Patient Safety Culture and Quality Improvement

This assignment delves into the crucial aspects of patient safety culture and continuous quality improvement in healthcare. It examines the influence of patient experience surveys on measuring health care quality, highlights the importance of a human factors systems approach, and analyzes the impact of safety climate, leadership, and continuous quality improvement initiatives on process quality and patient outcomes. The assignment draws upon relevant research and guidelines to provide a comprehensive understanding of these concepts and their significance in enhancing patient safety.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Answer 1
Quality in health care- Quality in health care is defined as the degree to which health care
organization maintains desired health outcome for individual patient or population group.
Quality in health care is also reflected by adherence to current professional knowledge and
clinical standards of practice (Folland, Goodman, & Stano, 2016). . When health care
professionals do the right thing at the right time for the right people, then this leads to the
delivery of quality care. The definition of quality may differ according to the perspective of a
health care professional or health care consumer. A health care consumer regards the following
elements as an indicator of quality in health care:
 Access and delivery of care in a timely manner
 Respect and understanding of patients preference
 Management of physical issues
 Good communication and health education
 Emotional support
 Effective patient follow up process (Anhang Price et al., 2014)
The term continuous quality management and total quality management was given by
McLaughline & Kaluzny (2016) and it involved the systematic process in organization for
planning and implement continuous improvement in health care quality and meeting key
expectations. Continuous quality improvement is dependent on the following elements:
 Commitment of an individual to improve quality
 Responsiveness to patient’s need
 Organizational learning arrangements

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 Adaption of new opportunities for continuous improvement
 Redesign of health care process
On the contrary, total quality management is dependent on the ability of an organization to
engage in participative management for safety and quality of care. Total quality management is
also ensured by the commitment of stakeholders to maintain safety of patient (Kronick et al.,
2015).
Answer 2:
Safety in healthcare is an indicator of quality and it can be defined as the process of
reducing the risk of unnecessary harm to a minimum level. Quality improvement initiative is an
important part of safety in health care by means of which practice structure, systems and clinical
care process is routinely examined. Safety in health care is dependent on the elements of
knowledge and information management, professional and patient-focus care, competence and
capacity and good management of finance (Vincent & Amalberti, 2015). The Clinical Excellence
Commission regards accreditation, education and training for quality, information management,
continuity of care and competence of health care staffs as important part to promote safety in
health care (Clinical Excellence Commission - Clinical Procedure Safety, 2017).
Patient safety is one of the fundamental principle of health care that involves the process
of management and prevention of errors and adverse affects to patient. Hence, major emphasis is
on preventing errors, learning from errors that occur and building a safety culture in health care
organization. Some of the example of patient safety practices include reducing negative
outcomes in patient by resource management and tracking different type of failures in health
care system such as communication failure, medical errors, clinical performance evaluation and

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patient management process (Carayon et al., 2014). Health care organizations now pay great
attentions to patient safety and quality improvement to establish their reputation as a high quality
care providers. Patient safety first starts with the development of patient safety culture where the
core goal is well-being of patient. This is then driven by a vision and compliance with
recognized standards of care. Patient safety culture can be built by involving everyone at each
level to foster a safe environment of accountability. Leadership commitment also determines the
patient safety level within health care system (Okuyama, Wagner, & Bijnen, 2014).
Answer 3
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality Health Care implemented the National
Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards in 2012 following public and stakeholder
consultation. The main purpose was to develop and national and uniform measure of safety and
quality in health care to address the gap in current and best practice outcomes in health care.
Through the set of standards, the main aim was to assist health service organization to maintain
safe and high quality care. The main stakeholders involve in the consultation and collaboration
process included technical experts, health professionals and patient. The NSQHS helps to
effectively evaluate whether minimum standards of safety and quality are met in health care
organizations or not. The following are the NSQHS standards:
1. Governance for safety and quality in health care organizations- This is related to quality
framework required for the introduction of safe system in health care.
2. Partnership with consumers- This standard defines the strategy for patient-centred health
system

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3. Prevention of health care associated infection- It describes the strategies and systems
needed to prevent infection of patient within the healthcare system
4. Medication safety- It described the process needed for safely prescribing, dispensing and
administering medicines to patients in health care setting.
5. Clinical handover- It relates to the process of effective clinical communication for the
safety of patient
6. Patient identification and procedure matching- This involves the appropriate process to
match the identity of patient and the assigned treatment for them to prevent adverse
events.
7. Blood and blood products- It explains the process needed for safe management of blood
and products to preserve the safety of patient.
8. Prevention of pressure injuries- It describes the best practice standards needed to prevent
pressure related injuries in patient.
9. Identifying and responding to clinical deterioration in acute health care- It involves the
process needed by organization to effectively respond to patients with deteriorating
clinical condition.
10. Preventing falls- It defines the best practice standards to prevent and manage incidences
of fall in health care organization (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in
Health Care, 2012).
Answer 5
Safety culture in health care is defined as the style and proficiency in health and safety
management by combining the elements of individual and group values, attitudes and
perceptions towards safety, competency standards and patterns of behavior to promote safety.

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Organizations can establish a positive safety culture by efficiently sharing perception of safety,
adequate communication process and implementation of preventive measures. Building a true
safety culture is a challenging task, however the progress in the development of safety culture
can be measured by range of indicators. This includes measurement of observable behavior,
attitudes and perceptions of individual towards safety. It can also be measured by the number of
adverse events and safety problems in particular health care organization (Weaver et al., 2013).
Some of the strategies for promoting a culture safety include the following:
 Adequate reporting of medical errors and adverse incidents
 Analysis and evaluation of the cause of errors and incidents
 Learning from errors and planning continuous improvement in the system to prevent the
same incident again
 Regular review of hospital safety standards (Morello et al. 2013)
Poor safety culture is very significant for health care organization as this may seriously affect
the patient and their health care related outcomes. Negative safety culture increases the
likelihood of fatal consequences for organization. Poor communication and lack of perception
about the importance safety affects patient outcomes significantly. Safety culture has been found
to have a link with patient outcomes as poor safety cultures increases the likelihood of hospital
morbidity rates, adverse events, readmissions and health care cost (Weaver et al., 2013).
Answer 7
Clinical leaders play a very important role in promoting safety and quality of care. Health
care environment is associated with many challenges like workforce issues, changing consumer
expectations, increase in demand of care and concern about quality and safety. Clinical leaders

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manage all these things. In the area of implementing quality improvement initiatives in health
care, clinical leaders play the following role:
 They formulate the goal and vision for continuous quality improvement
 Be accountable for quality and safety
 Set key priorities for quality improvement
 Uses practice data to enhance care, set quality goals and monitor clinical performance
 Engage in frank discussion with staff related to safety concerns
 Enhancing the credibility of the error reporting system
 Managing and responding to disruptive and unprofessional behavior of health care staffs
 Making changes in health care environment and organizational structure (McFadden et
al., 2015)
Clinical leaders have both legal and moral obligation to maintain safety of patient and
improve the quality of care. They spend considerable time on quality and safety related activities.
The clinical manager’s interaction on quality strategies and performance evaluation promotes the
achievement of quality and safety standards. Some of the measures adopted by clinical leader,
which lead to good quality performance, include adapting system wide measures for quality
improvement. They play a role in developing improvement culture, promoting clinical
involvement and safety climate attitudes. Effective clinical leaders with correct attitude have the
capability to influence the culture of the organization and they are involved at all levels to
promote quality improvement. Innovation is found as a factor to change the health organization
and improve clinical pathways. This is also a focus for clinical leaders involved in quality
improvement process (Parand et al., 2014).

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Reference
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