What can a zoo teach healthcare about patient safety?

Summary

Healthcare isn’t the only industry that’s working to protect people in dangerous environments. Each year at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) National Forum, the IHI faculty leads excursions to organisations outside of healthcare to learn about how they do their work.

Kathy Duncan, IHI Faculty, leads a trip to the Central Florida Zoo, which has one of North America’s largest collections of venomous snakes. In this video, Duncan goes behind the scenes to learn about the staff’s safety procedures for handling snakes when they need to be moved from their enclosures.

Content

Learning objectives

At the end of this activity, you will be able to:

• List three principles of reliable systems.
• Explain how the Central Florida Zoo uses these three principles in protecting staff from venomous snakes.
• Discuss how the zoo’s safety system can be applied to health care.