Building a culture of safety in interventional radiology

Safety in medicine is a pressing issue. It has been shown that deaths due to medical error range from 98,000 to 400,000 per year in the United States. Since this issue was broached in 1999, a variety of clinical and institutional safety interventions have been pioneered; however, the medical community has realized that without a strong institutional safety culture, the efficacy of these interventions is limited. Changing culture is often a long and difficult process. Just as the wider medical community slowly moves towards the practice of safety culture, interventional radiology must uphold a culture of safety along with its other core tenets throughout its continued evolution. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides many effective evidence-based training programs to help in the process of improving safety culture. Herein, we focus on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's comprehensive unit-based safety program and Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety programs and how they pertain to the interventional radiology setting. We also highlight key concepts that should be considered when embarking on an institutional cultural change. Finally, we focus on the role of safety culture as it pertains to those healthcare providers affected in the aftermath of an error, the "second victims."