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Showing results for tags 'Speaking up'.
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Content Article
Safe to speak up? NHS Staff Survey Results 2021
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Culture
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In this blog, Patient Safety Learning analyses the results of the NHS Staff Survey 2021, specifically focusing on responses relating to reporting, speaking up and acting on safety concerns. It reflects on the importance of staff feeling able to speak up about patient safety incidents and the implications when this is not the case. It describes the NHS’s current approach to creating a patient safety culture and emphasises the need for NHS England and NHS Improvement, in partnership with the National Guardian and Care Quality Commission, to bring forward robust and specific commitments to drive this work forward. -
Content ArticleThis report published by the National Guardian’s Office shows the experience of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians amid the continued pressure of the pandemic on the healthcare sector. Although the majority of guardians who responded to the survey were positive about the culture of their organisation, the results highlight a decline in factors that make it easy for staff to speak up, including support from leadership.
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NHS Staff Survey Results 2021 (30 March 2022)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Culture
The NHS Staff Survey is one of the largest workforce surveys in the world and is carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. It asks staff in England about their experiences of working for their respective NHS organisations. 648,594 staff responded to the survey this year. The full results of the 2021 NHS Staff Survey are published on the NHS Staff Survey website. -
Content ArticleThe rapid review was commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement, following concerns raised by staff at The Christie Hospital in relation to the Research & Innovation department. The review makes a number of recommendations and the Trust will be developing and action plan to address these.
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Crossword counterpoint: glimpses of NHS whistleblowing terrain
Hugh Wilkins posted an article in Whistle blowing
This blog is prompted by a recent newspaper crossword in which one of the clues, quadruplicated, was 'Whistle-blower'. The four answers were, respectively, 'canary', 'snitch', 'telltale' and 'betrayer'. The blog draws attention to negative perceptions of whistleblowers in the eyes of some people. It emphasises how wrong these perceptions are and how damaging this can be, with serious patient safety implications. In this blog I provide a crossword counterpoint (attached below to solve), which seeks to support learning about the realities of hostility against some staff who speak up in the NHS. I will share a follow-up blog which contains the solution to this crossword and seeks to provide further education on this topic where there is so much confusion and misunderstanding. -
Content ArticlePeter Duffy’s first book 'Whistle in the Wind' detailed his whistleblowing to the Care Quality Commission and General Medical Council about deteriorating clinical and surgical standards in a National Health Service Trust in England. In Peter’s new book ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ he speaks about "the corrupt, disorientating and Orwellian world into which the vulnerable, naive and solitary whistleblower stumbles." What truth he speaks; in this sequel to his incredibly important exposure of whistleblowing retribution at Morecambe Bay’s NHS Trust he reveals the depths to which those trusted with IT services in the NHS will go to defame and smear an employee who dares to speak the truth. Peter’s courage and tenacity against those who have tried to destroy him provides valuable insight and a guiding light for all those who may find themselves in a similar position fighting toxic management in the NHS.
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Content ArticleSafety voice is theorised as an important factor for mitigating accidents, but behavioural research during actual hazards has been scant. Research indicates power distance and poor listening to safety concerns (safety listening) suppresses safety voice. Yet, despite fruitful hypotheses and training programmes, data is based on imagined and simulated scenarios and it remains unclear to what extent speaking-up poses a genuine problem for safety management, how negative responses shape the behaviour, or how this can be explained by power distance. Moreover, this means it remains unclear how the concept of safety voice is relevant for understanding accidents. To address this, 172 Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts of historic aviation accidents were identified, integrated into a novel dataset , coded in terms of safety voice and safety listening and triangulated with Hofstede’s power distance. Results revealed that flight crew spoke-up in all but two accidents, provided the first direct evidence that power distance and safety listening explain variation in safety voice during accidents, and indicated partial effectiveness of CRM training programmes because safety voice and safety listening changed over the course of history, but only for low power distance environments. Thus, findings imply that accidents cannot be assumed to emerge from a lack of safety voice, or that the behaviour is sufficient for avoiding harm, and indicate a need for improving interventions across environments. Findings underscore that the literature should be grounded in real accidents and make safety voice more effective through improving ‘safety listening’.
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In this blog, Claire Cox, Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Manager at Guys and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, explains why and how she developed the Patient Safety Management Network. She looks at why the network is needed, what it has achieved so far, its aims for the future and how patient safety managers can get involved. -
Content Article
This white paper sets out the symbiotic relationship between healthcare worker safety and patient safety. It makes the case for a new focus on improvements in patient and healthcare worker safety, and on the relationship between them, to prevent safety incidents and deliver better outcomes for all. It has been published by the Safety for All campaign, set up by the Safer Healthcare and Biosafety Network (SHBN), an independent forum focused on improving healthcare worker and patient safety, including Patient Safety Learning and the Association of British HealthTech Industries. -
Content ArticleThe Virginia Mason (VM) Medical Center based in and around Seattle consists of one 350 bed hospital facility and 9 satellite units. They employ 5000 staff, 500 of which are physicians. The Patient Safety Alert (PSA) system was introduced in 2002 following a staff survey. This showed that staff were fearful of speaking-up about concerns. Also, staff doubted that information generated from concerns would improve the safety of care. At the time of the survey VM staff wishing to raise concerns had to complete a quality incident report (QIR). Typically, QIRs would sit on a shelf collecting dust for months, then filed away and forgotten. As we know from countless reports and commentaries into safety failures in healthcare and other industries, perceptions of fear and futility around speaking-up are inimical to creating a positive speak-up or open culture. Virginia Mason share their results of implementing the PSAs and 10 lessons for speaking up in the NHS.
