Measuring a Safety Culture: Critical Pathway or Academic Activity?

This issue of the journal, Modak et al. present an instrument that may help measure the extent to which a patient safety culture exists in an ambulatory setting within the US health care system.

Abstract

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified six core needs in a health care system, the first of which was safety.1 Furthermore, several IOM committees and others have identified the creation of a “culture of safety” as the key institutional requirement to achieve safe medical care.1–3 In this issue of the journal, Modak et al.4 present an instrument that may help measure the extent to which a patient safety culture exists in an ambulatory setting. While these authors and others have done considerable work on defining and measuring a culture of safety in the hospital setting,5,6 few have tackled the difficult task of measuring a safety culture in the ambulatory arena within the US health care system. Even in the hospital setting, where there has been more effort, the development of a culture of safety within all US hospitals has been spotty and, for some safety advocates, too slow.7