Healthcare and Social Assistance Sector

摘要

For the Healthcare and Social Assistance Sector, Prevention through Design should consider the interrelationships of patient safety, worker safety, and environmental safety. Influencing management leaders in this sector to adopt a culture of Prevention through Design can be accomplished by aligning PtD principles with already embraced concepts of sustainability and patient safety. Developing a steering group of stakeholders and studying models that have proven successful in other sectors should be considered to share expertise and develop sector consensus standards for PtD. Implementing PtD will require the challenging concept of transformative versus reformative change. The latter can be described as being accommodating (i.e., either making existing things better or less bad). Transformative changes are more sweeping and can lead to new forms and practices that guide us to safer and more productive environments. PtD, if viewed and practiced with broad vision, should further transformative changes that promote patient, worker, and environmental safety. Creating such changes requires top down, as well as bottom up, commitment and involvement. Shared governance is a critical underpinning for effective transformative changes. Implicit in this paradigm shift is moving toward a "no blame" culture, which encourages participatory problem solving and identification of needed PtD.