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Showing results for tags 'Organisational culture'.
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Content ArticleThe wellbeing of NHS staff is now recognised as a priority, as evidenced by the introduction of Wellbeing Guardians into the NHS. The NHS needs to appoint a National Wellbeing Guardian to provide a leadership role for the work of these guardians, and more generally to actively promote wellbeing in NHS staff, write Narinder Kapur, Christian Harkensee and Terry Skitmore in HSJ.
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Content ArticleThe importance of employee voice—speaking up and out about concerns—is widely recognised as fundamental to patient safety and quality of care. However, failures of voice continue to occur, often with disastrous consequences.
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Content ArticleWith a global nursing workforce shortage upon us, governments and health system decision makers are becoming alarmed at the potential risk to service delivery if solutions are not found. However, nurses know that what constitutes the fundamental threat to a healthy healthcare system is not the hard work of nursing, but rather the demoralizing conditions under which many nurses strive to practise their profession. This commentary examines the context for some of those conditions and encourages a collective commitment to articulating our vision for the profession in a manner that is sufficiently forceful to be effective.
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Content ArticleClinical and nonclinical staff at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital have improved patient care and raised staff morale at a very modest cost: 10 minutes a day and a special deck of cards. At the start of every shift, the team members get together for a brief “team-start.” Each team member rates his or her own mood as green (I’m good), orange (I’m okay but I have a few things I’m concerned about) or red (I’m under stress). The rest of the team doesn’t need to know that you’re under stress because you’re having a dispute with your landlord or you are worried about your ill toddler. How you feel, however, is important because it affects how you should be treated. Next, the team leader asks if there is anything in particular the team needs to know to work more effectively together that shift: For example, “Is there a delay in public transport so we can expect patients to be late for their appointments?,” or “Is there a patient with some kind of special need coming in?” Sharing the answers or results generated by the card questions and activities with the group ensures that the insights stick.
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Content ArticleDoctors and other healthcare professionals are often trained to mask their emotions. The argument is that patients trust them when they “act professional.” But that model of health care leadership is changing, write Roel van der Heijde and Dirk Deichmann in this opinion piece. Roel van der Heijde is a trainer in fear reduction and vulnerable leadership for several hospitals and nursing homes in The Netherlands and a partner at Patient-Centered Care Association in The Netherlands. Dirk Deichmann is an associate professor at Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management.
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Content ArticleListen for weak signals to avert potential disasters, urges Columbia Business School professor, Rita Gunther McGrath. We’ve all heard the stories. The multi-patent-holding chemist at Kodak who warned of the digital revolution. The experienced research and development person at Nokia who pointed out that the bean counters had taken over and the company couldn’t get new products out the door anymore. The scary-smart top engineers at General Electric who urged the company to bet on renewable energy rather than tying its fortunes to fossil fuels. It’s nearly always the case that someone, somewhere, saw a significant inflection point coming and tried to warn the ‘powers that be’ – to little avail. Ignoring these warnings imperils everyone. And yet, it happens over and over again. Let’s explore why, and what you as a leader might do about it.
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Content ArticleNHS England has set out 10 priorities for the 2022-23 financial year in its annual planning guidance. NHSE chief executive Amanda Pritchard makes clear in the introduction that many of its goals remain contingent on covid, stating: ”The objectives set out in this document are based on a scenario where covid-19 returns to a low level and we are able to make significant progress in the first part of next year.”
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Content Article
ECRI's Risk Assessment
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Improving systems of care
Keeping patients and staff safe is a top priority for every healthcare organisation. Leaders must be vigilant in continually monitoring, measuring, and improving risk, as well as identifying processes, environments, cultures and other factors affecting patient safety and organisational performance. ECRI’s Risk Assessments provide an efficient web-based solution for conducting such evaluations. These assessments collect multidisciplinary safety perspectives—from front-line workers to the executive suite—with reporting and analysis dashboards to help identify opportunities for improvement. -
Content ArticleClinician burnout in healthcare is a growing area of concern, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on. Research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Regenstrief Institute looked at ways organisations can address burnout.
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Content ArticleHealthcare leaders are bringing renewed attention to patient safety issues that have been overshadowed by another year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Becker's Hospital Review asked patient safety experts the following question: "If you could fix one patient safety issue overnight, what would it be and why?" Read the answers Cynthia Barnard, Vice President of Quality at Northwestern Memorial Healthcare (Chicago), Patricia McGaffigan, Vice President of Safety Programs at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Ana Pujols McKee Vice president and CMO and Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at The Joint Commission and Gary Stuck, CMO at Advocate Aurora Health gave.
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Content ArticleRacially and ethnically minoritised healthcare staff groups disproportionately experience and witness workplace discrimination from patients, colleagues and managers. This is visible in their under-representation at senior levels and over-representation in disciplinary proceedings and is associated with adversities such as greater depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, low job satisfaction and sickness absence. In the UK, little progress has been made despite the implementation of measures to tackle racialised inequities in the health services. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 48 healthcare staff in London (UK), Woodhead et al. identified how micro-level bullying, prejudice, discrimination and harassment behaviours, independently and in combination, exploit and maintain meso-level racialised hierarchies.
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Content ArticleNorthumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust were awarded the Freedom to Speak Up Organisation of the Year Award at the 2021 HSJ Awards with their demonstration of an integrated approach to speaking up. Kirsty Dickson was appointed as the first Freedom to Speak Up Guardian at Northumbria, following recommendations in the Francis Report. Since then, she has been working proactively to make sure that Freedom to Speak Up is woven into the fabric of the organisation.
