2016 HRM Impact Award Honorable Mention

PROJECT TITLE

Commitment to Safety (CTS) initiative 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Mayo Clinic introduced the Commitment to Safety (CTS) initiative in 2012 as an effort to strengthen the organization’s culture of safety and eliminate preventable harm to patients and staff. The initiative includes a comprehensive learning process known as the Team-based Engagement Model (TEM). TEM engages unit leaders and their teams in a methodology which evaluates and enhances the safety culture, team effectiveness and performance of their multidisciplinary work unit. The model was developed through a partnership between Mayo Clinic and Dr. Allan Frankel of Pascal Metrics in 2011.

A current state of the multidisciplinary work unit is obtained quantitatively via the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) and qualitatively via focus group interviews. This data is provided to the work unit during a TEM training session. Included with the data is discussion of three key concepts: Culture of Safety, Team Behaviors and development of a Learning System. The training culminates in the work unit developing two aim statements to begin their journey to a culture of safety.

So far, the training has been provided to 50 work units reaching approximately 3,000 employees. Work implemented while initiating TEM covered a wide variety of improvement categories: finance, patient experience, quality, safety and staff satisfaction. As of February 2016, achievements include increased amount of units in the SAQ’s 76-100th percentile for Teamwork from 10 to 25 percent within one iteration of TEM without decreasing the Safety and Job Satisfaction Domain; an average overall domain score of +3 was seen as well as on average increases in all domains; the Teamwork Domain for Florida units increased from 69 to 72 percent which is above industry mean.

The greatest success of the initiative comes from staff comments noting that this effort has helped Mayo Clinic continue to focus on its primary value: The needs of the patient come first.