Five Key Behaviors for Enhancing Patient Safety

1. Behaviors to Improve Patient Safety. There are five behaviors in which I, as a health care professional, can practice in order to improve safety for patients in my direct care. These include following written safety protocols, speak up when you have concerns, communicate clearly, don’t let yourself get careless, and take care of yourself. By adhering to simple, basic protocols such as hand washing you can be a key player in reducing the spread of infection to your patients and thus, keeping your patients safe. As a healthcare professional you must be an advocate for your patients and their safety by reporting unsafe working conditions, close calls, and adverse events.

2. Understanding Medical Errors. Errors are often a result of a flawed

Creating a Culture of Safety. A culture of safety includes psychological safety, active leadership, transparency, and fairness. As a health care professional, I can create a culture of safety by having a positive attitude and creating an environment within the team that feeds off that optimistic and encouraging behavior. In addition, I can contribute to a culture of safety by using effective communication, the “Fairness Algorithm” to differentiate between system error and unsafe behaviors, and by being respectful and approachable to all my fellow coworkers and patients.

6. Using the Model for Improvement. The model for improvement is a tool for accelerating improvement for health care processes and outcomes. As a healthcare professional I help make a change within my organization by pioneering or joining a team to answer the 3 fundamental questions: aim, measures, and changes, and then enacting a PDSA cycle to test the changes and determine if the proposed change plan worked, or needs improvement.

7. Employing Strategies to Improve Success. Strategies that I can use as a healthcare professional to help quality improvement is to find allies, serve as, or create a frontline staff to identify improvement priorities, display data in innovative ways, use stories to engage hearts, and speak in a language of

Patient and Family-Centered Care (PRCC). Patient-centered care is the active involvement and collaboration of patients, their family members, and providers in the design of new care models and in decision-making about individual options for treatment. The Institute of Medicine defines patient-centered care as: "Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions." I feel as though my role as a patient has given me the personal experience of the importance of patient-centered care and has peaked my interest in and dedication to empowering the patient in the future as health care professional. Involving patients and families in care experience is a critical part of creating an environment that fosters safety and quality and has been linked to improved patient outcomes. As a health care professional, I can empower the patient and their family by creating an environment where health care decision making is a collaborative process; one that includes and values the opinions of all those involved in order to come to a conclusion about what is best for the health of the