Senior Leaders Learn During Patient Safety Rounds

She then starts off the questioning and lets the senior executives take over.

"There's always going to be that little bit of reluctance initially, but once [staff members] get talking, it doesn't matter, and the playing field is leveled. They're very forthcoming about their issues," says Graydon-Baker.

Questions senior leaders might ask include:

• How will the next patient be harmed in your area?


• How does the environment fail you?


• What happened the last time a patient was hurt as a result of how we delivered care?


• What keeps you up at night?

Keys to successful patient safety rounds

There are three main requirements for ensuring that your patient safety rounds will be a success:

• The full participation of senior leadership is a must. Unless senior leaders are engaged and believe that hosting the WalkRounds is essential to patient safety, staff members will not be convinced that leadership really cares.


• A robust database or infrastructure is necessary for compiling and analyzing the data that come out of the WalkRounds.


• A mechanism for follow-up with the staff members involved with the WalkRounds is necessary.

Graydon-Baker says about one month after the WalkRounds take place, she sends out questionnaires to those staff members who were included to gauge whether they thought the leaders were listening to their concerns.

"There are questions like, ‘Do you think we take you seriously?' and ‘Have you seen improvements?' on the survey," says Graydon-Baker. "But that's solely dependent on the feedback you give them—even if it's negative feedback, even if it's, 'I can't do this right now; we heard you, and we're going to track this.'"