A qualitative study of speaking out about patient safety concerns in intensive care units

Medical Professionals' Responses to a Patient Safety Incident in Healthcare

Objectives: Patient safety incidents (PSIs) are common in healthcare. Open communication facilitated by psychological safety in healthcare could contribute to the prevention of PSIs and enhance patient safety. The aim of the study was to explore medical professionals' responses to a PSI in relation to psychological safety in Slovak healthcare. Methods: Sixteen individual semi-structured interviews with Slovak medical professionals were performed. Obtained qualitative data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the conventional content analysis method and the consensual qualitative research method. Results: We identified eight responses to a PSI from medical professionals themselves as well as their colleagues, many of which were active and with regard to ensuring patient safety (e.g., notification), but some of them were passive and ultimately threatening patients' safety (e.g., silence). Five superiors' responses to the PSI were identified, both positive (e.g., supportive) and negative (e.g., exaggerated, sharp). Conclusion: Medical professionals' responses to a PSI are diverse, indicating a potential for enhancing psychological safety in healthcare.

A scoping review exploring the impact and negotiation of hierarchy in healthcare organisations

Healthcare organisations are hierarchical; almost all are organised around the ranking of individuals by authority or status, whether this be based on profession, expertise, gender or ethnicity. Hierarchy is important for several reasons; it shapes the delivery of care, what is prioritised and who receives care. It also has an impact on healthcare workers and how they work and communicate together in organisations. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore the qualitative evidence related to hierarchy in healthcare organisations defined broadly, to address gaps in macro-level healthcare organisational research, specifically focusing on the (1) impact of hierarchy for healthcare workers and (2) how hierarchy is negotiated, sustained and challenged in healthcare organisations. After a search and screening, 32 papers were included in this review. The findings of this review detail the wide-reaching impacts that hierarchy has on healthcare delivery and health workers. The majority of studies spoke to hierarchy's impact on speaking up, that is, how it shaped communication between staff with differential status: not only what was said, but how it had an impact on what was acceptable to say, by whom and at what time. Hierarchy was also noted to have substantial personal costs, impacting on the well-being of those in less powerful positions. These findings also provide insight into the complex ways in which hierarchy was negotiated, challenged and reproduced. Studies not only detailed the way in which hierarchy was navigated day to day but also spoke to the reasons as to why hierarchy is often entrenched and difficult to shift. A number of studies spoke to the impact that hierarchy had in sustaining gender and ethnic inequalities, maintaining historically discriminatory practices. Importantly, hierarchy should not be reduced to differences between or within the professions in localised contexts but should be considered at a broad organisational level.

The Effects of Humor in Clinical Settings on Medical Trainees and the Implications for Medical Educators: A Scoping Review

Background

Clinical settings represent the site of patient care and clinical training for medical students and residents. Both processes involve social interaction, and humor is a fundamental component of social interaction that remains underexplored in medical education. This study investigated the impact of humor on medical trainees in the context of the clinical learning environment and examined the implications for medical educators.

Methods

Following scoping review methodology, the authors systematically searched six databases and Google Scholar in February 2021 and March 2022. Articles were screened and selected according to inclusion/exclusion criteria, and findings from included articles were synthesized using procedures of metasynthesis.

Results

Fifteen articles met inclusion criteria. Six themes emerged relating to the functions and effects of humor in clinical training settings: (1) managing emotions; (2) demarcating insider vs outsider status; (3) facilitating camaraderie; (4) ensuring conformity; (5) negotiating power differentials; and (6) fostering discrimination.

Conclusions

The use of humor by medical educators plays an integral role in trainees' everyday experiences. Positive humor helps with coping and communication, while negative humor serves as an indirect medium for communicating ridicule and prejudice. Further research drawing on social psychology theories may identify ways to reduce effects of negative humor and promote well-being and diversity in medical education.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01769-0.

