Our Network

Our Mission: Working together to eliminate serious harm across all children’s hospitals. 

We are 140+ children’s hospitals working together to help each individual hospital make progress on a journey to zero harm. SPS is the only such effort in the nation that is specifically focused on improving pediatric and employee safety. 


To guide this work, SPS network hospitals have come together around the following tenets: 

  • Executive leadership is a critical aspect of successful improvement in pediatric patient safety. The network has designed efforts to inspire and continuously develop the safety leadership skills of the executives who lead our network hospitals.

  • We must act with urgency and discipline, focusing on outcomes through a combination of high reliability concepts and quality improvement science methods. We learn through testing and partnering with families and front-line staff.

  • Instead, the SPS network is built on the fundamental belief that by sharing successes and failures transparently and learning from one another, children’s hospitals can achieve their goals more effectively and quickly than working alone.

  • SPS network hospitals must humbly share and gratefully learn from others. Accomplishing our goals requires focus on the detailed processes and cultural elements that lead to safer hospitals; guidance and support for hospital teams as they build the capacity for change; and facilitating relationships within the network to broaden and accelerate learning.

  • Hospitals within the network are employing the cultural transformation strategies of other high reliability industries to significantly reduce harm in their institutions. This emphasis on creating a culture of safety within pediatric institutions is a unique aspect of SPS’s approach.

SPS members Sarah Kandil and James Hoffman attend a National Learning Session.