Who is responsible for patient safety in your organization? The obvious answer may be the chief patient safety officer or the director of quality and safety. But that’s only partly right.

Patient safety has grown to become a distinct discipline involving practitioners from diverse areas of the health care spectrum who work under engaged and involved leaders. It involves representatives of nursing, medicine, environmental services, pharmacy, and other areas, none more important than the leadership team. Last January, the National Patient Safety Foundation established the American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety (ASPPS) as a multidisciplinary community of individuals committed to advancing patient safety best practices.

“ASPPS was created as a ‘home’ for what had previously been a fragmented community,” says Diane C. Pinakiewicz, MBA, president of NPSF and of ASPPS. “In unifying the broad base of people working to improve health care safety, our goal has been to promote consistency and standard practices to help health care professionals at all levels pursue the patient safety agenda.”

Because of their influence within their organizations, health care executives play a particularly vital role in advancing patient safety.

“There is no single strategic priority more critically important to a health care leader today than to relentlessly improve patient safety and health care quality,” says Susan T. Goodwin, RN, MSN, CPHQ, FNAHQ, FACHE.   “Doing this effectively means involving people with the requisite skills and education who employ evidence-based methods to achieve measurable goals, and who stay up-to-date on latest advances.”

Goodwin, immediate past president of the National Association for Healthcare Quality and assistant VP in the Clinical Services Group at Hospital Corporation of America, joined ASPPS last year. “The profession of patient safety has emerged as a discipline that engages many from diverse backgrounds,” she says. “ASPPS provides exceptional opportunities to bring disciplinary rigor to patient safety.”

ASPPS is marking its first anniversary this month with a number of events and activities, highlighted by an audio conference on January 24 with renowned patient safety pioneer, Lucian Leape, MD, adjunct professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health and chairman of the Lucian Leape Institute at NPSF.

Learn more about ASPPS and how you can benefit from membership.