"Just Culture" in Healthcare Settings
The concept of “Just Culture” in healthcare focuses on creating a non-blame environment, in which nurses and other working staff can feel comfortable in reporting any mistake made. Evidence supports that some healthcare settings tend to blame the individual which can result in a culture of fear and more errors. Focusing on just punishment of an individual usually does not result in fixing the overarching problem. “Just culture” takes the approach of blaming the facility or organization, creating an environment that is more honest and open. This scholarly project was conducted to explore the evidence on “Just culture” and present how potentially implementing it at a clinical agency could be beneficial. A review of current literature was conducted on scholarly journals and articles that are peer-reviewed. This literature review included a fundamental review of ten reviewed scholarly journals and articles that had multiple observational studies, mixed-methods of quantitative and qualitative data, controlled surveys, frameworks, and several randomized controlled trials. The evidence found that when implementing “Just culture” into healthcare practice, patient safety is improved because employees are held accountable as a collective whole. Another conclusion found is that more employees hold themselves accountable and proactively monitor their work environment before an error can occur. Lastly, just culture improves communication in the work environment, creating fewer medication errors and overall improving the safety of the hospital.