The IHI Open School is an innovative learning community where you can take free online courses, earn certificates, network with peers and experts, and gain confidence and skills in quality improvement and patient safety to change health care.
How do you know if you’re working in a culture of safety? In a new video, Dr. David W. Bates, a world-renowned leader in patient safety, defines a culture of safety and gives advice to organizations that are hoping to strengthen their safety culture. Hint: It has a lot to do with handling adverse events.
When something goes wrong in health care, a lot of organizations try to protect themselves from lawsuits. Unfortunately, this sometimes means they deny the patient the healing experience of receiving an apology. As CNN reports, “The basic human desire to hear ‘I'm sorry’ and an explanation of what went wrong — whether in the operating room or elsewhere — is behind a movement to encourage hospitals and doctors to move away from the traditional ‘deny and defend’ approach, to ‘acknowledge and apologize.’” After giving an apology, health systems should also try to improve. Learn how in our course PS 104: Root Cause and Systems Analysis.
We went back to the basics on best practices for starting and sustaining a Chapter on this month’s Global Chapter Call. We heard from two Chapters: a growing undergraduate Chapter at Willamette University in Oregon that’s found great success in its first year and a long-time Chapter at the University of Toronto that has developed a strong leadership structure. We’ve summarized the top 10 tips we learned from these Chapters in a new blog post.
How do you know if you’re working in a culture of safety? In 
