The Influence of Leadership and High Performance (HRM) - Thesis Example

Medical error reporting is the most important prerequisite of patient safety (Hosford, 2007, p.32). A medical error in this context can be defined as “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (e.g. error  of execution) or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (e.g. error of  planning)” (Hosford, 2007, p.32). The US Institute of Medicine (IOM)  report on medical errors published in 2000, titled, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, was an eye opener for the world about the magnitude of medical errors and consequent adverse effects on the patients, including death (Hosford, 2007, p.2). It is in this context, researchers began to focus attention on medical errors, and in due course, thoughts about an organizational climate that promotes error reporting, emerged.

When the reasons behind lack of error reporting were looked into, it emerged that the authoritative structure of the leadership and the overall organizational climate were becoming hindrances to errors being reported (Marquis and Huston, 2009, p.559).   Richardson and Storr (2010) have discussed the Patient Safety Programme initiated by World Health Organization (WHO) to promote “equity” in medical care across the world and observed that “nurses are ideally placed to drive the safety and quality agenda within health care” (p.13). This puts the nurses in the center of patient safety discourses.

In this discussion, patient safety will be examined in terms of the role of nurses, who are integral part of the modern concept of high performance work systems as well as that of organizational climate and leadership. Medical error reporting thus becomes the primary task of nurses and other human links involved in the HPWS and the responsibility of taking action to prevent medical errors in future will lie with the leadership. Especially, nurse leadership becomes a focus area when one approaches the issue of patient safety from this angle.

There is an argument within the health research community that “nurses are key to every safety initiative and every aspect of the safety movement” (Richardson and Storr, 2010, p.13). It is in this context that reproting and prevention of medical errors demand “empowerment and advocacy” of nursing leadership (Richardson and Storr, 2010, p.13).