Chronic unease

James Reason says that the price of patient safety is "chronic unease." We prefer to think that chronic curiosity is the way to achieve safety for both employees and patients. Constantly asking what we know and don t know, pursuing what has changed and why, inquiring about what went before and after an undesirable but preventable outcome, and exploring which leadership behaviors may have signaled the very behavior that occasioned the adverse event—these questions all bring continual improvement. 

Have a chronic sense of unease, i.e., they lack any sense of complacency. For example, they do not assume that because they have not had an incident for 10 years, one won t happen imminently. 

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