ARMC Enhances the Culture of Patient Safety

The Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) is helping hospitals enhance their culture of patient safety by facilitating TeamSTEPPS® workshops throughout Southern California. TeamSTEPPS (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) is a suite of tools and resources created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Department of Defense, that hospitals such as Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (ARMC) and other health care providers, can use to equip their staff with specialized communication techniques to prevent medical errors. TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based teamwork system aimed at optimizing patient care by improving communication and teamwork skills among health care professionals, including frontline staff. It includes a comprehensive set of ready-to-use materials and a training curriculum to successfully integrate teamwork principles into a variety of settings. The program provides higher quality, safer patient care by: producing highly effective medical teams that optimize the use of information and resources to achieve the best clinical outcomes for patients; increasing team awareness and clarifying team roles and responsibilities; resolving conflicts and improving information exchange; and eliminating barriers to quality and safety. TeamSTEPPS practices can be applied to any hospital-focused improvement effort – from hand hygiene to sepsis management. Core to the program is culture change. Working environments with mutual support create safer conditions for patients, improved morale and reduced employee turnover. “Promoting the ability to anticipate and support staff members’ needs through accurate knowledge of responsibilities, effective information exchange and workload balance has given our staff an important building block for success,” said Dr. Mark Comunale, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and chief medical officer for patient safety at ARMC, a 456-bed hospital in Colton. In the Inland Empire, a regional TeamSTEPPS collaborative (funded in part by Inland Empire Health Plan) has hospitals working together in a concentrated approach to accelerate improvement by learning from each other. The 2015 cohort included nine Inland Empire hospitals including ARMC, which is now acknowledged as a TeamSTEPPS champion in the region. HASC, founded in 1923, is a not-for-profit 501(c)(6) regional trade association. The mission of HASC is to serve the political, economic, informational and educational needs of hospitals and to help improve the quality and accessibility of health services.