Virtual patient safety rounds: one hospital system's approach to sharing knowledge.

Understanding how and why errors in healthcare happen is essential to improving patient safety. Yet exposure to this learning process is usually limited to those events occurring in one's own institution. Virtual Safety Rounds expands this learning opportunity to multiple hospitals. Twice each month physicians; nurses; and quality, risk, and patient safety staff participate in a discussion about a recent safety event within the healthcare system. Within this safe collegial environment experiences, plans of correction and lessons learned are shared. Hospitals are learning from each other without having to experience the patient safety issue directly.