What is Safety Culture? According to Claudia Tartaglia Reis (2014), safety culture reflects the commitment of the organization’s professionals to continuously promote a safe therapeutic environment. Paola Andreoli, in an ANVISA lecture, mentioned that safety culture is defined by how people implement processes, norms, and standards in the organization. This culture influences behaviors and safety outcomes for everyone: professionals, patients, and the institution.
What we realize is that if top and middle management manage to instill this feeling in their employees through concrete examples and actions, not just empty speeches, a culture of safety is established.
How do we know if our institution has a safety culture? Are there stages of maturity? Some authors classify the maturity of safety culture into different levels, which allows us to better understand each stage and how we can evolve and move up this scale.
The following figures illustrate this trajectory and guide us to reach these steps.
A consolidated safety culture can also be measured by the value placed on teamwork, the commitment of its leaders to offering safer care to patients, the initiative-taking attitude towards errors, incidents, and events, and the generation of institutional learning rather than blame.
And what stage of maturity is your institution at regarding safety culture?
By Ana Carolina Silveira
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