TY - JOUR T1 - Successfully implementing Safety WalkRounds: secret sauce more than a magic bullet JF - BMJ Quality & Safety JO - BMJ Qual Saf DO - 10.1136/bmjqs-2017-007378 SP - bmjqs-2017-007378 AU - Sara J Singer Y1 - 2018/02/09 UR - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/early/2018/02/09/bmjqs-2017-007378.abstract N2 - Implementing management innovations to improve safety of healthcare delivery is a critically important, yet often elusive, goal for healthcare organisations. Safety rounds, in which senior executives spend time on the frontlines of care, talking with staff and observing work, aim to improve safety of healthcare delivery by providing a systematic approach for engaging senior executives with the work system challenges faced by front-line staff and ensuring follow-up and accountability for addressing these challenges. They resemble ‘Management by Walking Around’, which originated at Hewlett-Packard1 and ‘gemba walks’, which are considered a key component of the Toyota Production System.2 However, descriptions of these precursor interventions emphasise engagement of senior executives with front-line workers and not follow-up and feedback about ideas generated through observation and discussion. Perhaps unlike in healthcare delivery, 3 follow up and feedback in technology and manufacturing companies can be assumed.In this issue of BMJ Quality and Safety, Sexton and colleagues found inconsistent provision of feedback and that ‘providing feedback following Leadership WalkRounds is associated with better patient safety culture, higher employee engagement and lower burnout.’4 Their research represents a welcome advance over typical intervention studies that simply assess whether an intervention is or is not effective, in that the authors identify a key component of the WalkRounds intervention that differentiates more and less effective forms of intervening. Specifically, WalkRounds followed by feedback to staff generated substantially higher safety culture domain scores and … ER -