International journal of health care quality assurance
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 2007
Promoting safety: longer-term responses of three health professional groups to a safety improvement programme.
Patient safety has been addressed since 2002 in the health system of New South Wales, Australia via a Safety Improvement Programme (SIP), which took a system-wide approach. The programme involved two-day courses to educate healthcare professionals to monitor and report incidents and analyse adverse events by conducting root cause analysis (RCA). This paper aims to predict that all professions would favour SIP but that their work and educational histories would result in doctors holding the least and nurses the most positive attitudes. Alternative hypotheses were that doctors' relative power and other professions' team-working skills would advantage the respective groups when conducting RCAs. ⋯ Few longer-term SIPs' assessments have been realised and the differences between professional groups have not been well quantified. As a result of this paper, benefits of and barriers to conducting RCAs are now more clearly understood.