The Time is Now

INQRI researcher Linda Flynn was recently quoted in an article on Nurse.com, "The Time is Now: 'Culture of Safety' Key to Preventing Errors." This powerful article presents evidence-based tools that are effective to preventing errors, like bar codes, while also focusing on the cultural shift required to intercept errors.

Flynn's own work dealt specifically with creating a culture of safety.

In a survey of New Jersey nurses in 14 hospitals, she found nurses reduced medication errors when they asked physicians to rewrite an order that didn’t use standard wording or was unclear; questioned why a patient was receiving a particular medication; did their own medication reconciliation; and educated patients and families about medications they were receiving.

The likelihood of nurses doing these things, she says, “was predicted by the work environment,” and specifically five factors: strong frontline nursing leadership; good collaboration between physicians and nurses; adequate resources; participation in decision-making; and foundations for quality, such as good mentoring, orientation and in-service education.

Click here to read the article and check out the accompanying Checklist for Nurse Patient-Safety Advocates.

Click here to read the blog posts from INQRI's series on the 10th anniversary of the To Err is Human report... because we agree with the article: "The time is now."

Click here to watch Dr. Flynn and her collaborator Dr. Dong Suh present their findings at the 2009 INQRI annual meeting.