Sustaining a culture of safety and optimising patient outcomes while implementing zero harm programme: a 2-year project of the nursing services – SBAHC

Abstract

This quality improvement report details how Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City (The City), the largest rehabilitation facility within Middle East with a capacity of 511 beds and more than 20 nursing in-patient units improved the quality and patient safety culture in nursing services after successfully adopting and implementing the zero harm programme.In healthcare settings, the idea of zero harm including zero incidents, zero injuries and injury-free are commonly used to highlight the importance of patient safety. Patient injuries and deaths resulting from hospital-acquired illnesses such as medication administration errors, falls, central line-associated bloodstream infections, hospital-acquired pressure injuries and catheter-associated urinary tract infection are largely preventable and grossly unacceptable occurrences. Achieving zero incidents of such critical measures can significantly impact treatment plan and enhance patient experience.The projects’ purpose was to build a new culture of safety by implementing innovative strategy designed to protect patients from preventable harm while maintaining an extraordinary high standard of quality patient care. Additionally, the programme was established with the aim of instilling a sense of commitment to every nurse working in this organisation to anticipate potential harms and to be vigilant to prevent it before it reaches the patient.This document also describes a set of initiatives aimed at mitigating preventable incidents and ultimately achieving zero harm on our organisation. The result showed a significant increase by 95% between the percentage of nursing units that had 365 days of zero harm in 2020 and 2021. This improvement indicates that the concept of zero harm had been successfully inculcated among nursing units and had motivated nursing staff to uphold a higher culture of patient safety. Furthermore, by incorporating the Just Culture model into the electronic reporting system, the reporting rate of occurrences in the zero-harm programme was supported and sustained.