Discussion: Perceptions and Values

Discussion: Perceptions and Values

Discussion: Perceptions and Values

Week 4: Culture of Safety 105105 unread replies.118118 replies. How does your current or former clinical environment maintain a culture of safety? How are errors reported and managed to improve quality? What suggestions would you make as a nurse leader to improve the culture of safety?

Studies have found that workplace related  are a result of a breakdown in an organization’s  and procedures that were established to deal with safety, and that the breakdown flows from inadequate attention being paid to safety issues.^[]Safety culture is the collection of the ,  and  that  share in relation to risks within an , such as a  or . Safety culture is a part of , and has been described in a variety of ways; notably the  and the Association of Land Grant and Public Universities have published summaries on this topic in 2014 and 2016 .

A good safety culture can be promoted by senior management commitment to safety, realistic practices for handling hazards, continuous organisational learning, and care and concern for hazards shared across the workforce.

The  highlighted the importance of safety culture and the effect of managerial and human factors on safety performance. The term ‘safety culture’ was first used in INSAG’s (1986) ‘Summary Report on the Post-Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident’ where safety culture was described as:

“That assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance.”

Since then, a number of definitions of safety culture have been published. The U.K. Health and Safety Commission developed one of the most commonly used definitions of safety culture: “The product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management”. “Organisations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures.”