By Healthcare Facilities Today

An assessment guide to determine whether an organization is maintaining a culture of safety is available on the Becker's ASC Review website. The guide includes 13 items to evaluate. The items are grouped into three areas: 

Effective training:

1. Training must be provided to all clinicians and staff involved in providing care

2. Conduct periodic refresher training on teamwork skills

3. Conduct new-hire training

Hardwiring behavior:

4. Customized, site-specific safety tools (e.g. checklists, communications scripting, standard operation procedures, etc.) must be created and implemented

Leadership actions:

5. Managers and administrators must monitor on departments that have implemented teamwork training and safety tools

6. Leadership must be willing to conduct coaching conversations with low performers and impose consequences for poor performance

7. Ensure safety and teamwork become part of the corporate mission or annual goals

8. Safety and quality metrics must be part of the dashboard used to measure performance 

9. Executive assessment and reward systems must be aligned with teamwork-based safety initiatives

10. Physicians must be actively recruited as partners in support of the teamwork-based safety and quality program

11. Revise the Policy & Procedures Manual and other unit documents to include teamwork and behavioral guidelines

12. Employed physicians, nursing, and staff member evaluation systems must include teamwork and communication behavior metrics

13. Institute a system to capture teamwork-based safety program successes and publicize those to the organization

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