The “trust-report-and-improve” dynamic is a crucial aspect of establishing high reliability in health care. When team members report adverse events or share concerns or ideas about safety, it’s important for team leaders to recognize their contributions, use their information to make improvements, and communicate back to team members how safety was enhanced as a result.
Establishing a process for consistently recognizing individuals who identify safety improvement opportunities reinforces the importance of both identifying and responding to unsafe conditions. This recognition also creates a bond of trust with leadership and contributes to building a safety culture.
In developing both recognition and a safety culture initiative, it is important to progress from simply reporting adverse events, to reporting close calls, and then to thinking more broadly about unsafe conditions or situations that could lead to adverse events or suboptimal outcomes. It’s a challenge to expand safety mindfulness from identifying mistakes that have happened or nearly happened to include what may happen. (Coleen Smith, Director, High Reliability Initiatives, Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, 20170731) https://www.jointcommission.org/leadership_blog/recognizing_those_who_contribute_to_safety_culture_the_trust-report-and-improve_dynamic/
Thank you, Shore Regional Health team members, for identifying and reporting potential patient harm conditions.
In October 2017, the Good Catch (Near Miss) Celebrate with Heart reward program began. From a random sample of all who entered Good Catch (Near Miss) events into the UMMSafe reporting system, Celebrate with Heart points have been deposited into the accounts of the the following team members: Melissa Means; Laura Jackson; Mark Kurtz; Katherine Applegarth; Sabrina Glenn; Micah Rowlands; Alyssa Baker; Theresa Whye; Elizabeth Shields; Tonya Faulkner; Mary Scott; Rebecca Lyons Hutchison; Debra Schultz; April Venables; Gail Gilless-Pardoe; Mary Camper; Amanda Alto; and Keri Tucker.