Swarm debrief guide (Epsom and St Helier Hospital)

Summary

Epsom and St Helier Hospital have developed a SWARM guide and fictional example video, for use by those who wish to use the Swarm debrief learning response as part of their Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) work. Swarm is one of the four learning responses and can be used whenever there is something new to learn, and does not have to be initiated by a patient safety incident. Typically, a Swarm debrief happens within 48 hours after the event and includes the multiprofessional staff that were involved.

Content

The Swarm Guide suggests useful phrases and prompts across three distinct phases, starting with 'setting the scene'. This phase is important as it helps to create group psychological safety, where all participants can feel safe to speak up and share their perspectives, without fear of ridicule or reprimand.

A Swarm debrief is informed by the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety SEIPS and Systems Thinking principles, that theorise most problems and possibilities for improvement belong to the work system. Therefore, the aim of a Swarm is to understand and explore important or relevant work system factors that helped or hindered event outcomes and crucially whether these system issues are present in our everyday work. You can spend most of the debrief 'exploring WSF & everyday work' as the questions and prompts within this phase support a curious approach.

Finally, you can draw the debrief to a close in 'next steps', by thanking participants, summarising key learning and checking for understanding. Then informing participants of how you will document and escalate any important system issues or findings, so that these can inform ongoing or future improvement work.