To achieve patient care excellence, improving the quality of occupational health and safety in healthcare must be a priority. My goal in this effort is to provide a high quality comprehensive user-friendly website with well-organized Internet links to credible sources of occupational health and safety information primarily related to healthcare. Healthcare Safety Info-eLink™ is for occupational health and safety professionals and other stakeholders in the healthcare industry who are committed to advancing safe working conditions in Canadian hospitals.

GUIDING PRINCIPLE

Maximize Efforts to Improve Quality of Patient Care in Hospitals through improving Healthcare Workplace Health and Safety Conditions and Practices.

PURPOSE

Data on the Canadian workforce has consistently indicated that healthcare workers are at greater risk of workplace injuries and more mental health problems than any other occupational group (Health Canada). In the U.S. for example:

Health Care is the second-fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy, employing over 12 million workers. Women represent nearly 80% of the health care work force. Health care workers face a wide range of hazards on the job, including needlestick injuries, back injuries, latex allergy, violence, and stress. Although it is possible to prevent or reduce health care worker exposure to these hazards, health care workers actually are experiencing increasing numbers of occupational injuries and illnesses. Rates of occupational injury to health care workers have risen over the past decade. By contrast, two of the most hazardous industries, agriculture and construction, are safer today than they were a decade ago
(NIOSH).

In addition to this unacceptable situation, many patients suffer preventable care-related adverse events (AEs) during hospitalization. AEs among hospital patients are unintended injuries or complications resulting in death, disability or prolonged hospital stay that arise from health care management. A study in 2004 funded by CIHI and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research found that 7.5% of adult medical or surgical patients suffered adverse events in hospital, about one third of which were deemed preventable. Although most patients recover within six months, each year between 9,250 and 23,750 Canadian adults experience a “preventable” adverse event in hospital and later die, according to the study (Baker et al. 2004). Therefore, patient safety in Canadian healthcare organizations has become an increasingly important topic and led to the recent creation of the (Canadian Patient Safety Institute). To address the issue of identifying strategies for improving patient care, much valuable effort has been focused on application of new technologies, developing better communication and coordination among clinicians, and creation of a patient adverse (sentinel) event information database to be shared by hospitals for learning purposes Canadian College of Health Service Executives. However, a growing body of research indicates that healthcare worker health and safety conditions are not just an important but an essential factor associated with the quality of patient care (Yassi et al., 2005). Specifically, efforts to increase the quality of hospital occupational health and safety conditions and practices can be expected to have a direct positive impact on patient safety outcomes and an overall reduction in healthcare costs. Since knowledge is an essential component required for advancing this valuable concept to its maturity, this webservice was founded to provide a simplified and efficient means of accessing useful healthcare occupational, environmental and related safety information.
Christopher Lipowski, CRSP

“Why do we chose to work in healthcare? Because it gives us a chance to make a difference in the lives of others during our short time on earth. If enough of us do that, we will make this world a better place for our children and grandchildren.”
~ Quint Studer

"Culture clearly announces every day to every worker whether safety is a key value...it determines the extent of casualties, trauma disorders, stress claims and compensation paid...and it dictates whether elements of a safety system succeed or fail. The goal is to change your company’s culture until safety becomes an internal value that is incorporated in every plan, decision, and work activity. In the new safety culture, every employee will know that the only way to do anything is safely." — Dr. Dan Petersen

The Quality Worklife-Quality Healthcare Collaborative defines a healthy healthcare workplace as: A work setting that takes a strategic and comprehensive approach to providing the physical, cultural, psychosocial and work/job design conditions that maximize health and well-being of healthcare providers, quality of patient outcomes and organizational performance. “A fundamental way to better healthcare is through healthier healthcare workplaces. It is unacceptable to work in, receive care in, govern, manage and fund unhealthy healthcare workplaces.” — (QWQHC)

“Unsafe acts are like mosquitoes. You can try to swat them one at a time, but there will always be others to take their place. The only effective remedy is to drain the swamps in which they breed. In the case of errors and violations, the "swamps" are equipment designs that promote operator error, bad communications, high workloads, budgetary and commercial pressures, procedures that necessitate their violation in order to get the job done, inadequate organization, missing barriers, and safeguards . . . the list is potentially long but all of these latent factors are, in theory, detectable and correctable before a mishap occurs." — James T. Reason.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
~ Albert Einstein