Breaking down silos: The power of shared responsibility in patient safety

Patient safety is often spoken about as everyone’s responsibility, a core value that underpins modern healthcare. But in practice, safety can easily become siloed. It’s often seen as the remit of clinical leads, governance officers or management, rather than something that belongs to every member of a team.

That separation can be costly. When everyone assumes someone else is responsible for patient safety, issues go unnoticed, lessons aren’t shared and risks compound quietly in the background.

This was a recurring theme during our Semble Insights webinar, ‘Creating a patient safety-first culture in your clinic’. The discussion brought together experts from both clinical and digital settings to explore what a truly shared safety culture looks like in practice and how to build one from the inside out.

“Siloed working can be quite dangerous,” said Dr Lucas Denton, GP and Clinical Governance Lead at Thriva. “Everyone in a team has so many different roles, different experiences, both clinical and non-clinical. Every action or touchpoint they have can ripple downstream and affect patient safety.”

In other words, safety doesn’t just happen in the consultation room. It’s shaped by every interaction across a patient’s journey, from the way data is entered, to how information is passed between systems, to how quickly teams communicate when something goes wrong.

From governance to growth

According to Semble’s Clinical Safety Officer and Product Manager, Dr Karim Sandid, creating a shared culture begins with changing perceptions about what ‘safety’ actually means in practice.

“When you’re the Clinical Safety Officer coming into a digital company, not everyone knows what that means,” Karim explained. “The first thing you have to do is explain that patient safety isn’t the responsibility of one person, it’s a shared responsibility across the organisation.”

To make that real, Karim led the creation of a Clinical Safety Committee at Semble: a group that brings together people from product, tech, compliance and clinical teams.

“It really helps to bring different lenses and perspectives,” he said. “When you’re thinking about anticipating potential risks, some people will think about things you didn’t consider.”

By bringing together a range of disciplines, the committee ensures that safety isn’t an afterthought in product development but embedded from the start. And it helps every team member see how their decisions, even those far removed from direct patient care, have an impact on safety outcomes.

Local leadership matters

For larger organisations, shared responsibility also relies on local leadership, people who are close enough to daily activity to notice when something isn’t quite right.

“We have leads in different areas. A cath lab lead, an imaging lead, an MRI lead,” said Dr Rahim Kanji, Consultant Cardiologist at OneWelbeck. "They’re witnessing day-to-day what’s happening on the shop floor and have built a rapport with the team. They can feed back regularly to clinical leads so strategies can be created to reduce risk.”

This local structure acts as a bridge between teams and senior leadership, making communication faster and feedback more actionable. When information flows freely up and down, problems can be identified and addressed before they escalate.

How to build a shared safety culture

For clinics and healthcare providers, breaking down silos doesn’t have to mean overhauling everything. Small, intentional changes can create lasting cultural shifts:

Mix your meetings: Involve staff from different disciplines in your safety discussions. A wider range of perspectives means fewer blind spots.

Simplify communication: Make it clear how and where to raise safety concerns and ensure everyone feels safe doing so.

Share learning stories: Celebrate when someone spots a potential issue early. Turn near misses into learning opportunities.

Embed safety into daily language: The more it’s talked about, the less it feels like a box to tick.

As Lucas put it: “Everyone has something to bring with their own touchpoints.”

When every individual understands their role in safety and feels empowered to act on it, patient safety becomes a collective strength rather than a personal burden.