When No Change is Good News

This article from London tears at my heart strings. P. Lachman, et al. based their intervention in a small inpatient ward of a children's hospital and aimed to determine ways that both children and parents could more effectively report any harm being done to them by hospital employees. The overall goal was to measure nurses' perceptions of any change in the ward's safety culture over the course of a year. Investigators tested 10 different versions of a reporting tool. (Not surprisingly the kids liked the version with the most pictures.) The bad news is also the good news: safety climate scores were already high, and no significant change was observed during the study period.