Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Building a Culture of Safety Across Healthcare Teams with Dr. William Scharf
Mar 25, 2026
Dr. William Scharf, Executive Clinical Director of Quality and Safety at AdventHealth and surgeon, discusses building system-wide safety programs. He talks about psychological safety, frontline engagement, and cross-functional collaboration. He describes training initiatives like a Patient Safety Academy and daily practices such as debriefs and shared monitors to strengthen culture.
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Why A Surgeon Embraced Patient Safety Work
- William Scharf described his shift from surgeon to patient safety after learning about high annual deaths from medical error and joining a patient safety collaborative.
- He immersed himself in safety science starting in 1999 and later joined AdventHealth driven by the belief that errors stem from bad systems not bad people.
Teach Safety Science To Leaders Directly
- Build system-level education by training clinical and operational leaders in patient safety science through multi-day academies.
- AdventHealth runs a Patient Safety Academy and a condensed Signature Safety Seminar to teach learning, leadership, and data management across hospitals.
Culture Trumps Protocols For High Reliability
- Culture outweighs policies, technology, and protocols when aiming for high reliability in healthcare.
- Changing culture is slow and hard, so leaders must assess psychological safety, leader responses, trust in issue resolution, and siloed behaviors.