Reducing Employee Injury Rates with a Hospital-wide Employee Safety Program

Abstract

Introduction: Despite the well-known dangers of working in the healthcare industry, healthcare organizations have historically accepted workplace injuries as business as usual. In 2017, Children’s National Hospital began our Employee and Staff Safety program to drive down the employee injury rate and address this disturbing industry trend. Methods: With guidance and support from executive leadership, we created an Employee and Staff Safety program that aligned employee safety work with existing patient safety and quality improvement efforts. Team leads collected and analyzed baseline employee injury data and identified areas of highest injuries. Dedicated subcommittees focused on five specific areas: slips, trips, and falls; sharps injuries; blood and body fluid exposures; verbal and physical violence; and overexertion injuries. Subcommittees established aims, identified key drivers, and brainstormed interventions for tests of change. Results: Because the inception of the Employee and Staff Safety program, Children’s National has seen significant reductions in our Days Away Restricted or Transfer (DART) rate. The DART rate shows a sustained 37% reduction since the baseline period of FY16–FY17 (1.48 injuries/200,000 h worked to 0.93 injuries/200,000 h worked). The regression trend shows a significant decrease (38.3%) in DART injuries, from 1.544 to 0.952 over 56 months; P = 0.016. Conclusions: Active leadership support and analyzing data on specific employee harm areas coupled with targeted interventions, helped improve Children’s National’s DART rate. The Employee and Staff Safety program’s success in utilizing patient safety and quality improvement tools creates a generalizable framework for other hospitals to advance their high-reliability journey.

Slips, Trips, and Falls: A Quality Improvement Initiative

“…We accomplish this within a comprehensive Employee Staff Safety program driven by hospital leadership previously described. 8 Mitchell et al's October 2012 commentary from the Institute of Medicine's Best Practices Innovation collaborative highlighted the importance of high-functioning teams in health care. 12 They establish that shared goals, clear roles, mutual trust, effective communication, and measurable processes and outcomes are the fundamental principles of team-based health care.…”

“…We accomplish this within a comprehensive Employee Staff Safety program driven by hospital leadership previously described. 8…”

“…7 The prior article was overarching; it demonstrated the role of a system-wide programmatic effort to tackle the problem of employee staff safety and addressed sharps injuries, blood and body fluid exposures, workplace violence, overexertion, and slips, trips, and falls from a macro perspective. 8 The current report details the specific quality improvement initiative aimed to decrease the number of slips/trips/falls by 20% initially in the first 6 months of FY 18 and sustain for 1 year within Children's National Hospital owned and operated facilities. The group chose a target of 20% as an attainable goal to target in the first 6 months.…”

“…The focus areas included sharps injuries, blood and body fluid exposure, workplace violence, slips, trips, falls, and overexertion injuries. 8 We have previously reported on the success of our broad employee staff safety work to create a safer work environment. 7 The prior article was overarching; it demonstrated the role of a system-wide programmatic effort to tackle the problem of employee staff safety and addressed sharps injuries, blood and body fluid exposures, workplace violence, overexertion, and slips, trips, and falls from a macro perspective.…”

“…The focus areas included sharps injuries, blood and body fluid exposure, workplace violence, slips, trips, falls, and overexertion injuries. 8 We have previously reported on the success of our broad employee staff safety work to create a safer work environment. 7…”