The authors discuss the use of patient safety culture surveys as a means to promote organizational learning and build a culture of safety. Detailed information on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture and adaptation for use in rural hospitals is available in the Briefing Paper.(http://flexmonitoring.org/documents/BriefingPaper30_Patient-Safety-Cultu...) A listing of additional tools and resources to enhance patient safety culture is provided in both the Policy Brief and the Briefing Paper.
Key Facts:
Establishing a culture of patient safety includes promoting a non-punitive environment of shared accountability (a just culture), encouragement to report errors (a reporting culture), and development of a learning culture.
Research demonstrates a positive relationship between organizational culture and safety outcomes for both patients and employees.
Use of the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture has been effective for planning, implementing, and evaluating targeted patient safety interventions in Critical Access Hospitals.
This policy brief is part of a series of policy briefs by the Flex Monitoring Team identifying and assessing evidence-based patient safety and quality improvement interventions appropriate for use by state Flex Programs and Critical Access Hospitals. Key Findings:
Hospital falls are a serious patient safety problem, accounting for nearly 84% of all inpatient incidents.
Most falls commonly occur as a result of medication related issues, toileting needs, and hospital environmental conditions.
Effective falls interventions target both intrinsic (e.g. physiologic) and extrinsic (e.g. environmental) risk factors.
Effective falls prevention teams are interdisciplinary and ideally include pharmacists, nurses, physical therapists, medical, and quality officers and are imbedded in a culture of patient safety.
Education for and communication across all staff contributes to successful falls prevention programs.
Reporting falls data to one of the national organizations allows for benchmarking.
Mental health problems have considerable impact on children and their families and some of these impacts are higher in rural than urban areas. Rural children are slightly but significantly more likely to have a mental health problem than urban children, are more likely to have a behavioral difficulty, and are more likely to be usually or always affected by their condition. Compared to urban children, rural children are more likely to go without access to all parent-reported needed mental health services and their families spend more time coordinating their care. This working paper and policy brief provide information on prevalence of children's mental health needs and associated access to care and family impact across rural and urban areas. Analyses are based on the 2005-06 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs.
Critical Access Hospitals play an important role in the provision of long term care (LTC) services in rural communities, and are more likely than other rural and urban hospitals to provide "core" LTC including skilled and intermediate care nursing services. Trends over time showed a greater decline in CAHs than other hospitals in the provision of LTC services, suggesting that changes in LTC reimbursement policies could affect LTC access in rural communities.
Using a national inventory of facilities providing substance abuse treatment services, the authors identified rural detox providers and surveyed them to examine their characteristics, access issues for detox services, and the fit of rural detox services within the substance abuse treatment system. They also examined the geographic distribution of these providers among large rural towns, small rural towns, and isolated rural areas. The results of the 2008 survey indicate that most rural residents (82%) live in a county without a detox provider and that providers are concentrated in large rural towns. While rural detox providers offer care across a number of substances, the full range of professionally-recommended detox services is incomplete in rural areas. Travel distances to detox services are lengthy and access to specialty programs for patients with specific needs (e.g., adolescents) is limited.
One of four issue briefs related to the full length report entitled "Shaping Youth Behavior: Impact of School Environments on Physical Activity and Food Choices" designed to reinforce the points presented in this report in a concise and accessible format. These issue briefs contain best practices, relevant action steps, and a resource list that points the reader to supporting information. They are ideal for printing and distributing to stakeholders, policymakers, and other interested parties.
One of four issue briefs related to the full length report entitled "Shaping Youth Behavior: Impact of School Environments on Physical Activity and Food Choices" designed to reinforce the points presented in this report in a concise and accessible format. These issue briefs contain best practices, relevant action steps, and a resource list that points the reader to supporting information. They are ideal for printing and distributing to stakeholders, policymakers, and other interested parties.
USM Social Dashboard »
Check out our new Social Dashboard to see other ways to stay connected across the USM community.