Fidelity and the impact of patient safety huddles on teamwork and safety culture: an evaluation of the Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare (HUSH) project.

Background: The Patient Safety Huddle (PSH) is a brief multidisciplinary daily meeting held to discuss threats to patient safety and actions to mitigate risk. Despite growing interest and application of huddles as a mechanism for improving safety, evidence of their impact remains limited. There is also variation in how huddles are conceived and implemented with insufficient focus on their fidelity (the extent to which delivered as planned) and potential ways in which they might influence outcomes.

Sustaining the commitment to patient safety huddles: insights from eight acute hospital ward teams.

Background: A recent initiative in hospital settings is the patient safety huddle (PSH): a brief multidisciplinary meeting held to highlight patient safety issues and actions to mitigate identified risks.

Aim: The authors studied eight ward teams that had sustained PSHs for over 2 years in order to identify key contributory factors.

Methods: Unannounced observations of the PSH on eight acute wards in one UK hospital were undertaken.