Annie's Story: How a system's approach can change safety culture

Summary

Annie's story is an example of how healthcare organisations seeking high reliability embrace a just culture in all they do. This includes a system's approach to analysing near misses and harm events – looking to analyse events without a blame and shame approach.

Content

This 5 minute video, from MedStar Health, focuses on the human cost to our healthcare workforce when we fail to cultivate a just culture and systems approach overall, but especially when managing unfortunate harm events. This story has inspired conversation and can be used widely as a teaching tool.

When patient harm occurs, caregivers involved are often devastated along with the patient and family, yet many have had to navigate this storm alone. A systems approach in our healthcare workplace, along with the just culture, cultivates the sharing of knowledge and helps prevent patient harm from occurring altogether.

If you'd like to share your thoughts on Annie's Story, the systems approach and building a just culture, please comment below or join the conversation in our forum – Analysing events without blame or shame.