Creating a Safety Culture in Our Hospitals

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Not Running a Hospital blog recently ran a column about the attitude prevalent in our healthcare institutions. According to the post, most institutions accept error rates that are greater than zero because it’s thought that that is an acceptable standard of care. This attitude is all too often the reason safety in hospitals and other healthcare facilities has not improved. In its most recent blog post, the author notes, “Take a step back for a moment: if your parent or spouse was having a stroke (horrible clot lodged in brain, killing brain cells by the minute) – you recognized it right away, called 911, and got your loved one to a Primary Stroke Service hospital in a fabulously short period of time, are you happy with a 1 in 5 chance that they won’t get the one life-altering drug we know works?”
That is precisely the point. Hospitals should be places of healing. They shouldn’t be where you or a loved one are a statistical part of “an acceptable error rate”. Until that attitude changes, healthcare will be much like playing Russian roulette.

Holly Haines
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