At Vanderbilt Health, we are committed to Making Safety Personal through becoming a high reliability organization. Safety and Reliability Science was learned from the High Reliability Organization, or HRO, prototypes. The process for becoming an HRO is called high reliability organizing. HROs are every bit as complex as healthcare. Consider all the moment-to-moment decisions that must be made while at war on a carrier deck, under weather related duress in a cockpit, or to avoid a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. But HROs have figured something out – they’ve figured out how to operate in high-risk situations by decreasing the probability of an error so they are very unlikely to make it all the way through the system to result in a bad outcome. Today, HROs are referred to as “ultra-safe” by changing the way they think and act. At Vanderbilt Health, high reliability demands we do the same.
We strive to deliver the exceptional care experience to our patients and families in the pursuit of zero preventable harm. Safety is everyone’s responsibility: high reliability leaders promote safety as an uncompromising core value, anticipate problems and find collaborative solutions, and set and maintain the highest standard; high reliability team members speak up for safety, are personally committed to safety, and are accountable to communicate clearly and completely.