Safety culture
Restorative Just Culture
Restorative Just Culture (RJC) describes a set of organisational values and behaviours as they relate to incident management and repair of trust. RJC occurs when all parties come together to openly and safely discuss their understanding of how things went wrong, how they have been affected by the incident, and collaboratively decide what should be done to repair the harm.
Restorative Just Culture is a foundational element of the NSW Health initiative Zero Suicides in Care.
The Clinical Excellence Commission and external stakeholders co-developed a guide to assist NSWH’s mental health services, to develop a Restorative Just and Learning Culture (RJLC) as part of the state-wide Zero Suicides in Care initiative. The guide is a 'living document' and will be regularly updated as new evidence and examples of best practice emerge. The guide explains why a Restorative Just Learning Culture is an important step in the continuing development of safety culture in health organisations to emphasise learning and improvement elements.
- Guide to Co-developing a Restorative Just and Learning Culture – June 2023
- Summary: Guide to Co-developing a Restorative Just and Learning Culture – June 2023
The Clinical Excellence Commission Mental Health Patient Safety Team led a Restorative Just Culture Learning Symposium and Skills Workshops at the Novotel Sydney Brighton Beach, Brighton Le Sands on 22-26 May 2023. This event looked at implementation issues of the various elements of developing a Restorative Just and Learning Culture.
Listen to Dr Nick O'Connor and Dr Kathryn Turner discuss Restorative Just Culture on the CEC's Guiding Principles of Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) meetings in action podcast series.
The Clinical Excellence Commission led a Restorative Just Culture Masterclass at the Kirribilli Club, Sydney on 30 June 2022.
Masterclass resources
- Restorative Just Culture Masterclass Report
- Restorative Just and Learning Culture: What is Restorative Just Culture and why should we bother? Presentation by Dr Kathryn Turner
Safety Culture Measurement Tools
As part of Mental Health Patient Safety Program, we will work with mental health teams to help facilitate a safety culture. Safety Culture is a demonstrably reliable predictor of clinical safety behaviours and patient safety outcomes.
Enhanced culture has been shown to improve the psychological health of providers and increase engagement and satisfaction at work. Ultimately, a healthier culture benefits both patients and providers.
The CEC has developed guidelines and tools to enable your mental health service to administer a safety culture survey, identify improvement priorities and to lead quality improvement against these priorities.
Safety Fundamentals for Teams
We strongly encourage and support mental health teams to implement the Safety Fundamentals for Teams. These can help improve teamwork and communication, create a culture of safety and are key elements of high reliability organisations. Our inability to communicate effectively within teams and with patients and their carers is directly linked to patient harm.
Safety Fundamentals are practical tools, most of which require a short implementation time and have the potential to bring quick measurable gains.