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VvAA Risk Management for Healthcare and NLR Air Transport Safety Institute have initiated a cooperation with the aim of promoting safety in hospitals. Research by Nivel [1] revealed last year that hospitals have made significant progress in recent years. Hospitals now face the challenge to maintain that performance and preferably to further improve. Yet VvAA Risk Management for Healthcare and NLR Air Transport Safety Institute are jointly developing an instrument that assesses the safety culture in hospitals and facilitates hospitals to realize that ambition.

Working together for safe healthcare
There are already numerous initiatives in the area of patient safety, such as the introduction of a safety management system, conducting prospective risk analysis and a timeout procedure for operations. The importance of an effective risk management system is also described in the “Zorgbrede Governancecode”. An important foundation to make this system work well is safety culture. At the end of this month, VvAA Risk Management for Healthcare and NLR Air Transport Safety Institute will offer a tool, called SCAN, to measure safety culture and to make professionals aware of their responsibility to provide safe care. The cooperation is a unique combination of knowledge and experience from healthcare and aviation. A combination of two organizations that like to work together on safe healthcare.

SCAN provides insight
The improvement of safety in hospitals is dependent on many factors. The upcoming online tool SCAN provides insight into the safety culture of healthcare. Arjen Balk, NLR: “Conducting research on the safety culture has an impact and leads to confrontation and challenge within an organization. The best feedback we got was an employee of a large international airline. She saw the survey as a tool to create the necessary discussion in the organization and consequentially to identify actions for further improvement of their safety culture”. Lilian Knol, VvAA: “The many years of knowledge and experience of VvAA is incorporated in SCAN, creating a unique safety tool for the healthcare, based on the best practices in aviation. SCAN will give insight into the factors that influence the safety culture, so that effort can be focused on what can be improved further”.

[1] I. van Noord, N. Zwijnenberg en C. Wagner: Patiëntveiligheidscultuur in Nederlandse Ziekenhuizen: een stap in de goede richting? Utrecht/Amsterdam, NIVEL/EMGO+ Instituut, 2013