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Organisational culture and patient safety poster
Hugh Wilkins posted an article in Good practice
Poster presented by hub topic lead, Hugh Wilkins, at the MPEC 2021 Conference.- Posted
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Content ArticleThis National Guardians Office report analyses the themes and learning from their review of the speaking up culture at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals which was undertaken 2020. The National Guardians Office received information indicating that a speaking up case may not have been handled following good practice. The information received also suggested black and minority ethnic workers had comparatively worse experiences when speaking up. Based on focus groups and interviews with Trust workers, and analysis of internal processes and data, the report reviews information about the trust’s speaking up culture and arrangements and the trust’s support for its workers to speak up.
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Content ArticleThis study in BMJ Open considers how the usefulness of internal whistleblowing is affected by other institutional processes in healthcare organisations. The authors examine how the effectiveness of formal inquiries (in response to employees raising concerns) affects the utility of whistleblowing. The study used computer simulations to test the utility of several whistleblowing policies in a variety of organisational contexts. This study found that: organisational inefficiencies can have a negative impact on the benefits of speaking up about poor patient care where resources are limited and reviews less efficient, it can actually improve patient care if whistleblowing rates are limited including 'softer' mechanisms for reporting concerns (for example, peer to peer conversation) alongside whistleblowing policies, can overcome these organisational limitations.
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'Whistleblowing': a definition for reflection in Speak Up Month
Steve Turner posted an article in Whistle blowing
It's that time again. 'Speak Up Month' in the NHS. In this blog, I discuss the definition of 'whistelblowing' and why this is important. I believe that although the Francis Report has stimulated some positive changes, the only way to successfully move forward on this is to celebrate and promote genuine whistleblowers. This includes using the word 'whistleblowing', not a euphemism. It also needs us to involve everyone, including patients, in the changes. "Whistleblowing isn’t a problem to be solved or managed, it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. The more we move away for labelling and stereotyping the more we will learn. Regardless of our position, role or perceived status, we all need to address this much more openly and explicitly, in a spirit of truth and reconciliation." What is whistleblowing? "In the UK, NHS bodies have been guilty of muddying the waters. Sometimes implying that whistleblowers are people who fail to use the proper channels, or are troublemakers, especially when they go outside their organisation with their concerns. In fact, the Public Interest Disclosure Act makes no distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ whistle-blowers..."- Posted
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Content ArticleThe National Guardian’s Office today publishes its Annual Report for 2020, highlighting the progress which has been made in Freedom to Speak Up in health and the impact of the pandemic on speaking up.
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Content ArticleIn this story from a former Policy & Performance Officer, the truth is told about how ineffective hierarchies often result in a culture of dishonesty.
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Content ArticleThis poster was presented by Hugh Wilkins at the UK Imaging and Oncology Congress in June 2019 and highlights the serious problem of retaliation against NHS staff who raise concerns in the public interest.
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Freedom to Speak Up Guardian survey 2020
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Speak Up Guardians
This is the fourth year that the National Guardian’s Office has surveyed Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in order to understand how speaking up is supported within organisations. Their views give valuable insights into both how the Guardian role is implemented and what further support and learning is needed to truly create a culture where speaking up is business as usual. The results also reveal details about their perceptions of the barriers to speaking up, the sources of detriment for speaking up and the network’s demographics. -
Content ArticleThis is the National Guardian's Office annual data report covering the 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. It analyses the themes and learning from the speaking up data shared by Freedom to Speak Up Guardians across this period. There are over 700 Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in the NHS and there were 20,388 cases raised with them in 2020/21.
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Content ArticleIn this report, Exploring Freedom to Speak Up: Supporting the introduction of the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian role in Primary Care and Integrated Settings, the National Guardian's Office illustrates the challenges and benefits of implementing Freedom to Speak Up in different primary care settings. In 2019, the National Guardian’s Office began a two-year project working with primary care providers to understand how the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian role could be introduced in primary care and integrated settings. This report describes some of the variety of organisations, and the different Freedom to Speak Up models they have adopted.
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Content ArticleImproving patient safety culture (PSC) is a significant priority for OECD countries as they work to improve healthcare quality and safety—a goal that has increased in importance as countries have faced new safety concerns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from this OECD benchmarking work in PSC show that there is significant room for improvement.
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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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Blog: At the edge of inside (24 June 2016)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Culture
In this opinion piece for The New York Times, David Brooks looks at the value of being 'at the edge of the inside'. He argues that being within an organisation, but not so close to the centre that you are subsumed by the 'group think', puts an individual in a good position to positively influence the organisation's culture and practice. -
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 ArticleThe Royal College of Anaesthetists is launching a campaign to prevent future deaths from unrecognised oesophageal intubation following a recently received coroner’s report where an oesophageal intubation took place and was not recognised in time to save the life of the patient. The coroner’s report highlighted the critical importance of human factors in safe anaesthetic practice. In this blog, Matt Bigwood and Chris Frerk discuss how one of the main aims of the campaign is to empower every team member, regardless of position, to be able to speak up if they spot this problem. You can also read more about the campaign here.
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