Last week, SafeCare BC, with the support of WorkSafeBC, spearheaded the first session of the Peer Resource Network, a new initiative that aims to connect leadership teams to foster the development of a culture of safety in the continuing care sector.

Many leadership teams have identified that they feel isolated from one another when it comes to developing their workplace’s health and safety programs. The Peer Resource Network aims to provide leadership teams with a forum to share and learn about occupational health and safety and return-to-work best practices from their peers. It also connects them with external resources to support positive change in those practices.

“We’ve received lots of feedback through various venues that leadership teams feel like they are perennially re-inventing the wheel to address the safety issues in their workplaces,” said SafeCare BC’s Executive Director Jennifer Lyle. “This is a key issue in the continuing care sector and the Peer Resource Network was established to address the need for these organizations to connect and learn from each other.”

The Peer Resource Network is made up of a small group of leaders from organizations from the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health regions. Over the next few months, they will move together through a series of five different sessions that address various safety topics and issues.

The topic of the first session was: Creating a Culture of Safety: Introduction to Safety Leadership. The session touched on a number of key subjects:

• Defining safety culture vs. safety climate
• Working with a safety culture framework to identify where an organization fits on the safety culture spectrum across different aspects of safety culture (e.g. communication and consultation, leadership commitment, etc.)
• Exploring different ways to bring about a change in culture once an organization has identified where it should focus
• Measuring the effect of teams’ activities on the organization’s safety culture using scientifically validated, easy-to-use tools

The workshop session was very dialogue-focused with an emphasis on sharing best practices, taking a practical approach to applying theory, and exploring how the different organizations had successfully applied safety culture principles at their own sites. Participants were very engaged and many great ideas were shared. Each participant left the session with new tools and concepts they could apply and use at their own organizations.

Thank-you to all who made this first session a success, and we look forward to next few sessions!