Collaborative for Accountability and Improvement and the Foundation for Healthcare Quality hosted a two-day retreat in Seattle, Washington (09/2017) in which administrators and healthcare providers discussed ways to advance communication and resolution programs (CRPs) and other resources in Northwest Hospitals to increase patient safety and communication among hospital leadership, attorneys, and health insurers.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) adopted the Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) program to increase patient and family engagement in the healthcare settings. The PFCC encourages and trains patients, families, and healthcare workers to share their experiences and improve care. This program also offers methods to measure the effectiveness of this program.

Marx discusses uses a legal viewpoint to discuss how to be more tolerant of errors in the workplace, while also holding people accountable for their mistakes. He outlines four important behavior concepts, and how they can be applied to the healthcare system to decrease risk of adverse events and increase accountability: malpractice, understanding violations, ignorance, and mishaps.

Patients and family members identified the factors that contributed to their respective adverse incidents, such as not following safety measures and lack of communication. Participants stated that they were not involved in the analysis process of the adverse events, so they missed out on ways to become more involved in learning about adverse events and how they can be decreased in the healthcare setting. Thus, the authors of this article emphasize that healthcare systems should implement educational modules that not only help decrease the risk of adverse events, but also teach healthcare professionals, patients, and family members on how to be proactive in preventing them.

Authors of this article emphasize how the “no blame” approach should be balanced with accountability when promoting patient safety in healthcare settings. However, this balance should be distributed among healthcare professionals, patients, and family members when effectively improving and promoting patient care and safety.

In this study, conference and process leaders were divided into three groups Morbidity and Mortality Conferences (MMCs), Educational Conferences, and Quality Assurance (QA) Meetings) to review adverse incidents and near misses, as well as to find ways to prevent them in the future as well as to promote patient safety. Researchers found that it is important to incorporate various approaches and clinical practices to effectively promote patient safety in the healthcare setting.

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a systematic method used to analyze adverse incidents, especially in the healthcare setting. This approach identified both active and latent errors that contribute to adverse incidents. Active errors occur between humans and the system, while latent errors are known as the hidden issues in a healthcare system. An important principle of RCA is to recognize the source of problems that contribute the increased risk of medical errors, while not concentrating on individual mishaps as the sole cause of the issue.

Previous studies suggest that psychologically safe workplaces foster a feeling of comfort among employees, allowing them to feel comfortable with taking risks, such as identifying mistakes in the workplace. In this study, researchers analyzed the levels of psychological safety in Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals, and studied its relationship to employees’ comfort in disclosing medical mistakes. Researchers found that only a minority of workers were uncomfortable in admitting mistakes, and their discomfort was due to fear of retaliation.

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) published this report on root cause analyses and actions (“RCA2”), which are programs aimed to reduce the risk of adverse medical events and instead increase effective measures to reduce them in the future. This report illustrates strategies that healthcare organizations can utilize when implementing RCA2 programs in the workplace. This report also details specific strategies that help healthcare organizations identify the faults and hazards in their systems that increase the risk of adverse medical outcomes, as well as how to take active and positive steps to prevent them from happening in the future.

The National Patient Safety Foundation conducted a study to investigate the effectiveness of root Cause Analyses and Actions, or RCA² (RCA “squared”), in healthcare settings. RCA² is a model used by health professionals to understand why mistakes occur in the workplace, and how to develop strategies to prevent them in future situations. National Patient Safety Foundation specifically concentrated on the specific methods used by the RCA² model, and analyzed if they were effective or not. They also identified defects in the model and sought out ways on how to improve them, so they model could be efficient.

Researchers concluded that an organizational culture characterized by anonymity, rewards and recognition for staff members making reports, grassroots involvement in the review and interpretation of data, and use of external sources of error data is critical for establishing a process truly capable of creating safety. This process for changing culture can be applied in any health care system desiring to improve the safety of the medication use process.

The authors of this article analyzed how medical mistakes and injuries are correlated with high healthcare costs and poor patient quality. To lower these rates, the authors emphasized the importance of implementing an incident reporting system in healthcare settings. The implementation of these systems involve changing the culture of the workplace, so it promotes learning, flexibility, and blamelessness.

This white paper introduces an overall approach and tools designed to support two processes: the proactive preparation of a plan for managing serious clinical adverse events, and the reactive emergency response of an organization that has no such plan.

Every day, clinical adverse events occur within our health care system, causing physical and psychological harm to one or more patients, their families, staff (including medical staff), the community, and the organization. In the crisis that often emerges, what differentiates organizations, positively or negatively, is their culture of safety, the role of the board of trustees and executive leadership, advanced planning for such an event, the balanced prioritization of the needs of the patient and family, staff, and organization, and how actions immediately and over time bring empathy, support, resolution, learning, and improvement. The risks of not responding to these adverse events in a timely and effective manner are significant, and include loss of trust, absence of healing, no learning and improvement, the sending of mixed messages about what is really important to the organization, increased likelihood of regulatory action or lawsuits, and challenges by the media.

