High reliability organisations and collective mindfulness for improving healthcare safety management: a scoping review protocol of factors, measures and instruments

A growing body of peer-reviewed studies demonstrate the importance of high-reliability organisations and collective mindfulness in improving healthcare safety. However, limited attention has been devoted to developing a common set of characteristics, dimensions, indicators and instruments for measuring collective mindfulness. This can limit its operationalisation and ability to benchmark. This protocol outlines the key procedures that will be used to conduct a scoping literature review, in order to summarise key definitions; identify theoretical underpinnings, dimensions, measures and instruments; and develop a theoretical model to advance research and practice. Specifically, a five-step process and the Preferred Reporting Instruments for Systematic and Meta-Analyses will be used to search, screen and select literature published in five electronic databases. Keywords will include a combination of ‘high-reliability organisations’, high-reliability theory’ with ‘health care’, ‘patient safety’, ‘medical errors’, ‘medical mistakes’, ‘medication error’. A double-blind process will be used for searching, screening and selection of abstracts and full-articles, and inter-observer agreement assessed using Cohen’s kappa.