To improve safety in the operating theater, a company of aviation pilots was employed to guide implementation of preprocedural briefings. A 5-point Likert scale survey that assessed the attitudes of operating room personnel toward patient safety was distributed before and 6 months following implementation of the briefings. Using Mann-Whitney analysis, the survey showed a significant (P < .05) improvement in 2 questions (of 13) involving reporting error and 2 questions (of 11) involving patient safety climate. When analyzed by occupation, there were no significant changes for faculty physicians; for resident physicians, there was a significant improvement in 1 question (of 13) regarding error reporting. For nurses, there were significant improvements in 3 questions (of 4) involving teamwork, 1 question (of 13) involving reporting error, and 3 questions (of 11) regarding patient safety climate. These results suggest that aviation-based crew resource management initiatives lead to an improved perception of patient safety, which was largely demonstrated by nursing personnel.

Building a new hospital is an exciting time. However significant planning is required to prepare staff to assume care of patients in an environment with new workflow changes and new equipment. The challenges of this advanced preparation are compounded when the opening of the new hospital includes the planned move of the inpatient census of patients from an existing hospital to the new hospital. Goals and objectives on the move day include patient and staff safety, with a seamless transition to the new environment. This article describes the experiences and strategies used by an adult inpatient department to successfully open a new hospital.

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