Creating reporting and learning cultures in health-care organizations

Patient safety has emerged as an important issue in Canadian health care, as reflected in the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation's patient/client safety goals. Achieving these goals calls for concerted efforts within health-care organizations. To assist nurse leaders in their efforts in developing a culture of safety that is receptive to reporting and learning from adverse events and near misses, the authors explore the challenges and provide four recommendations for action. By enacting these recommendations, nurse leaders can support the analysis and actions necessary to identify improvements that will create safer health-care environments.