Health and safety management - Essay Example

Nonetheless, this essay focuses on the safety culture in healthcare organizations. According to Power (2011), having a culture that promotes and supports safety has been identified as core to improving safety in the healthcare sector, as well as other organizations. For this reason, healthcare organizations today are adopting concepts of safety culture from other high-reliability industries such as nuclear energy and aviation. This includes the implementation of teamwork and communication models in healthcare organizations.

In addition, this involves the creation of work environments that promote the safety of patients. In doing this, healthcare organizations have the goal of becoming high-reliability organizations (ECRI Institute 2009). In the context of the healthcare organization, safety culture encompasses different aspects, including “belief that harm is untenable, ability to speak up and raise concerns, obligation to listen when others have a concern, recognition of personal and organizational hazards, and obligation to work as a team” (ECRI Institute 2009, p. 2). Safety culture in a healthcare organization also involves commitment to safety by the highest levels of the organization (Occupational Safety & Health Administration n.d). Additionally, in order to promote organizational commitment to safety, the leaders offer incentives and rewards (Goodman 2004).

This also involves adequate communication among all workers across different organizational levels. Above all, there is openness about errors and reporting of problems in the organization, and organizational learning and effective response to problems and errors is maintained (Leonard & Frankel 2006). Furthermore, Eeckelaert et al. (2011) note that a healthcare organization that strongly upholds a safety culture frequently assesses its safety culture through different assessment methods, including use of interviews and questionnaires on the staff and management. Oh (2012) notes that, most healthcare organizations in the United States today highly focus on patient safety and quality improvement.

Patient safety culture is therefore, considered part of the safety culture in healthcare organizations. This is because healthcare organizations provide services to patients, thus patients are their main clients. Oh (2012) notes that patient safety culture begins at the top, which is the highest level of the healthcare organization. Goodman (2004) notes that the executive leadership in healthcare organizations must promote a culture of safety and be committed to it, in order for this to be emulated by the other people in the organization, since patient safety culture involves everyone at different levels of a healthcare organization.

Nonetheless, according to ECRI Institute (2009), in order for such initiatives of patient safety and quality improvement to be successful, it is necessary for the healthcare organization to embrace an overall culture of safety. Black (2002) argues that a safety culture is of benefit to healthcare organizations. This mainly involves looking after the health and wellbeing of patients and staff. Without a safety culture in any healthcare organization, there are different detrimental consequences that will be experienced.

A safety culture in healthcare organization promotes the health and wellbeing of the staff. Staff are core to any organization, therefore, imperative for the organizational performance (Hall