Changing hospital culture to improve patient safety

Dr Pauline Chen's Doctor and Patient column this week explores how hospitals are trying to increase patient safety by encouraging disclosure of errors, so that physicians and administrators can learn from and improve on systematic errors. But Dr. Chen explores the difficulty directors of these types of disclosure problems have encountered. It takes more than just encouraging error disclosure, you have to change an entire hospital culture of that has come to fear mistakes because of fear that it will damage a long sought after career or result in a malpractice lawsuit. The article demonstrates that you cannot change an entire organizational culture by changing a policy on paper. This kind of shift in attitude will require long-term educational efforts and open dialogue about the importance of patient safety and how disclosing errors helps achieve that safety goal. Organizational culture does not change overnight. But ongoing, effective communication, can help achieve new cultural goals.