Section: Applying CUSP to MRSA and SSI Prevention
The Science of Safety is a foundational framework for the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) that helps us understand how patient safety is the outcome of systems, rather than individual errors. Each system is designed to achieve exactly the results that it gets.
This section will go over the Science of Safety, the principles of safe design, the Swiss Cheese Model, and the accompanying concepts.
Presentations
Presentation: The Science of Safety: Principles in Practice
After reviewing the content of this presentation, viewers will be able to—
- Describe the patient safety risks that patients face in healthcare environments.
- Explain the four principles of the science of safety and how they inform teams who seek to strengthen their organization's safety culture.
- Describe the characteristics of safe systems and outline the main strategies used to create them.
- Explain how diverse teams foster a safety culture and protect patients from safety defects
Documents:
Presentation: Learning From Defects: Applying the Swiss Cheese Model of System Failures
After reviewing the content of this presentation, viewers will be able to—
- Review the definition of a defect
- Review the “Swiss cheese model” of system failure
- Apply a patient example to discover system failures
Documents:
Tools and Resources
Understand the Science of Safety (ƵCore CUSP Toolkit)
The Science of Safety emphasizes the importance of system design, safe design principles, and an analysis of patient safety as a science. For more information, please follow this link to the Understand the Science of Safety module of the ƵCore CUSP Toolkit.
Video: CUSP: Understand the Science of Safety – ƵPatient Safety
A video summary of the key principles of safe design—standardize care, create independent checklists for important processes, and learn from defects. This video is recommended for new members of CUSP teams. This video is publicly available on YouTube.
Video: CUSP: Principles of Safe Design Apply to Technical and Teamwork Outcomes—ƵPatient Safety
Safe design principles should be used for both technical and adaptive work. This video discusses how to apply safe design principles for improved outcomes. This video is publicly available on YouTube.
