Our motto at The Salus Network is "safety structure first, safety culture second." Simply put, safety culture is the way we do things around here, especially when no one is watching! We don’t believe in presenting safety culture improvements in terms of poorly defined transactional changes that echo academic theory and psycho-babble. We believe in order to steer safety culture in a positive direction we need to focus on accountability vs. blame, better communication and teamwork, break the code of silence, and reinforce safety is everyone’s job.

At the end of the day, whether you’re a nurse, physician, hospital administrator, or anyone else for that matter, when you come into work you need to be able to easily comprehend what’s expected of you in any safety culture or new safety culture initiative.

We believe safety culture, as the way we do things around here with no one is watching, is similar to that of a restaurant. It is a well-known fact that we are what we eat. We can choose to eat healthy and reap the rewards or eat poorly and suffer the consequences, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. The restaurant, in this case, is the hospital (or any organization for that matter). Senior management decides the menu for us to choose from and like any good restaurant there are daily specials. So, a breakdown of the analogy looks something like this:

• Restaurant = The Hospital
• Creating the Menu = Senior Hospital Management
• We are what we eat = Physicians, Nurses, Pharmacists, Administrators, etc.
• Daily Menu Specials = Incentives to create “buy-in” by all

We accomplish safety culture change management by assisting you in processing specific safety culture inputs that include:

1. An Informed Culture

• People understand the hazards and risks involved in their own clinical care operations
• Staff work continuously to identify and overcome threats to safety

2. A Just Culture

• Errors must be understood but willful violations cannot be tolerated
• The workforce knows and agrees on what is acceptable and unacceptable

3. A Reporting Culture

• People are encouraged to voice safety concerns
• When safety concerns are reported they are analyzed and appropriate action is taken

4. A Learning Culture

• People are encouraged to develop and apply their own skills and knowledge to enhance organizational safety
• Staff are updated on safety issues by management
• Safety reports are fed back to staff so that everyone learns from lessons

A healthy menu with exciting, desirable specials that taste good all lead to eating better. Contrary to popular belief, culture can be changed quickly depending on the quality of the incentives. Maybe we need to have better menu specials…

For more information contact:

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