Throughout the fall, clinical leaders from across Vanderbilt Health will attend in-person events that will help them gain new tools, learn skills, and reinforce tactics intended to make Vanderbilt Health a High Reliability Organization.
Modeled after other industries such as aviation, nuclear power, and the military, High Reliability Organizations demonstrate a commitment to safety that results in remarkably few accidents or major errors despite the complex, high-risk, and high-pressure environments in which they operate. This commitment to safety is strengthened by strong cultural characteristics and repeatable and documented systems and processes.
Vanderbilt Health’s multi-year journey to becoming a High Reliability Organization, known as Making Safety Personal, launched in Mar. 2021, and is now moving into Phase 3, which focuses on implementation and habit-forming.
The Making Safety Personal: Leader Safety Skills bootcamps will be held in various locations across the organization, with multiple timeslots to accommodate leaders’ schedules.
“Our bootcamps will help our leaders and managers learn important leadership skills that will foster a robust culture of safety at Vanderbilt Health,” said Jenny Slayton, DNP, RN, senior vice president for Quality, Safety and Risk Prevention. “We’ll also reinforce the Universal Safety and Reliability Skills that our team members will be learning and adopting beginning in calendar year 2025.”
Vanderbilt Health’s Making Safety Personal journey was designed with input from key stakeholders from multiple areas of the organization, with input from consultants with deep expertise in guiding other health care organizations on these types of complex implementations. The extensive work to get Vanderbilt Health to this point has been led by the Quality, Safety and Risk prevention team and represents the significant effort of large groups of people throughout the health system.
According to C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer, “Every patient, family member, and employee at Vanderbilt depend on VUMC to be a safe place all the time. Our work toward becoming a High Reliability organization will help us be a place where safety is automatic and we support each other in speaking up.”
The Leader Skills bootcamps kick off Sept. 18. Invited leaders can log into the Learning Exchange to select a date that works for them.