Implementation of a safety framework in a rehabilitation hospital

This patient safety initiative was implemented at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, a fully affiliated hospital of the University of Toronto that operates in-patient and outpatient facilities on five sites. A working group was created to engage the leaders and employees in defining and implementing our "ideal" safety culture. A subset of this group became the Research Team, mandated to do the "discovery work" with external groups and internal stakeholders to provide valuable input for designing the safety culture model. This involved identifying the key components required to support a safety culture, testing this model with findings from the academic literature and best in class organizations and identifying the who, what, when, where and how of each key component. Future activities will focus on the integration of safety into existing programs, initiatives and policies, seeking feedback from staff, patients and families, and evaluating the effectiveness of our intervention and the extent of the culture change.