25 Jul 2023
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27 Nov 2024
Insights from Stuart Kaill: Compassionate Leadership, Psychological Safety, and Integrity in Patient Safety
Patient Safety Lead at Health Innovation Manchester, Stuart Kaill tells us about a recent learning event as part of the National Patient Safety Improvement programmes on compassionate leadership, psychological safety and leading with integrity.
The online event was attended by over 100 senior leaders from all sectors within the Northwest health and social care system and the immediate feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive with many attendees sharing their actions that they would take back to their places of work (more later…)
At the event we heard from Suzette Woodward, experienced nurse and NHS leader, visiting professor and author of “Rethinking Patient Safety” and “Patient Safety Now”. Suzette always speaks so eloquently and passionately about patient safety, demystifying concepts and making the case for doing things differently obvious. Much of Suzette’s talk centred around the concept of Safety II which argues that for safety critical sectors and organisations, just as important as interrogating what goes wrong is investing time and effort into learning why things go right – indeed when time and resources are scarce, it is essential to do this.
“It’s always amazing how long a good culture takes, and how quickly one is dismantled” – Event participant
Dr Matt Hill, Consultant Anaesthetist, Honorary University Fellow (Plymouth University), Generation Q Fellow and Clinical Advisor on Safety Culture for NHS England talked to us about his learning from years of working with teams and organisations to understand their own safety culture through the SCORE safety culture tool.
He believes that “the impact of understanding the key aspects of safety culture across organisations and the health care system has the potential to result in significant gains in patient outcomes, staff metrics and financial savings, so how do we focus on conversations and get the best out of each other?”
Matt has more recently been involved in testing out a model for explorative team cultural conversations called MOMENTS which provides a framework for reflecting on some of our routine daily interactions – ‘moments’ that can unwittingly foster poor communication or unhealthy behaviours such as pulling rank, microaggressions, and so on. MOMENTS is a model that enables teams to make small but real improvements to some of their critical daily interactions that can support a climate of psychological safety and safety culture, and I know my team is looking forward to working with teams to try it for themselves.
“There’s power in the follow up question ‘No really, how are you?’”
“Take the fear out of seeking help, if you offer support make sure you have the support – make sure someone is obligated to providing it. We have removed spaces for people to come together – put them back in place.” – Event participants
Before we closed the event, it was fantastic to read in the chat box, examples of the participants’ takeaways from the session – not just learnings but small commitments to act differently too. There were too many list but here is selection:
“Listen more to my teams”
“Be more reflective and aware of my inner emotions”
“Approach investigations and the sharing of learning from incidents in a positive way starting with what goes right”
“Focus more on the 90%”
“Assume things normally go right and ask what was different this time”
If you missed the learning event the YouTube links to the individual speaker sessions can be found below:
For any further information, please email psc@healthinnovationmanchester.com
Related reading:
Google’s Project Aristotle – Psych Safety
IHI Framework for Improving Joy In Work
Safer Healthcare: Strategies for the Real World’, – Charles Vincent and René Amalberti