In sports, teams have huddles to strategize. At Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital (SBELIH), our care teams have huddles, too. At SBELIH we have several forms of Safety Huddles.
Nursing Admin huddles are conducted daily in the afternoon. The purpose of the Unit Based Safety Huddles is to increase safety awareness among our front-line nursing staff and to identify ways to help ensure that safety measures are in place at all times for all of our patients.
Each member of each care team at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, regardless of the shift they are working, is responsible for the wellbeing of every patient on each unit. Whether it’s discussing equipment issues, a medication concern, special visitor requirements, or which patients are on alert for falls, our nursing staff and nursing leadership use the information to plan interventions to increase safety for our patients. Every 12 hours, the team gathers together to listen, learn, and provide solutions to specific concerns and problems that have been identified.
We also conduct Daily Hospital Safety Huddles. These are 15 minute meetings of hospital leaders and key team members designed to raise awareness of safety issues. They occur Monday through Friday at 8:15 in the morning. A prescriptive template is used to aid reporting and keep the meeting to the 15 minute time limit.
We report on three categories of issues: A look back at the last 24 hours for reporting any safety or quality issues, a look ahead at the next 24 hours for any anticipated issues, and a report of follow up on previous identified issues.
The focus is on patient safety and staff safety. The highly structured process allows us to focus on systems issues, direct follow up and drive accountability.
