Transparency, Training, and Staff Safety Rounds

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Transparency, Proactive Communication

Transparency and proactive communication includes:

• Communicating with healthcare workers
  • Promote positive messages on the intranet, highlight ‘caught in the act’ participants.
  • Promote safe handling on the unit (e.g., place signage).
  • Implement processes to report near misses and share root causes with staff including deviation from safe practice and procedures compliance.
  • Encourage employees to have a voice and offer non-punitive response.
  • Share and discuss results of safety culture surveys.

• Communicating with patients and their families
  • Promote positive messages in brochures or patient information.
  • Explain healthcare worker hazard protection (e.g., gloves, surgical masks, respirators, goggles, signage) (Lind et al., 2014).

Safety Culture Training

Providing safety culture training should be completed at orientation and at regular intervals. Providing ‘on the spot’ training when unsafe incidents or work practices occur and evaluating training results for program improvement should also be performed.

Staff Safety Rounds to Evaluate the Work, Conditions, and Environment

Performing staff safety rounds is important to evaluate the work, conditions, and the work environment. Safety rounds should include:

• Discussing how to avoid workarounds, developing monitoring systems for safe practice deviation, need for change and safety compliance, and a respectful work environment (Rugs et al., 2012).
• Utilizing evaluation and safety culture survey results for program improvement and measuring against baseline data. Prioritizing all changes needed.
• Creating opportunities for safe practice motivation.