Patient Safety Culture

When receiving any kind of healthcare service whether it be in a physician office or in a larger healthcare setting most patients believe that there is a high level of safety, and that healthcare professionals practice and exhibit a safety culture. Safety culture can be defined as "the way patient safety is thought about, structured and implemented in an organization. Safety climate is a subset of this and focuses on attitudes about patient safety” (Safety & Culture, 2016). Safety is one of the focal areas in the delivery of healthcare, to patients, family members and healthcare professionals. Safety is one of the most essential areas when it comes to diagnosis, treatment, and care. Recently there has been more examination and research into

Errors can result from either faulty systems or processes that can be inefficient or the changing mix of patients and health insurance, as well as differences with provider experiences and education that can increase the level of complexity. Medical errors can result from lack of skills, to coordination of care, to mistakes and diagnosis, all of these can impinge on patient safety. One of the ways that improvements in patient outcomes with regard to quality and patient safety can be made is with the use of reciprocal inhibition which is a process of defining undesirable behaviors and reinforcing the positive aspects of it instead. Medical errors happen and health organizations with the use of reciprocal inhibition can improve it instead of punishing those that were responsible for the error. Perhaps finding out what led to the error being made is a great way to it to prevent them. Utilizing reciprocal inhibition is good method to use in a healthcare setting because instead of punishing the someone who reports the error they can be rewarded by helping improve quality

Some may ask what exactly is a high reliability organization and it is a “organizations with systems in place that make them exceptionally consistent in accomplishing their goals and avoiding potentially catastrophic errors” (Gamble, 2013). When organizations operate for a period of time without incurring any major accidents or catastrophic failures, the concept of having high reliability is attractive “due to the complexity of operations and the risk of significant and even potentially catastrophic consequences when failures occur in health care”(“High reliability,”