Safety First!

I went to the construction site for one of our new ambulatory centers a few days ago to celebrate an important milestone with the team.  There are a few well-known milestones in construction - groundbreaking (putting the shovel to the ground), topping off (sometimes called topping out, which is when the last beam is put into place at the top of the building), watertight (sometimes called wind and watertight, which is when the building has effectively been sealed off from the weather and interior work begins), owner handoff (when construction is completed and the builder hands the building off to the owners), and of course, the grand opening.  There are probably a few that I'm missing, but nevertheless, in this case, we were celebrating reaching the watertight milestone.

We toured the facility and thanked the construction team.  I was impressed to learn that the construction team was getting ready to celebrate 365 days without a safety event (they were actually just one day short when I toured the site).  Of course, that particular milestone caught my attention.  I asked for further information on their milestone.  The threshold for that particular metric was any safety incident that caused an injury severe enough to result in lost or restricted worktime.  We then talked about our staff injury metrics, which are very similar.  We track Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)-recordable injuries (any staff injury that requires medical treatment above first aid) and DART (any staff injury resulting in days away, restricted, or transferred from the usual work assignment).  

Unfortunately, workplace injuries in the health care industry are all too common, and surprisingly our OSHA-recordable injury rate and DART rate far surpass most other industries.  We believe that it's hard to keep patients safe when our staff don't feel safe.  Therefore, we have designed our Staff Safety program to closely mirror our Patient Safety program.  While the injuries and specific interventions are different, the safety culture that we are trying to build and develop is exactly the same for patients and staff.  For too long, hospitals have considered patient safety issues, such as central line infections or pressure ulcers as unavoidable, particularly in hospitals that care for the most complicated patients.  The same belief was true for staff safety.  Most hospitals now have thankfully adopted a different stance.

It may be a long time before we reach the milestone of 365 days without a staff safety event.  However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  The health care industry has a lot to learn from other industries, such as commercial aviation, nuclear power, and construction.  This week happens to be National Patient Safety Awareness Week - what is your organization doing to keep your patients and staff safe?