Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. are encouraging employees to speak up about patient safety concerns. They analyzed reasons that stopped employees from raising patient safety concerns and found they were often too reluctant to raise concerns about co-workers and unsafe behaviours. To address this, Johns Hopkins implemented interventions from 2014 through 2016, including clear definitions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, coordinated reporting mechanisms, leadership training and consistent consequences for unacceptable behaviours. They then designed a program, Safe at Hopkins, to address and investigate concerns and to make everyone feel comfortable. During the study period, employees made 382 individual reports of disruptive behaviour that led to 55 investigations in which officials interviewed an entire clinical unit.
NBHC Care Experience