What’s at the Foundation of Safer Care?

Voices Shaping Safer Care is a blog series featuring reflections and experiences from people across health and social care in Canada. Through stories from patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, leaders and community partners, the series explores the everyday moments, relationships and systems that influence safety.

There’s always more to notice

A person hesitates to ask a question. A care team makes a decision without hearing from someone who knows the patient well. A service is available, but difficult for some people to reach.  

Moments like these can tell us a great deal about safety. This Canadian Patient Safety Week, What Shapes Safer Care? invites us to look more closely at the experiences, relationships and systems that influence how people give and receive care. To understand what shapes safer care, we need to look at it from different perspectives. What feels safe, respectful or accessible to one person may look very different to someone else. The experiences and preferences we bring to a conversation can shape what we notice, the questions we ask and the decisions we make. 

Understanding what shapes safer care means paying attention to what isn’t always obvious. Who feels safe speaking up? Whose knowledge is valued? What affects how someone accesses care? What makes meaningful partnership meaningful? 

These questions connect to four areas of focus that are foundational to safe, high-quality care: engagement-capable environments, cultural safety, patient safety, and health equity. Each foundation adds something different to our understanding of care.  

• Engagement-capable environments create the conditions for meaningful partnership – they help people feel safe speaking up.

• Cultural safety brings attention to power, trust and respect, and help different sources of knowledge be considered in care delivery.

• Patient safety broadens the focus beyond preventing harm to the relationships, environments and systems that contribute to safe care.

• Health equity asks us to recognize and address differences in access to care and outcomes.

The questions we ask about care shape what we notice. But what we notice about that care is also shaped by where we stand.

What are you noticing in your own setting?

Our own experiences can only tell us so much about how others experience care. Listening to colleagues, patients, caregivers and communities can help us understand what shapes safer care for others, and help us ask questions that we might not have considered:

• Whose voices are informing our understanding of care, and what voices might we be missing?

• What helps people feel heard, respected and able to participate? What might stand in the way?

• What can we learn from people who encounter care differently about inequities, risks or opportunities for improvement?

These conversations can challenge assumptions and help us make more informed choices about how care is designed, delivered and improved.

Learning that meets you where you are

Being open to what others can show us takes practice and intention. So does building our understanding of the conditions that influence people’s experiences of care. 

The Foundations of Healthcare Excellence are intended to support that ongoing learning. The self-paced e-learning series explores engagement-capable environments, cultural safety, patient safety, and health equity, four concepts that organizations across Canada identified as priorities for deeper learning and action. Throughout the series, individual and team-based activities create space to reflect, exchange perspectives and consider what the learning means in your own context. 

You’ve asked what shapes safer care. Now take the next step and start building your foundation.