Patient safety culture
What is patient safety culture and how can it be used to improve patient care.
…the biggest challenge to moving toward a safer health system is changing the culture from one of blaming individuals for errors to one in which errors are treated not as personal failures, but as opportunities to improve the system and prevent harm.
Kohn, To Err is Human, 2000
Hospital staff are often the first to notice patterns of unsafe practice and the conditions that increase or decrease these patterns. Asking staff about patient safety is an important part of a comprehensive measurement and improvement system and can help to identify areas where a hospital is doing well and areas for improvement.
- About
What is patient safety culture and how can measurement lead to improvement
- Measures of patient safety culture
Australian survey on patient safety culture, technical specifications and other validated measures
- For implementers
Guidance on undertaking an improvement project using measurement of patient safety culture
- For hospital management and boards
The benefits of understanding the culture of your hospital
- For hospital staff
Why you are being asked about culture and how this information will be used
- For consumers
How hospitals use information about culture to improve your care
Hospital measurement toolkit
The greatest value from measuring patient safety culture is not the survey itself, but the approach that is taken to investigate and change as a result of the survey data. The Patient Safety Culture Measurement Toolkit provides information to support hospitals to collect, interpret, discuss and action results from surveys of patient safety culture. There is also a suite of templates to help streamline your project.
- Tools and templates
Technical specifications and templates to support implementation of the A-HSOPS 2.0
- Download the Australian Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture
Get the A-HSOPS 2.0 survey form