Building a learning management framework for patient safety: Lessons from a large multistate system (20 September 2024)

Summary

Many healthcare networks strive to become a high reliability organisation (HRO)—an organization that maintains a safe environment despite the challenges and complexities of its daily operations, many of which are considered high-risk. This study in Patient Safety looks at how Ascension health, a multistate health system, has built a customised learning management system to help it become a HRO. Network-based learning systems have been recognised as an effective way to share knowledge and collaborate toward safety, but there has been little published on how they have been applied in healthcare organisations. A team at Ascension has been developing a comprehensive learning management network that provides continuous, widespread patient safety education through various channels, including event reporting, data analysis, storytelling and causal analysis. This article shares the lessons they learned about what did and didn’t work and promising strategies. These insights can be used by other health systems who want to introduce a similar framework to foster a supportive environment for patient safety.