This week, healthcare providers across the country are celebrating Patient Safety Awareness Week with initiatives for care teams to keep patient safety top-of-mind.

Although this week is important, developing and maintaining a culture of patient safety requires an ongoing effort to educate, enforce, and track safety measures. Although many hospital units track metrics such as the number of days since the last hospital-acquired infection (HAI), it’s important to take proactive measures to keep staff engaged in following clinically-proven safety procedures.

Using tools such as CipherRounds can help sustain a culture of safety by helping to audit processes, alert to potential issues, and reinforce the right protocols. By implementing patient safety scripts or audits directly into the digital rounding tool, hospital leaders can hold staff members accountable with in-depth reports and shadow rounding opportunities.

As we have shared before, ensuring safer, patient-centered care is only possible through change initiatives that address people, processes, and technology. With the use of technology-enabled rounding processes, leaders can build a culture of ownership, audit for opportunity areas, and accelerate quality improvement initiatives.

Patient safety is the foundation of creating positive experiences across the care continuum. If you’d like to learn more about these types of patient safety programs, we encourage you to access this case study highlighting how one of our partners reduced harm rates by 37% across CAUTI, CLABSI, and PE/DVT events.