During the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has put enormous stress on the healthcare delivery system and shed light on its vulnerabilities. Rapid changes to systems and processes in response to the crisis—along with shifting guidelines, staffing shortages, and burnout—have exacerbated existing patient safety risks and introduced new ones. While moving forward may feel daunting, these experiences offer countless opportunities to learn, adapt, and build stronger systems of care.

We’re using this Patient Safety Awareness Week (March 13-19, 2022) to share tools that can support healthcare organizations as they refocus their patient safety efforts and priorities. Organizational capacity to manage risk and address safety issues on an ongoing basis is essential to making our healthcare systems safer. Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety provides a clear path to advance patient safety in organizations across the continuum of care and practical tools to guide the work. Safer Together addresses a key issue hindering patient safety progress over the past 20 years: everyone is approaching patient safety independently and learning is siloed within organizations. Effective implementation of evidence-based best practices requires a shared framework. Safer Together provides that shared framework, and it focuses on the systems and infrastructure organizations have in place rather than specific solutions to individual problems.

Tools to Get You Started form Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety

Self-Assessment Tool

A tool that provides a helpful starting point for prioritizing your patient safety improvements efforts.

Implementation Resource Guide

A resource for implementing the national action plan recommendations and to track your patient safety improvement efforts over time.

Learn more about the Safer Together: National Action Plan and Get the Tools