Physician engagement in organisational patient safety through the implementation of a Medical Safety Huddle initiative: a qualitative study (15 September 2023)

Summary

Efforts to increase physician engagement in quality and safety are most often approached from an organisational or administrative perspective. Given hospital-based physicians’ strong professional identification, physician-led strategies may offer a novel strategic approach to enhancing physician engagement. It remains unclear what role medical leadership can play in leading programmes to enhance physician engagement. In this study, Rotteau et al. explore physicians’ experience of participating in a Medical Safety Huddle initiative and how participation influences engagement with organisational quality and safety efforts.

They found that The Medical Safety Huddle initiative supports physician engagement in quality and safety through intrinsic motivation. However, the huddles’ implementation must align with the organisation’s multipronged patient safety agenda to support multidisciplinary collaborative quality and safety efforts and leaders must ensure mechanisms to consistently address reported safety concerns for sustained physician engagement.