Why does the management team need to be involved?
Patient safety no longer depends solely on clinical practice. It also depends on how a healthcare organization is structured, governed, and managed .
That's why the role of the management team is becoming increasingly important.
Patient safety: a matter of care, organization, and management
Patient safety is no longer solely a matter of clinical practice. Today, it also depends on how a healthcare organization is structured, governed, and managed.
Over the past few decades, patient safety has undergone a profound evolution. What was initially addressed primarily through clinical practice, risk identification, or the prevention of adverse events has acquired a much broader scope.
National and international strategies, quality and accreditation standards, and the health systems themselves have progressively incorporated this vision.
Security is also managed
Improving safety requires safe clinical practices, but also leadership, organizational structures, defined responsibilities, risk management, information, learning, resources, and the ability to drive and sustain change.
Create the conditions for safe assistance
The conditions under which safe care is provided do not depend solely on clinical decisions.
They also depend on how assistance is organized, how responsibilities are distributed, what resources are allocated, how risks are managed, what information is used, and what priorities the organization sets.
The management team occupies a key position
Patient safety permeates the entire organization and requires a shared vision from the management team.
It is not about the management team carrying out all security actions, but about creating the conditions so that the entire organization can develop safe assistance.
What does it mean to run a secure organization?
We have made significant progress in defining what organizations should do to improve patient safety. However, we have not always been as clear in determining what those who lead them should do.
Managerial responsibilities appear distributed among strategies, standards, accreditation models, recommendations and best practices, but often without an integrated vision that allows understanding the role of the management team as a whole.
But what does this mean in practice for those who lead the organization? One way to approach their role is to start with five simple questions:
What responsibilities correspond to the management team?
What decisions should he/she make?
What structures does it need to promote?
What information should you know?
How should you participate in risk management?
Patient safety is part of the DNA of healthcare and must also be part of the DNA of its management.
A safe healthcare organization does not just provide safety: it incorporates safety into its way of organizing, deciding, and managing.
These questions help to define the problem, but they are not enough to solve it. For the management team to truly exercise its responsibility for patient safety, it is necessary to translate that general responsibility into specific areas of action and, within those areas, identify its role in the various activities carried out by the organization.
This has been precisely one of the objectives of the Impulso Project : to organize the available knowledge on patient safety from the perspective of management and leadership, and to transform it into a framework that allows identifying where the management team should intervene and what its role should be in each case.
The result is structured around ten key aspects for patient safety management , ranging from culture and leadership to risk management, participation, competencies, and healthcare technologies. Within each of these aspects, different actions are developed, and the management team can assume different roles for each action.
10 areas for managing patient safety
Safety is built from different areas of the organization. In each of these areas, the management team has a role to play.
Building and developing a safety culture
Lead the rollout of patient safety
Define structures, responsibilities, and resources
Identify, analyze and manage risks
Plan and implement risk management
Communicating, involving, and facilitating the participation of professionals
Inform, listen, and incorporate their participation
Organize and manage security documentation
Develop professional knowledge and skills
Managing the risks associated with health technologies
Not all areas require the same actions or the same level of involvement.
The challenge lies in identifying what role the management team plays in each of them and how to turn it into action.
This portal is constantly being updated. It regularly incorporates new content and resources for management teams. You can subscribe at the bottom of the page to receive information about the latest updates.
How can we help your management team?
The Portal brings together knowledge, tools and resources developed by Enclave de Salud to help management teams understand, develop, evaluate and improve their role in patient safety.
Understand
Knowledge to lead
Frameworks, analysis and content to understand management responsibilities and the main challenges of patient safety.
Develop
Management training and development
Content and resources to strengthen the capabilities of the management team and delve deeper into leadership, culture, risk management and security governance.
Evaluate
Knowing where we are
Self-assessment tools to analyze, individually or as a team, how key managerial responsibilities are being addressed and to identify opportunities for improvement.
Improve
Moving from assessment to action
Health Enclave support to interpret results, prioritize opportunities and turn them into concrete improvement goals and actions.
This framework objectively defines the responsibilities and obligations of the management team, as a governing body, to design, implement, and maintain a patient safety system integrated within an appropriate organizational structure…. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE METHODOLOGY
