This whitepaper reports on a survey of 176 healthcare leaders from 22 countries about how their organisations access and use data on patient safety incidents, and what gets in the way of learning from them effectively. Responses were gathered at an international quality and safety forum.
What was studied?
The survey asked healthcare leaders across 22 countries about the root causes of safety incidents in their organisations, how safety data is used alongside other information, and the practical barriers that prevent teams from learning from what goes wrong.
What did they find?
Workforce-related factors, such as staff capability, capacity and workload, were the most commonly cited root cause of safety incidents. Nearly half of respondents said safety data was often viewed in isolation from other datasets, and the top barriers to learning were time pressure, poor data quality and a blame culture.
Why it matters
This shows that even at senior leadership level, learning honestly from safety incidents is genuinely difficult, often not from a lack of care but from data silos, time pressure and fear of blame.
Why we included it
It illustrates why an open, non-blame culture matters for any organisation handling safety: fear of blame is consistently one of the biggest barriers to genuinely learning from what goes wrong.
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What was studied?
The survey asked healthcare leaders across 22 countries about the root causes of safety incidents in their organisations, how safety data is used alongside other information, and the practical barriers that prevent teams from learning from what goes wrong.
What did they find?
Workforce-related factors, such as staff capability, capacity and workload, were the most commonly cited root cause of safety incidents. Nearly half of respondents said safety data was often viewed in isolation from other datasets, and the top barriers to learning were time pressure, poor data quality and a blame culture.
Why it matters
This shows that even at senior leadership level, learning honestly from safety incidents is genuinely difficult, often not from a lack of care but from data silos, time pressure and fear of blame.
Why we included it
It illustrates why an open, non-blame culture matters for any organisation handling safety: fear of blame is consistently one of the biggest barriers to genuinely learning from what goes wrong.