Understanding safety culture

One of the areas that I find most challenging now is when a statement is made about the ‘culture’ of a service. Whether this is from a regulator or colleagues, it's a label that sticks, and can be positive or negative. In 2018 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, called for a change in culture within the NHS that he said would reduce the number of patients who experience avoidable harm. With the 2018 report Opening the Door to Change, the CQC was calling on the NHS and its partners to promote a change in safety culture to give safety the priority it deserves.

‘Staff know that what they do carries risk, but the culture in which they work is one that views itself as essentially safe, where errors are considered exceptional, and where rigid hierarchical structures make it hard for staff to speak up about potential safety issues or raise concerns.’