Behaviors & Culture

Guiding Behaviors

Because Saint Joseph Health System is part of one of the nation’s largest Catholic healthcare organizations, we share a rich and robust moral tradition that permeates all that we do. That means all SJHS colleagues are called to live SJHS’s values from the heart and are committed to providing high-quality, personalized care to our patients and their families. Our Guiding Behaviors reinforce our core values, where every person is honored and served with reverence and respect every time. And our Just Culture reinforces our commitment to your safety by emphasizing learning from mistakes so they are not repeated.

The SJHS Guiding Behaviors reinforce our hospital system’s core values of respect, social justice, and compassion, care of those experiencing poverty and underserved, and excellence. Ultimately, these guiding behaviors are meant to draw us back to the bedside of our patients.

These Guiding Behaviors are to be practiced by every member of our staff with every patient and visitor with whom we come into contact:

1. We support each other in serving our patients and communities.
2. We communicate openly, honestly, respectfully and directly.
3. We are fully present.
4. We are accountable.
5. We trust and assume goodness in all intentions.
6. We are continuous learners.

Just Culture

SJHS has made a commitment to providing a Just Culture environment for all associates. Just Culture is a nationally recognized program with an emphasis on patient safety. This type of environment refers to our efforts as an organization to be "just" - or fair - with all our associates. The lessons of Just Culture are applicable to every walk of life. It is a set of ideas that influence how we respond to the fallibility of our fellow human beings. In a Just Culture model, we address three behaviors:

• Human error. The slip or lapse that we do not intend. This provides an opportunity to console.
• At-risk behavior. The choice we make where the risk or harm is unjustifiably increased. This provides an opportunity to coach.
• Reckless behavior. The choice to knowingly take a substantial and unjustifiable risk. 
  This provides an opportunity to correct.

Just Culture is more than a concept; it is a commitment that SJHS makes to you and all of our associates for the time when things do not go as planned.