ABOUT THE STUDENT WORKBOOK
As a student in a healthcare profession, you have probably heard of the concept of high reliability as a means to reduce harm, enhance quality, and improve outcomes. Patient safety and quality are of increasing importance to consumers, payers, providers, and organizations. As a large majority of the workforce, nurses are on the front lines of the delivery and provision of safe and effective care. The quest for high reliability must permeate an organization by way of leadership commitment, a culture of safety, continuous quality improvement, and every person's focus within the organization. This student workbook is designed as a companion to the primary textbook, High Reliability Organizations: A Healthcare Handbook for Patient Safety & Quality (2nd ed.), which explains how high reliability contributes to organizational quality and safety, recommends quality and safety activities based on high reliability principles, and integrates high reliability principles into healthcare practice.
PURPOSE AND STRUCTURE
The purpose of this workbook is to provide learning activities that relate to each chapter in the book. These learning activities introduce students to high reliability, explain the concepts of high reliability and high reliability organizations (HROs), provide examples of what the concepts would look like in
everyday practice, and describe the information and tools nurses and other healthcare providers need for the organization to become an HRO. The first 26 chapters provide one accompanying learning activity, whereas the last five chapters provide context for the summative or final learning activity.
Every learning activity reflects the content of its accompanying chapter. Students should read the chapter and supplemental materials and, if specified, focus on certain sections within the chapter prior to completing an exercise. Students may complete all these learning activities, but some instructors may choose only one or two from each chapter that meet the objectives of a particular course. Each learning activity begins with objectives, contains accompanying resource material or additional external resources, and has learning activity exercise-specific instructions. Nurses represent the majority of healthcare workers and are on the front lines of delivery and provision of safe and effective care. As a result, nurses are ideally situated to drive the mission to achieve high reliability in healthcare. It is our hope that the student workbook will prepare you to apply HRO principles to patient safety and quality problems in your place of practice because we all benefit from a safer healthcare environment.
CYNTHIA A. OSTER, PhD, MBA, APRN, ACNS-BC, CNS-BC, ANP, FAAN, is the Patient Safety Nurse Scientist at Emory Healthcare and an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Oster received her BSN from the University of Iowa, her MSN from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and her PhD from the University of Colorado College of Nursing. In addition, she earned an ANP certificate from Beth El College of Nursing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and an MBA from the University of Colorado-Denver. In 2017, she became a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She mentors clinical nurses and advanced practice nurses to develop clinical practice wisdom through application of high reliability principles, evidence-based practice, and the conduct of research. Oster has presented at national and international meetings and has published in the areas of high reliability, evidence-based practice, alarm fatigue, and peer review.
JANE S. BRAATEN, PhD, APRN, CNS, ANP, CPPS, CPHQ, is a Director of Quality & Patient Safety Officer and nurse scientist at Centura Health, Castle Rock Adventist Hospital in Castle Rock, Colorado. Braaten obtained her BSN from the Indiana University School of Nursing and holds the degree of doctor of philosophy and certificates of clinical nurse specialist and adult nurse practitioner from the University of Colorado College of Nursing. She also is a certified professional in patient safety (CPPS) and a certified professional in healthcare quality (CPHQ). She has presented at national meetings and has published in the areas of hospital system barriers to rapid response team activation, quality improvement in telemetry, end-of-life care in the intensive care unit, leadership, and high reliability organizations and healthcare.
