IV Glossary

Change: The process of altering or replacing existing knowledge, skills, attitudes, systems, policies, or procedures.^[1]

Change agent: Anyone who has the skill and power to stimulate, facilitate, and coordinate the change effort.

Change management: Process of making changes in a deliberate, planned, and systematic manner.

Culture of safety: Organizational culture that embraces error reporting by employees with the goal of identifying systemic causes of problems that can be addressed to improve patient safety. Just Culture is a component of a culture of safety.

Followership: The upward influence of individuals on their leaders and their teams.

Just Culture: A culture where people feel safe raising questions and concerns and report safety events in an environment that emphasizes a nonpunitive response to errors and near misses. Clear lines are drawn between human error, at-risk, and reckless employee behaviors.

Leadership: The art of establishing direction and influencing and motivating others to achieve their maximum potential to accomplish tasks, objectives, or projects.^[2],[3]

Management: Roles that focus on tasks such as planning, organizing, prioritizing, budgeting, staffing, coordinating, and reporting.^[4]

Mission statement: An organization’s statement that describes how the organization will fulfill its vision and establishes a common course of action for future endeavors.

Organizational culture: The implicit values and beliefs that reflect the norms and traditions of an organization. An organization’s vision, mission, and values statements are the foundation of organizational culture.

Systems leadership: A set of skills used to catalyze, enable, and support the process of systems-level change that focuses on the individual, the community, and the system.

Systems theory: The concept that systems do not function in isolation but rather there is an interdependence that exists between their parts. Systems theory assumes that most individuals strive to do good work, but are affected by diverse influences within the system.

Values statement: The organization’s established values that support its vision and mission and provide strategic guidelines for decision-making, both internally and externally, by members of the organization.

Vision statement: An organization’s statement that defines why the organization exists, describes how the organization is unique and different from similar organizations, and specifies what the organization is striving to be.