It's time: The poor culture regarding safety and quality in Australian hospitals must be addressed!

This review article demonstrates the causal relationship between a poor safety and quality culture in Australian and overseas hospitals and the occurrence of adverse patient events (AEs). The evidence of serious adverse events occurring in these hospitals is unquestionable. Awareness of the importance of that poor safety and quality culture in hospitals and its linkage with AEs is not as widespread as is warranted, but there is mounting evidence of its rapidly increasing recognition. The concept of technical and non-technical competence in workers in different industries is also well developed, with an increasing consensus that the non-technical aspects of healthcare delivery are responsible for a majority of the adverse events, rather than issues of technical competence. The need to provide patient safety education, particularly in a multi-professional setting has been established through the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Patient Safety Curriculum Guide: Multi- Professional Edition in 2011. This document also stresses the importance of multi-disciplinary care teams. A corollary of this is the need to extend this education to more senior members of healthcare teams, who did not experience these concepts in their education. Following completion of the education of those senior members in the issues of a safety and quality culture, all members of those professions must then have periodic mandatory reviews of these lessons incorporated into their continuing professional development (CPD) activities. One manifestation of that poor safety and quality culture is bullying, which is extensive in hospitals and which is rapidly being recognised in the Australian environment.