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Content Article
4th Learning from Excellence Conference videos (8 October 2021)
Sam posted an article in Improving patient safety
The theme for the 4th Learning from Excellence Community Event was “Being better, together”, reflecting LfE's aspiration to grow as individuals, and as part of a community, through focussing on what works. For this event, LfE partnered with the Civility Saves Lives (CSL) team, who promote the importance of kindness and civility at work and seek to help us to address the times this is lacking in a thoughtful and compassionate way, through their Calling it out with Compassion programme. -
Content ArticlePandemic and backlog pressures may make candour more challenging but do not make it any less essential, the panel at a recent HSJ webinar argued.
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Content Article
West Suffolk Review (9 December 2021)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Other reports and inquiries
Findings from an independent review, commissioned by NHS Improvement in February 2020, at the request of the Department for Health and Social Care, into the handling of whistleblowing at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. -
Content ArticleAimed at those who are responsible for the overall performance of organisations, divisions or departments in diverse industries such as healthcare, aviation, construction, oil and gas, nuclear, railways and defence, this book introduces a new safety paradigm in comprehensible and practical terms. It aims at improving safety and overall organisational performance through a doable, different and directed approach using multiple small steps. This book will help readers in understanding how to integrate the natural variability of human performance – and our ability to compensate for unpredictability elsewhere – into organisational systems, thereby ensuring successful outcomes. It covers important topics, including complexity, effective workplace innovations, micro-experiments, maintaining alignment between rules and reality, maximising learning and restoring relations. It includes practical examples and supporting material referenced in the expansive notes section. This book: Presents multiple small steps that collectively facilitate the improvement of safety. Discusses improving safety in routine work;, not triggered by accidents. Covers a chapter on what to do when things go wrong. Discusses these methods with the help of numerous vignettes. Has a separate section on each industry. Safety professionals, academicians, researchers and students (undergraduate and graduate) in health and safety, human factors, ergonomics, occupational health and safety will also appreciate the brevity and clarity of this work in conveying the latest scientific insights on safety.
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Content Article
Recently an enduring discussion evolved on Twitter on why safety culture is important for patient safety. My reaction, of course, was: it isn’t. Let me explain why. I think it is possible to address safety without addressing safety culture. Or, rather, to focus on actions that will improve both safety performance and safety culture (as a by-product) at the same time. In this blog I propose some of these actions – showing how to create an understanding of how work is (actually) done (rather than what it says on paper), seeing what makes it difficult and identifying what resources are missing. If we address these challenges, then surely we will be able to improve safety and safety culture will follow naturally. -
Content Article
Special investigation: The voice of nursing on mute (1 December 2021)
Sam posted an article in Whistle blowing
The Nursing Times has carried out an investigation into nurses’ experiences of speaking out in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, revealing disturbing findings about the current state of openness in the NHS. -
Content ArticleThis is the first National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) report into how sex, ethnicity, disability and age affect how the organisation awards health research funding. Using their new Equality and Data Reporting system, the NIHR has been able to collect data on equality diversity and inclusion (EDI) for the first time. The information in this report is a benchmark for further reporting and will form the basis of the NIHR's new EDI strategy.
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Content ArticleThis episode of the Hope4Med podcast features pharmacist Soojin Jun, co-founder of Patients for Patient Safety US and patient advocate with a passion for patient safety, quality improvement, and health equity. Dr. Jun shares the life-changing experience that affected her family and led to her career in healthcare. She discusses the importance of effective communication in healthcare, not only between patients and providers but also between providers. Miscommunications can cost a life. We also explore how burnout and moral injury can further harm when healthcare professionals are not functioning at their optimal level.
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Content Article
In this blog, Patient Safety Learning’s Chief Executive, Helen Hughes, reflects on participating in a recent Health Service Journal (HSJ) Patient Safety Congress webinar, held in association with BD, which considered some of the key emerging patient safety issues for 2022.- Posted
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Gwen Nightingale and Katherine Merrifield from The Health Foundation highlight measures to tackle health inequalities that they would like to see included in the government's White Paper on health disparities, due to be published in Spring 2022. They argue that significant investment and ambitious policy are needed to tackle differences in health outcomes. They highlight five areas of focus: Tackle the wider determinants of health head on A new, whole-government approach to improving health Policy ideas backed with immediate investment Meaningfully measuring success Learning from the past
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Content ArticleThis article in the Financial Times by Alicia Clegg discusses how cronyism corrodes workplace relationships and destroys trust. It shows that the issues are common to both public and private sectors and demonstrates the need to seek out and resolve root causes.
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Content ArticleTrust is the basis for almost everything we do. It’s the foundation on which our laws and contracts are built. It’s the reason we’re willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, to pledge our lives to another person in marriage, and to cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. It’s also the input that makes it possible for leaders to create the conditions for employees to fully realize their own capacity and power. So how do you build up stores of this essential leadership capital? By focusing, the authors of this article argue, on the three core drivers of trust: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People tend to trust you when they think they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they believe that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers. This article by Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss explains how leaders can identify their weaknesses and strengths on these three dimensions and offers advice on how all three can be developed in the service of a truly empowering leadership style.
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Content ArticleThis study from West et al. explore the relationships between leader support, staff influence over decisions, work pressure and patient satisfaction. The results provide evidence that leader support influences patient satisfaction through shaping staff experience, particularly staff influence over decisions and work pressure. Patients’ care is dependent on the health, well-being, and effectiveness of the NHS workforce. That, in turn, is determined by the extent to which leaders are supportive in ensuring that work environments are managed in a way which protects the well-being of staff.
