Situation awareness and patient safety

Situation awareness is a core element of high-performing clinical teams. Situation awareness means being aware of what is going on around you in real time. To have situation awareness, one needs to gather relevant and current information, process it, and share it with other members of the clinical teams so that a shared understanding of the risks and safety issues can be gained by all members of the clinical team. This process facilitates the early identification of potential risks, enabling appropriate mitigating actions to be taken in a timely fashion. The viewpoint of every team member, including those of patients and families, is important in order to obtain true situation awareness, as every person has a different lens through which facts are seen. When one develops situation awareness, the hierarchy is flattened at the point of discussion.