This document discusses the importance of leadership in establishing a culture of safety and effective patient safety programs. It outlines several leverage points leaders must address, including establishing aims for improvement, aligning measures and strategies, engaging physicians, and building improvement capability. The document also discusses adverse events, their human and economic costs, and goals of patient safety programs like reporting errors and analyzing systems failures to prevent future mistakes.

1. Culture of Safety Patient safety is simply defined as "the prevention of harm to patients.” Our systems are too complex to expect merely extraordinary people to perform perfectly 100 percent of the time. We as leaders have a responsibility to put in place systems to support safe practice.” -- James Conway, IHI Senior Fellow; former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute