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The role for leaders of health care organizations in patient safety
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The role for leaders of health care organizations in patient safety

John R Clarke, Jeffrey C Lerner and William Marella
American journal of medical quality, v 22(5), pp 311-318
Sep 2007
PMID: 17804390

Abstract

Communication Health Facility Administration Humans Leadership Medical Errors - prevention & control Organizational Culture Professional Role Quality of Health Care Safety Safety Management - organization & administration Staff Development - organization & administration
We review what leaders of health care systems, including chief executive officers and board members, need to know to have "patient safety literacy" and do to make their systems safe. High reliability organizations produce reliable results that are not dependent on providers being perfect. Their characteristics include the commitment of leadership to safety as a system responsibility, with a culture of safety that decreases variability with standardized care and does not condone "at-risk behavior." A business case can be made for investing resources into systems that produce good outcomes reliably. Leaders must see patient safety problems as problems with their system, not with their employees. Leaders need to give providers information to make and monitor system progress. All medical errors, including near misses, and processes associated with all adverse events may provide information for system improvement. Improving systems should produce better long-term results than educating workers to be more careful.

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52 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Health Care Sciences & Services
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