Bridget Milne has been drawn to patient safety since she began her healthcare career as an operating room nurse. Now, as provincial quality improvement and patient safety leader, Bridget’s passion for patient safety supports system-wide improvements.
She describes an important part of her job as looking at past harms to understand, “what is the information telling us?” Bridget says it’s rare for safety incidents to be a one-off.
“If a patient receives the wrong medication, it’s very unlikely that’s due only to one thing or one person,” Bridget explains. “We work in a complex health system – we need to look at all the factors. How can we make improvements if we don’t understand it as a whole?”
Bridget draws data from Nova Scotia Health’s patient safety reporting system and works with team members across departments to gain insight into what contributed to patient safety incidents, and what will help prevent future harm.
“When we see an incident happening in more than one place, it’s about connecting those dots. It’s about spreading and sharing that knowledge.”
Knowledge-sharing happens through quality teams, quality councils and the issuing of provincial patient safety alerts, says Bridget, whose role also includes embedding patient safety principles into policies, procedures and processes. Bridget recently co-led the development of a ‘Just Culture’ policy, which focuses on promoting a culture that allows healthcare providers to feel safe reporting errors and identifying safety issues.
Heather Cochrane is Nova Scotia Health lead for patient safety and director for Northern Zone Quality Improvement & Safety. She works closely with Bridget and points to her commitment to the bigger picture. “Bridget has been instrumental in advancing improvements in processes to make care safer for patients, families and communities who access our services,” she says.
Heather pointed to a recent collaboration between Bridget and the Research, Innovation and Discovery team to improve Nova Scotia Health’s quality review process, which is used to analyze the most serious patient safety incidents. “This work has aligned us with patient safety best practices and is moving Nova Scotia Health forward nationally in our collaboration with patients and families, to learn and improve patient safety,” Heather says.
In addition to examining past harms, Bridget says it’s important to be proactive when it comes to patient safety. She points to the importance of staff safety huddles, where teams can anticipate challenges and develop solutions to mitigate risk. Patients play an important role too. She gives the example of patients letting the healthcare team know if a medication is unfamiliar.
Reflecting on the rewards of her job, Bridget sums it up by saying: “People come to us often at the worst times of their lives. We need to look after them and make sure the whole system is set up to safely look after them. Anything we can do to improve patient safety is where I want to be. Knowing that we’re actively improving and working to make things better brings me a lot of joy.”
Photo of Bridget Milne.
