Safety Checklist - Questions everyone should ask about safety

Q3: Are we actively encouraging reporting of adverse events?

Why is it important?

Organisations that report more adverse events usually have a better safety culture. We can't learn and improve if we don't know what the problems are. It is important to know what happened and why it happened. We also want to know about the things that nearly happened (near misses) as well as those that did.

What does 'good' look like?

• We understand that high reporting indicates an open and fair culture.
• We encourage staff to report things that go wrong.
• We make it easy to do so and we ensure we feedback themes and lessons learned across the organisation and nationally.
• We understand that effective, honest communication and team working supports situational awareness across teams and the organisation, and allows all team members to have a voice, be listened to and responded to.