Burnout and low staff morale have been associated with poor patient safety outcomes. This study focused on the association between organizational climate, burnout and morale, and the use of seclusion and restraints in inpatient psychiatric hospitals. The authors recommend that initiatives aimed at reducing restraints and seclusion in inpatient psychiatric facilities also include a component aimed at improving organizational climate and staff morale.

Researchers conducted focus groups in this qualitative study of staff in mental healthcare settings and assessed the barriers and facilitators to incident reporting. The authors identified unique challenges to incident reporting in mental health, including the incidence of violence and aggressive behavior. Participants often underreported violent or aggressive events because they attributed the behavior to the patient’s diagnosis, and cited dissatisfaction with how reported incidents were handled by police.

This study focused on healthcare workers speaking-up behavior in six psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland. The authors found significant differences in speaking-up despite having moderate to high scores on items that were associated with psychological safety. Although nurses reported patient safety concerns more frequently, they also remained silent more often compared with psychologists and physicians, indicating they may feel less psychological safety.

Establishing a culture of safety within health care organizations requires strong leadership support. This cross-sectional survey study of nurses, allied health professionals, and unit clerks working in the inpatient setting at a single hospital found that positive perceptions of senior leadership support for safety and positive perceptions of teamwork were associated with positive perceptions of patient safety. In addition, when staff perceived senior leadership support for safety to be lacking, the positive impact of direct managerial leadership on staff perceptions of patient safety was more pronounced.

Although patient safety has been a focus of nursing care in hospitals, this study found significant gaps in nurses' perceptions of patient safety in psychiatric inpatient units. For example, none of the interviewed nurses mentioned the importance of preventing inpatient suicide, which was the topic of a recent Joint Commission sentinel event alert.

The TeamSTEPPS teamwork training program was successfully implemented at a psychiatric hospital, with resulting improvement in staff perceptions of teamwork.

This news article highlights an award-winning addiction treatment center’s strategy to embrace patient safety improvement.