Introduction to Just Culture

Just culture is the concept of designing, implementing, and supporting a fair and just learning culture within an organization. Just culture entails managing behavioral choices and designing safer systems to prevent errors. A just culture model in health care creates a unique framework where administrators and employees both share in the responsibility of upholding safe practices where errors are minimized. In a just culture environment, shared responsibility is founded through trust, transparency, and open communication. Health care organizational commitment to a just culture acknowledges that health care providers operates in a complex and high risk environment and safe and reliable systems are essential to minimizing errors and adverse events. In a just culture environment individuals are empowered to report errors and take responsibility for their behaviors and actions. Administrative commitment to reliable and safe systems and provider’s accountability form the basis of the just culture model. The just culture model of health care leads to organizational improvements in safety and quality of care. ^{5, 47, 23}