Increasing pressure to perform erodes the safety concept

So if you want to safeguard the quality of services at your facility with a forward-looking approach, you must not only invest in comprehensive risk management, but also continually review it in the context of a sustainable safety culture. Currently, however, there is a lack of meaningful data on the observations of employees with regard to the work situation and the safety climate, which describe the status quo, show the in-house development also on a longitudinal basis, and help to analyze and improve the influence of safety culture on patient safety in the long term.

Against this background, the Picker Institute Germany and the Institute for Patient Safety at the University Hospital Bonn have developed an instrument for measuring the work situation and safety culture in German hospitals in a joint project. The Institute for Patient Safety at Bonn University Hospital has the topic of patient safety - and thus also the topic of safety culture - as a research focus and is currently supported with an endowed professorship by the Patient Safety Action Alliance.

"A culture, i.e., the values and norms are difficult to measure. But they have an impact on employee attitudes, perceptions and behavior, and these in turn are measurable," said Maria Nadj-Kittler, managing director of the Picker Institute.

The renowned BQS Institute for Quality and Patient Safety is responsible for marketing the new survey instrument. The BQS Institute has specialized in measuring quality in the area of inpatient care for many years and has contributed significantly to the current standard in the area of external quality assurance of hospitals in Germany. Kurt M. Lang, Managing Director of the BQS Institute, comments: "The constantly increasing pressure to perform in the area of inpatient facilities is eroding the concept of safety over time. We are glad to have found another important instrument that helps to secure the high quality standard in inpatient care also in the future. With our knowledge of the various quality levels, we will carefully incorporate this new tool into the further development of hospitals."

Further information on the survey instrument "Work Situation and Safety Culture" as well as other evaluation tools of the Picker Institute can be found here...