According to a 2013 survey from insurance provider AIG, negative organizational culture is the number one barrier to patient safety in the healthcare industry. While preventable medical errors is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., it is also one of the highest expenses for healthcare providers –“half of every dollar spent on healthcare costs is related to a medical error,” said Emily Rinehart, a registered nurse and vice president and division manager for healthcare risk consulting at AIG.

There are three main ways company culture can impact patient safety:

• Staff buy-in – How committed is your workforce?
• Communication breakdown – Is your medical staff communicating patient care effectively?
• Compliance vs. commitment – Are you more interested taking disciplinary action or correcting the problem?

First, do no harm – a phrase typically associated with the Hippocratic oath medical students take before transitioning into a licensed professional. While nurses and doctors pledge to uphold the highest standard of medical care possible, in corporate healthcare, some aspects of patient safety fall through the cracks.

Nursing and clinical staff face demanding work environments that, when mishandled, can devastate patient care. Long hours, heavy patient loads, and high turnover all contribute to putting patient safety at risk. When it comes to performing in such a high-stakes atmosphere, all applicants are not created equal. Our research shows that there are six personality-based competencies that accurately predict an individual’s ability to perform his or her job safely.

Download our newest safety ebook, First, Do No Harm, to learn what they are and find out how to minimize the risks of patient safety, starting first with your people.

We got a kick out of this U.S. Navy office safety video from the 1940s.

Although the office environment (and the tone of the safety videos) has changed a bit since then, the underlying point of the video remains relevant – some personalities make an individual more prone to carelessness and, even in the most mundane of environments, that carelessness can cause accidents.

For more information about how people’s personalities influence office safety, check out Hogan SafeSystem.