10 Elements of a Just Culture in Healthcare

A just patient safety culture is the culmination of individual and group beliefs, values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and behavior patterns that determine an organization’s commitment to quality and patient safety.

In other words, to establish an effective patient safety culture, every healthcare team member should be equally committed to putting patient safety first. Furthermore, the team must continuously engage in actions that reflect that commitment.

Improving the safety culture within a healthcare environment is critical to preventing harm and improving the overall quality of care. Organizations that fail to prioritize a just patient safety culture are more likely to experience:

• Higher rates of patient harm
• Underreported safety events
• Increased costs

To establish a just patient safety culture, a healthcare organization must:

• Define and adhere to clear safety policies
• Use transparent risk-based processes for recognizing human errors and system errors
• Encourage all team members to report harmful incidents and near misses without fear of retaliation
• Promote open communication among care teams so that all employees feel safe reporting events
• Regularly assess system strengths and vulnerabilities, and prioritize them for improvement

In order to provide the highest quality care in the safest possible environment, all organizations should prioritize just culture healthcare by establishing a patient safety culture. To do so effectively, many organizations turn to health information technology.

Implementing incident reporting software is an integral part of establishing an effective patient safety culture.

For example, an incident reporting software solution can help to pinpoint exactly where the majority of patient falls are occurring, down to the specific location. Understanding this information could prompt additional training on proper fall protocol or prevention measures for that specific department.

Performance Health Partners’ patient safety software helps healthcare organizations take action to prevent harm, improve the quality of the care experience, and truly cultivate a patient safety culture.

Specifically, our incident reporting tool does this by allowing organizations to:

• Eliminate the risk of inconsistent or incomplete data entry
• Effectively synthesize patient data
• Provide a central channel for team communication
• Get real-time notifications and alerts
• Analyze custom dashboards to track trends over time
• Prevent reoccurring incidents from taking place
• Get closer to zero harm

For more information on how a software solution can help your organization improve patient safety outcomes, request a free demo with our team.