April 20, 2017
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Please note: This event is for invited researchers only.
Title:
Patient Safety Culture: Evidence from Healthcare and Directions for Building a More Positive Instrument
Talk description:
Patient safety is a key healthcare value that has been neglected historically. In order to facilitate the promotion of patient safety in healthcare organizations, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) disseminates cultural evaluation and development tools that can help healthcare providers change their organizational cultures. We have recently studied both facility- and individual-level predictors of nursing home safety culture and the impact of safety culture on resident outcomes for nursing homes participating in a national AHRQ-funded collaborative to reduce infection rates. A study of the workers in participating facilities found that perceptions of safety culture varied widely among nursing home workers, with administrators consistently perceiving safety culture better than bedside staff who spent more time with residents. At the same time, higher safety culture scores were not linked to improved infection rates, and although nursing homes in the collaborative saw declining infection rates, safety culture scores changed very little, and no association was found between initial or over-time safety culture scores and infection rates. Our findings suggest that significant reductions in infection rates can occur without improvements in safety culture. Discussion will focus on why patient safety culture instruments have not been useful in large scale change in the healthcare sector and next steps for measuring important aspects of organizational culture, particularly positive aspects of cultural change.
Biography:
Dr. Jane Banaszak-Holl is currently Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health, and Associate Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology in the School of Medicine. She also holds a position as Visiting Professor of Health Services Research at the University of Greenwich and serves on the Board of Directors for the United Methodist Retirement Communities and their subsidiary, Thome PACE of Jackson, MI. She has done research on care options for seniors for over 20 years and is focused on improving the quality of care and quality of life for seniors living in long-term care settings as well as for employees working within this context. Her current research includes studies of how corporate ownership impacts health in nursing homes, the link between organizational culture and performance in healthcare systems, implementation of best practices in healthcare, and how leadership influences clinical care.
Research is the heart of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), and we want to make sure that we support each other in developing high quality research. To that end, we created the Adderley Positive Research Incubator for sharing and encouraging POS-related research ideas that are at various stages of development.
Learn more about the Adderley Positive Research Incubator here and direct questions about individual sessions to Julia Lee at jooalee@umich.edu.