Organizational Culture and Its Influence on Patient Safety in Healthcare Organizations

Running head: PATIENT SAFETY
PATIENT SAFETY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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PATIENT SAFETY
Introduction:
The topic of patient safety mainly revolves around the ways by which the hospitals and
other healthcare organizations protect their patients from errors, accidents, injuries and even
infections. This is an important aspect as every year about 440,000 people are seen to die from
preventable errors in the hospitals (Weller et al., 2014). Studies have suggested that
organizational culture in the healthcare industries play an important role in ensuring the patient
safety in the healthcare units. It mainly refers to the wide range of the social phenomena that
includes organization’s customary dress, behavior, languages, behaviors, beliefs, values,
authority, myths, symbols of status, ceremonies and rituals and even modes of deference and
subversion. In simple words, it mainly explains the set of guiding beliefs, understanding as well
as the ways of thinking which the members of the organizations share to meet their goals and
objectives. This assignment will show the various ways by which the elements of organizational
culture influence patient safety in healthcare organizations.
Leadership, teamwork and communication:
Organizational cultures, which influence effective leaderships, can contribute to the
culture of patient safety. Studies that healthcare professionals who are leaders in the organization
have the capabilities of communicating vision to the employees and motivating them in ways by
which the latter can work beyond their goals to achieve the vision (Guldenmund et al., 20170.
Leaders who explain the importance of patient safety to the subordinates, helping them with
strategies by which they can develop skills and knowledge of patient safety and can solve all
their concerns of achieving patient safety can ensure the best outcome (Reis et al., 2018).
Development of the team morale, continuous boosting of the team members to strive for patient

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PATIENT SAFETY
safety interventions and encouraging constant feedback exchange among the team members also
contribute to development of patient safety.
Reflection:
During the time of my placement, I noticed that huge number of patients was suffering
due to the medication errors that the nurses conducted. It was very difficult for the organization
to understand the reasons of both the senior and the junior nurses creating such issues as all were
skilled and knowledgeable. The leaders tried to observe the actions of the teams and tried to
understand the reasons that contributed to the errors. The leaders realized that ineffective
communication, power struggles, lack of bonding and trust were contributing to such errors.
Therefore, the leaders need to change the organizational culture where effective communication
was not promoted (Hickner et al., 2015) . They undertook transformational leadership style and
motivated employees to interact communicate with each other, provide feedbacks, and engage in
informal outings and others. These aspects helped in development of string binds, trust and
relationship among the employees. Therefore, power struggles were resolved and the embers
were seen to communicate effectively (Reason, 2017). Therefore, with effective leadership,
organizational culture was modified which used patient safety through reduction of medication
error incidents.
Learning and the just culture:
“Learning and the just culture” is an environment where individuals can speak out when
they have concerns and are supported when they need. Those organizational culture which does
not encourage open discussions about the systems and the reviews in the healthcare units make
the employees upset. When staffs were not encouraged for raising concerns or speak openly in