Healthcare Hygiene magazine September 2020 September 2020 | Page 27

step backward in regard to upholding their culture of safety, in
that errors happened, people didn’t talk about them, and then
blamed each other instead of figuring out what in the system
went wrong and how to prevent it from recurring. I am worried
about that trend; if we are losing that culture of clinicians feeling
safe enough to speak up and report issues, that is dangerous.
HHM Are principles of “high reliability” remaining steadfast or
evolving in these challenging times?
BM: I do think the concept of high reliability is still important,
and as you know, part of high reliability organizations (HROs) is
that your work is never done, and you are always trying to get
better at it. That is still very important. Some of the concepts of
high reliability, for example, the tenet of listening to the experts,
it’s not necessarily the CEO who knows best, it’s the individual
closest to the work at hand. Facilities that go to their infection
preventionist(s) regularly for their opinions or for their help,
for example, fare the best during challenging times especially.
Resilience is another important tenet of high reliability. Everybody
needs resilience right now, helping them to recover from the
pandemic and emerging from it in an even better state than
they were before. So, I think the principles of high reliability
are still very important, and they probably were tested in many
organizations during this pandemic.
HHM How can patient/healthcare personnel safety be
balanced with value/asset protection in an unprecedented
time like this?
BM: I think that COVID-19 may have re-balanced this because
an organization’s biggest asset is its people. If you take good
care of your people, then you will get all the value out of them,
especially in a situation like a pandemic. The other thing is
scrutinizing return on investment; investing in appropriate PPE
probably is more important than getting the newest and fanciest
MRI machine, right? Facilities must continue to focus on what is
really important – building a solid foundation for your healthcare
system by championing your patients and your personnel.
HHM What is healthcare risk management looking like
for the future?
BM: In my mind, there are two important points. One is that
the role of infection prevention will be much more valued in the
future than it was in the past. In the past, infection prevention
departments were chronically under-staffed and under-resourced.
They never had the (wo)manpower to do everything that needed
doing, so I think that is something hopefully that many organizations
will realize and correct. Whether they hire in-house infection
preventionists or bring in consultants regularly, or both, infection
prevention is very, very important. The other point is that in some
facilities, such as in the large teaching hospitals, they usually
compete with each other; however, they came together during
the pandemic and started sharing information and resources. For
example, I saw a report that in one state, health systems came
together and decided that administering the allocated amount
of Remdesivir was for the common good. They distributed it to
where the COVID-19 patients were instead of saying, “Oh, I got
it, and I’m holding on to it.” So, I really hope that these kinds of
partnerships between organizations will continue because that
that would be incredibly beneficial to patients.
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