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Web site spotlight: CE Article: Leadership standards make patient safety a priority

Nurse Leader Weekly, January 5, 2009

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It's the start of a new year, and The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) expects nurse managers and other hospital leaders at accredited facilities to take patient safety a little more seriously. The Leadership (LD) standards, which were updated for 2009, make clear leadership teams are responsible for the safety of their patients—and they can now be surveyed on the topic.

As part of LD.3.10, leaders are now required to create and maintain a culture of safety,. To understand how to do this, it's necessary to define culture, says Richard A. Sheff, MD, CMSL, chair and executive director of The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc., in Marblehead, MA.

"Culture drives behavior, and behavior drives results," he says. Because behavior is something learned and repeated every day, it is difficult to change. However, he says, it can be done.

The LD.3.10 regulation stipulates that leaders are responsible for measuring the culture of their facility. There are public domain surveys that can facilitate this process, such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

Facilities are also required to make changes within the organization based on the results of those measurements.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from the CE article, "2009 Leadership standards make patient safety a priority" featured in The Reading Room on HCPro's  online resource center, www.StrategiesforNurseManagers.com.

Did you know members of StrategiesforNurseManagers.com can receive free CE credits for this article with membership? Just login or subscribe today.

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