Health Quality Alberta approached Lindisfarne to create a patient safety video, highlighting the importance of just culture within healthcare.
Our team traveled to Calgary and Lethbridge to speak to Deb Prowse, Patient Safety Advocate, Carmella Steinke, Senior Lead, Quality Management and Improvement, Acute Care Alberta, and Mollie Cole, Executive Director of HQA.
We heard from Deb Prowse about the difficult, avoidable incident that led to her mother’s passing in hospital. How the incident led to her involvement in patient safety advocacy, and influenced her belief in just culture.
We also heard from Carmella Steinke about a difficult incident in her own nursing career that led to patient injury. The guilt and devastation she felt informed her conviction regarding the importance of just culture for both patients, and healthcare workers.
Mollie Cole provided a clear outline of how an atmosphere of trust, in which healthcare workers are supported and treated fairly when something goes wrong, helps to improve patient safety. In a just culture, people feel safe to discuss errors and safety concerns, in efforts to learn and improve outcomes, without fear of blame or judgement.
For this patient safety video, our team had the opportunity to create custom animations of the five principles of Just Culture: TRUST.
T is To Transparently inform everyone about how things are to be done.
R is Responding appropriately – having a standardized way of assessing incidents.
U is Understanding that people aren’t perfect and how the system plays a role.
S is Supporting everyone who is involved or impacted by an incident.
T is Treating Respectfully
Looking at system problems, as opposed to individual problems, and bringing healthcare providers together will hopefully prevent some of the damage that might be done to patients and providers.
The full patient safety video can be found here: