Learning How to Smartly and Adaptively Manage High Functioning Safety Cultures in US Healthcare Organizations During COVID-19

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruption to healthcare delivery systems. To respond to the crisis, healthcare organizations have had to reorganize instantly, with little time to reflect on the roles to assign to their patient safety (PS) and quality improvement (QI) managers. The increasing complexity of the United States healthcare system has compounded the likelihood of mistakes. Expecting error-free performance from healthcare personnel working in exceedingly high stressed environments is idealistic (World Health Organization, 2019). This topic is essential because medical errors are related to patient safety. Medical errors are “preventable adverse” events occurring during medical care administration that can be harmful to the patient (Carver et al., 2020). Patient safety focuses on preventing and reducing safety hazards, errors, and risks that may happen while providers administer health care (World Health Organization, 2019). The following are five components necessary to execute patient safety:

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  Clear-cut guidelines.

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  Leadership capability.

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  Data to lead safety enhancements.

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  Competent health care specialists.

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  Patient engagement (World Health Organization, 2019).

Additionally, these five components are not exclusive of one another. Each of these belongs within the organizational system and systematically interacts with the other parts through an inter-related organization design continuum. All these are influenced by human resources and organizational leadership.