Healthcare safety and quality capability framework

The Healthcare Safety and Quality Capabilities Framework (PDF 1.6MB) describes the capabilities and behaviours that are expected of all WA Health employees, leaders and board members to engage in safety management and quality improvement practices that deliver safe, reliable care.

Furthermore, strong workforce capabilities will also facilitate WA Health to recruit and develop our staff by acknowledging, supporting and guiding them to achieve their career potential.

The Healthcare Safety and quality Capabilities Framework complements the WA Public Sector Capability Profiles (external site) which describes the capabilities and associated behaviours that are expected of all WA public sector employees.

What the Framework covers

The Healthcare Safety and Quality Capabilities Framework comprises six capabilities which will enable our WA Health workforce to further develop their knowledge, skills and behaviours at each level of the organisation.

These safety and quality capabilities include:

Contribute to high reliability	Understand and apply knowledge regarding how the organisational, team and individual conditions influence reliable service delivery to achieve safe, high-quality care.
Manage clinical incidents and risk	Identify, communicate and manage clinical incidents and risk.
Recognition and management of individual factors that influence performance at work	Be aware of thoughts, emotions and physical feelings that influence effective performance at work and adapt when necessary to deliver safe, reliable care.
Uphold a safety culture	Support staff, patients, families, and carers to feel safe, engage in learning and to acknowledge when an incident has occurred.
Utilise improvement methodologies	Able to understand and utilise appropriate improvement, research and applied science methodologies to achieve change for healthcare improvement.
Utilise systems thinking	Able to see the individual parts of the healthcare organisation, how they operate and interact, and their patterns of behaviours over time, and to use that information to contribute to change for safety and quality.

Who should use this framework

It is expected that all WA Health employees, both clinical and non-clinical, must have a foundational level of knowledge, skills and abilities in safety and quality.

This facilitates shared understanding, helps identify more opportunities for change and is essential to build a culture of safety and improvement