A necessity, not a nicety

How many times do you hear that colleagues have upset each other by being rude? The NHS Patient Safety Strategy for England (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2019) has a significant thread highlighting safety culture woven throughout:

‘The mistaken belief persists that patient safety is about individual effort.’

The strategy document claims that getting this right could save almost 1000 extra lives each year. In it, Dr Sonya Wallbank described some of the features of a safety culture, including psychological safety for staff; this includes a need to feel supported within a compassionate and inclusive environment operating at the level of the group, not the individual. Also of importance is that each individual knows that they will be treated fairly and compassionately by the group if things go wrong, or they speak up to stop problems occurring. Psychological safety is also described as meaning that staff do not feel the need to behave defensively to protect themselves, which instead opens the space in which they can learn.