How to Conduct Effective Safety Huddles Safety huddles are a key tool for healthcare organizations to reduce patient harm, ensure accurate, consistent communication between staff, and promote patient and employee safety. Safety huddles can be defined as routine, brief meetings, usually at the beginning of the workday, comprised of staff from varying disciplines. (1)
The meeting is a time for care teams to discuss reported incidents, relay information about areas of safety concern such as short staffing, equipment or inventory, and to establish safety goals. (2) Safety huddles allow teams to communicate effectively, share information, and identify concerns to improve safety efforts across the organization. Huddles have been shown to improve patient safety in a variety of areas such as falls, wrong-site surgery, near misses, and other types of incidents. (3)
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A study of a large acute care hospital showed that when four nursing units adopted regular safety huddles, there was a significant reduction in falls from 12.4 to just five falls per week. (2) The study also showed improvements in 23 out of 27 parameters of their culture survey. (2) These brief meetings have been shown to improve the efficiency of information sharing, enhance a sense of accountability and empowerment of staff, and increase the sense of community across different departments and units. (4) Key elements of conducting effective safety huddles include: