A safer SickKids for all

“Our expected safety behaviours – making a personal commitment to safety, supporting a questioning attitude, being accountable for clear and complete communication – are centred around the importance of asking questions, listening to each other, and acting when necessary.” 

– Rick Wray, Director, Quality Management, Safety and Infection Prevention & Control, and co-lead of Caring Safely 

The Caring Safely program is core to our strategy to ensure quality and accountability in everything we do. Caring Safely is about eliminating preventable harm by reliably deploying specific safety strategies and tools while paying attention to important elements of a safety culture and associated behaviours.  

Looking at our safety outcomes over the past few years, during which we have faced a global pandemic, we have held our ground on some of our safety achievements, but still have work to do. The main types of harm we’re focused on preventing include hospital-acquired conditions, or HACs (e.g., central line associated blood stream infections, surgical site infections, falls and pressure injuries), serious safety events (SSEs), and employee safety events. 

Safety is a two-way street and SickKids is supporting staff in multiple ways to achieve our goals. For instance, we are refocusing efforts to improve our safety culture so that everyone feels safe to speak up when they have a safety concern, and everyone is receptive and appreciative when others speak up. Further, we are refining the SSE process to drive improvements related to findings, and building structures and adding staff directly related to HAC oversight. Lastly, we are providing easy access to data and data analysis to better understand common causes of staff injuries and developing targeted interventions to reduce harm.