The paper includes three tools for leaders (as appendices) — a Checklist, a Work Plan, and a Disclosure Culture Assessment Tool — and numerous resources to guide practice. The three tools are also included below as individual documents for ease of use.

The 2011 (second edition) update reflects a number of suggested improvements and clarifications, including new content on reimbursement and compensation as part of any discussion of disclosure and resolution, and disclosure of errors that have occurred at another institution, among other updates. Additional citations, resources, and examples from organizations mounting effective crisis responses are also included.

In the BMJ Quality & Safety Study (2009), researchers studied why clinicians are often considered “second victims” in the wake of medical errors. The researchers delved into how healthcare providers recover from the guilt and stress involved medical errors, and discuss the elements related to recovery and delineate from the second victim phenomenon. These factors include moving forward, receiving emotional support, and reestablishing a sense of integrity. Researchers recommended that it is important to for healthcare institutions to implement support systems that not only offer emotional aid but also decrease the likelihood of future adverse events.

Researchers acknowledged how a majority of adverse medical events involve patient harm. Patients and family are known as first victims. Researchers also acknowledged how healthcare professionals are also considered victims after an adverse event, due to the emotional and psychological trauma experienced after it. In other words, healthcare professionals are also known as second victims. In this study, researchers analyzed the various coping strategies that clinicians use in the wake of adverse events. These strategies include attending programs that offer emotional aid second victims, as well as taking accountability for the situation and learning from it.

In The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error,’ Sidney Dekker discusses how organizations can successfully deal with perceived “human error” without implementing new rules, punishing people, or requesting compliance. Dekker discusses how people embody “the Bad Apple Theory,” which states that an institution would be safe and reliable albeit a few irresponsible individuals in it. To combat this theory and “human error,” Dekker encourages organizations to learn to understand mistakes, how to improve investigative processes, and how to increase the safety climate of the workplace. He does this by offering specific strategies that encourage organizations and employees to think creatively to foster a safe environment that mitigates “human error.”

This YouTube video recounts the true story of Lewis Blackman, a 15-year-old boy who died in a hospital following routine surgery. This story sheds light on the importance of healthcare providers to not only be cognizant of their patients’ conditions,  but to also frequently engage with families so they feel involved in patient care.

This story has been taken from the Book “Wall of Silence” authored by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh. The story can be found in Part One “Breaking the Silence”-“The Human Face of Medical Mistakes” page no-31.

The objective of this article is to describe the scientific discipline of human factors and provide common ground for partnerships between healthcare and human factors communities.

Read more here.

This article discusses on how healthcare professionals are often considered “second victims” of adverse medical events, due to the psychological and emotional trauma they experience. To support second victims, it is important for health institutions to implement early warning systems that address harm risks associated with adverse incidents. In this article, researchers specifically focus on nurses and how respond to adverse medical events.

This thesis paper delves into the importance of classifying healthcare conflicts into relationship-based groups  to appropriately address the dynamics, goals, and interventions associated with the conflict. These dynamics include ways of improving communication and rapports, as well as efficiently saving money.

The Medstar’s Patient Safety and Quality Program included this video in their patient safety and care program. This video illustrates the story of Michael Skolnik, who lost his life due to medical malpractice. The error involved the surgeon not being completely transparent with the patient or his family about the surgical procedure. This video emphasizes the importance of shared decision making between patients, families, and physicians to avoid future adverse medical outcomes, especially ones in which lives are lost.

The Joint Commission’s Framework for Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Action Plan offers a holistic outline of questions used for healthcare organizations to analyze adverse events in the workplace. Questions include identifying specific protocols in the procedure, external factors, staffing numbers, and other factors that could have potentially influenced the adverse outcome.

The Joint Commission published three reports that address patient care and reducing risks of adverse health outcomes: the Patient Safety Systems , Sentinel Event Policy, and RCA2. The Patient Safety Systems report explains how healthcare professionals can develop effective measures to promote patient safety and compassion towards coworkers. The Sentinel Event Policy report details how the Joint Commission collaborates with healthcare institutions to promote patient safety and improve systems that reduce the risk of adverse incidents. The RCA2: Improving Root Cause Analyses and Actions to Prevent Harm report illustrates strategies that institutions or individuals can utilize to analyze the hazards and faults in their systems to they can effectively prevent future adverse medical outcomes.

The goal of the VA National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) is to offer tool kits, resources, and event analysis methods to help promote patient safety. The NCPS program is based on a systems approach to problem solving that focuses on prevention, not punishment. The organization uses human factors engineering methods and applies concepts from high-reliability organizations, such as aviation, to target and eliminate system vulnerabilities.