In May, clinical and system employees evaluated the culture of patient safety at Northwestern Medicine. The Culture of Safety Survey yielded a 41% response rate for employees and a 12% response rate for physicians, fairly typical of such surveys nationally. Highlights include:
Overall, 87% of respondents agree that the organization is taking action to improve patient safety.
Employees and physicians feel that the health system has a nonpunitive culture of reporting errors, with 77% of employees and 75% of physicians agreeing with this statement.
Communication across clinical areas is an area of opportunity for the health system, with 67% of employees and 71% of physicians agreeing that communications are strong.
Staff members express confidence in the system’s commitment to safety and quality, with 89% of employees and 88% of physicians agreeing NM is committed to delivering safe, high-quality care.
From a system perspective, your valuable feedback from this survey is being used to help shape future safety training, tools, programs and more. If you participated in the survey, ask your manager to share department-specific data.
For more information about how to best work on improving your team’s safety culture, please visit the Quality and Patient Safety page on NM Interactive, or reach out to your local Patient Safety program manager: