2019 BWFH Safety Culture Survey now open

As part of Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital’s commitment to patient safety culture, we are conducting a staff survey of our safety culture which opened on Wednesday, May 1. 

Some of you may recall taking this same survey in the fall of 2016. Back then, you told us you felt positive about hospital-wide efforts to learn about and improve upon current patient safety practices and the way people come together to support one another when projects require teamwork.

However, there was also room for improvement, particularly in two areas: ensuring a non-punitive response to errors and better communication during hand offs and transitions. Over the last two years, we’ve made great strides in these areas.

Non-punitive response to errors means that people can feel free reporting errors or issues without concern that there will be punishment. We have done a great deal of work in the area of non-punitive response to errors. Many of you have attended a Just Culture High Reliability training or participated in a Collaborative Case Review (CCR) after an event and have had the chance to see the process in action.

Based on the last survey, the Patient Safety team implemented individual feedback for safety reporting and created a weekly Last Week in Patient Safety newsletter to improve communication regarding steps taken to close gaps identified by safety reporting in the RL Solutions system. We also added a closed loop tracking system to ensure that we make the changes we find during the CCR process.  Finally, the hospital started a daily safety huddle (Monday through Friday at 9:30 am) to review all aspects of how the hospital is functioning day to day.

As you can see, the feedback we received in 2016 has been invaluable. By surveying again, we hope to see how far we’ve come and plan for even more change in the future. At BWFH we listen to your feedback about safe patient care and build programs to use your suggestions. This year’s information will be of great importance because an organization’s beliefs and attitudes about patient safety provide an indication of the likelihood of errors and adverse events.

On May 1, staff who work 20 hours or more a week and who also have work that connects directly with patients will receive an email from Pascal Metrics (support@pascalmetrics.com) containing a link to the Safety Culture Survey. The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential and will be processed electronically by Pascal Metrics.