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To make an improvement on a larger scale and continuing along the path of quality auditing, this paper aims to identify the steps taken towards excellence for patient care in Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH).

SQUH, in the Gulf country Sultanate of Oman, has enthusiastically entered the challenge of improving quality in healthcare while traveling towards healthcare excellence. It began with the successful achievement of ISO 9001:2000 certification (May 2005) and re‐certification (May 2008) and is now adopting accreditation standards.

Being a prominent 500‐bed teaching research hospital in the country offering general and distinguished specialized clinical services while adhering to continuing professional development, the source of motivation derives from the hospital's vision and mission, thus bringing the primary focus of auditing to a peak. By performing internal quality audit, proper monitoring of conformity by measuring the effectiveness to the stated intention in a cycle of continuous quality improvement (CQI) is ensured.

Traditionally, health prevention and cure have always been the aim for the healthcare industry. Consequently it is the one industry that faces continuous pressures to improve quality and the one with the fastest‐growing interest in quality.

The paper puts forward a model that incorporates the fundamentals of quality improvement through quality auditing step by step in a systematic manner and shows measurable results.

Globally, safety in healthcare services has become an important focus. The Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH), located in the Sultanate of Oman in the Arabian Gulf, has begun to take active steps in delivering safer healthcare services while moving towards healthcare excellence. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of prioritizing hospital‐wide safety and discuss how it has become essentially linked to the multi‐faceted dimension of quality through acceptability, efficiency accessibility and continuity in SQUH.

In an effort to shift all cultural elements of SQUH staff, system and activities towards addressing the goal of safety, SQUH has brought on a safety culture by holistic and systemic approach to quality improvement. Illustrated herein is the journey of how the hospital is addressing and measuring the goal of safety as an organizational priority through values, beliefs, goals, policies and operations.

The progressive steps that SQUH initiated since 2008 which measure, assess and ultimately change the perception of safety in the hospital are described. Specific recommendations include addressing safety culture elements of communicated values and objectives and measuring them, raising the awareness and training barriers, adopting safety goals specific to hospital environment, and centralizing a monitoring system to track input, progress and closure of safety mechanisms and activities.

The paper presents a model for improving safety in healthcare services through the initiatives of a university hospital, implementing a measureable phase approach over a two‐year period for addressing the goal of safety.