Patient safety outcomes: the importance of understanding the organizational culture and safety climate.

摘要

PATIENT SAFETY IS an important goal for all health care providers and administrators. However, many barriers may impede this goal. An example can be wrong-site surgeries, which are rare but very serious errors. The Joint Commission has stressed the importance of decreasing wrong-site surgeries through their Universal Protocol. Hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers have instituted policies and procedures both pre- and intraoperatively to eliminate wrong-site surgeries. Yet, wrong-site surgeries continue to be reported. As O'Leary and Jacott commented, multiple health care providers are involved in this system-dependent process-from the nurses in the preop-erative setting to the operating room team. Each of these people and areas provide an opportunity for an error to be caught, or not. The reality remains that every health care worker involved in patient care is prone to error.