Patient Safety
January 26, 2006

Sample Outline for a Patient Safety Plan

Program goals (consistent with organization mission)

Scope of the Program

  • Activities & functions relating to patient safety
  • Participating sites, settings, and services

Structure

  • Management of the Program
  • Components (safety-related offices, committees, functions)
  • Interdisciplinary participation
  • Oversight

Mechanisms for coordination

  • Among components of the Program
  • Among the professional disciplines
  • Across the organization

Communicating with patients about safety

  • Patient education
  • Informing patients about their care

Staff education

  • Safety-related orientation & training
  • Team training
  • Expectations for reporting

Safety improvement activities

  • Definition of terms
  • Prioritization of improvement activities
  • Routine safety-related data collection and analysis
    • Incident reporting
    • Medication error reporting
    • Infection surveillance
    • Facility safety surveillance
    • Staff perceptions of, and suggestions for improving patient safety
    • Staff willingness to report errors
    • Patient/family perceptions of, and suggestions for improving patient safety
  • Identification, reporting, and management of sentinel events
  • Proactive risk reduction
    • Identification of high-risk processes
    • Failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis
  • Reporting of results
    • To the Patient Safety Program
    • To organization staff
    • To executive leadership and the governing body