Insight 25: Nurse Well-Being is Foundational to Patient Safety

More than 25 years after To Err Is Human put patient safety on the national agenda, the crisis persists. The WHO estimates that 1 in 10 patients worldwide experiences harm during medical care, and half of it is preventable. And yet one foundational factor remains overlooked: the well-being of the people delivering care. With more than half of nurses reporting burnout and hundreds of thousands expected to leave the profession, the workforce crisis and the patient safety crisis are now one and the same. In this Insight from Episode 123: Safer Together | The Architecture of a Movement, Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at IHI and former Administrator of CMS, and Patricia McGaffigan, RN, Vice President at IHI and President of the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety, make the case that healthcare must look beyond its own walls, drawing on lessons from aviation and other industries, to build cultures where psychological safety, dignity, and the freedom to speak up are the foundation of safe care. Not sentiment but essential reality.