Engaging All Employees in Efforts to Achieve High Reliability.

DRAMATIC AND NUMEROUS advances in science, technology, and medicine provide new opportunities to keep people healthy as well as to diagnose, treat, and cure disease. Unfortunately, increasing complexity increases opportunities for mistakes and errors, particularly in healthcare organizations as they struggle to prevent patient harm (). Safety problems persist and harm to patients continues despite widespread attention to the need for improvement ().

Highly reliable behaviors.

A lack of respect between nursing and medical disciplines can lead to a lack of trust and disruptive behaviors that are a significant part of the culture of health care today. In order to ensure the best care for all patients, a systematic approach to defining desired and undesired behaviors is a place to begin. A systems view requires an appreciation of local culture and operations.