THERE HAS been extensive literature on medical errors over the last decade, which has prompted the development of many safety initiatives and guidelines for practice. Most of these are intended to improve patient safety as they should, but it has become increasingly clear that we also need initiatives and guidelines to improve worker safety in the health care setting. Health care organizations striving for high reliability need to be concerned with the safety of both patients and their workers; patient safety initiatives are not enough.1 Recommendations for integrating patient and worker safety initiatives include building worker safety as a core value of the organization, identifying opportunities to link patient and worker safety activities across departments and programs, understanding and measuring performance on safety-related issues, and maintaining successful patient and worker safety improvement initiatives
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