Host a Conversation on Rethinking Patient Safety

To kick start your journey of rethinking patient safety, host “safety conversations” with your leaders, staff, volunteers, patients, residents and clients, care partners and community.  

What are safety conversations?

Safety conversations are an important step in creating safety, responding to and managing harm after it occurs and building a proactive patient safety culture.

They are respectful discussions between two or more people organizing, delivering, seeking and/or receiving care.

They also foster a culture shift that promotes an understanding that patient safety, staff safety and cultural safety go hand-in-hand, recognizing that all users and providers of care create safety together.

To make care safer we must start by thinking and talking about it differently because small changes have big impact.

Why this matters

Safety conversations change the way we think about safety. They help expand our focus from past harm to a more proactive, holistic view of safety. They promote the ‘practice of inquiry’ and help place value on soft intelligence (listening, observing and perceiving).

Through conversations, we empower a collective responsibility for safety – a culture of respect, trust, collaboration and open communication where patients, residents, clients, care partners, healthcare providers and staff feel safe to explore, speak up and act.