Nurses' perceptions of their role in antimicrobial stewardship within the hospital environment. An integrative literature review

BACKGROUND

Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) has traditionally been the domain of doctors and pharmacists but there is a growing recognition that successful stewardship incorporates a multidisciplinary approach that includes nursing staff. This literature review explores nurses' perceptions of their role in antimicrobial stewardship within the hospital environment and provides new insights to inform future practice.

METHODOLOGY

An integrative literature review was undertaken. Five academic databases were searched, which identified six relevant studies. Whittemore and Knafl's method for conducting an integrative review was followed. ENTREQ guidelines have been adhered to.

FINDINGS

Two themes were identified: nurses' working in partnership with other professionals and engagement in education.

DISCUSSION

Antimicrobial stewardship illustrates the role of the nurse within the wider multidisciplinary team regarding wider patient safety issues and the need for education to enhance this role.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

Nurses have a clear role to play in antimicrobial stewardship but need to be fully cognisant of the issues involved. Further clarity on how nurses should enact this role in their complex working environments is required. It is essential that both student and qualified nurses are able to speak up in order to maximise patient safety, fulfil their professional duty and promote the overall effectiveness of AMS if they witness poor antibiotic management practices.

Hospital managers’ views on the state of patient safety culture across three regions in Ghana

Background

Improving patient safety culture in healthcare organisations contributes positively to the quality of care and patients’ attitudes toward care. While hospital managers undoubtedly play critical roles in creating a patient safety culture, in Ghana, qualitative studies focussing on hospital managers’ views on the state of patient safety culture in their hospitals remain scanty.

Objective

This study aimed to explore the views of hospital managers regarding compliance to patient safety culture dimensions in the selected hospitals in the Bono, Greater Accra, and Upper East regions of Ghana.

Methodology

This was a qualitative exploratory study. A purposive sampling of all hospital managers involved in patient safety practices was conducted. The sampled managers were then invited to a focus group discussion. Twelve focus group discussions with each consisting of a maximum of twelve participants were conducted. The ten patient safety culture dimensions adapted from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s patient safety culture composite measures framed the interview guide. Deductive thematic content analysis was done. Lincoln and Guba’s methods of trustworthiness were applied to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.

Findings

Positive patient safety culture behaviours such as open communication, organisational learning, and strong teamwork within units, were an established practice in the selected facilities across Ghana. Lack of teamwork across units, fear of reporting adverse events, the existence of a blame culture, inconsistent response to errors, extreme shortage of staff, sub-standard handover, lack of management support with resources constrained the patient safety culture. The lack of standardised policies on reporting adverse events and response to errors encouraged managers to use various approaches, some resulting in a blame culture. Staff shortage contributed to poor quality of safety practices including poor handover which was also influenced by lateness to duty.

Conclusion

Prompt and appropriate responses by managers to medical errors require improvements in staffing and material resources as well as the enactment of standard policies across health facilities in the country. By so doing, hospital managers would contribute significantly to patient safety, and help build a patient safety culture in the selected hospitals.

Thinking about social power and hierarchy in medical education

CONTEXT

Social power has been diversely conceptualised in many academic areas. Operating on both the micro (interactional) and macro (structural) levels, we understand power to shape behaviour and knowledge through both repression and production. Hierarchies are one organising form of power, stratifying individuals or groups based on the possession of valued social resources.

DISCUSSION

Medicine is a highly organised social context where work and learning are contingent on interaction and thereby influenced greatly by social power and hierarchy. Despite the relevance of power to education research, there are many unrealized opportunities to use this construct to expand our understanding of how physicians work and learn. Hierarchy, when considered in our field, is typically gestured to as an omnipresent feature of the clinical environment that harms low-status individuals by repressing their ability to communicate openly and exercise their agency. This may be true in many circumstances, but this conceptualization of hierarchy neglects consideration of other aspects of hierarchy that may be generative for understanding the experiences of medical learners. For example, medical learners may experience the superimposition of multiple hierarchies, some of which are fluid and some of which are calcified, some of which are productive and helpful and some of which are oppressive and harmful. Power may work 'up' and 'across' hierarchical ranks, rather than just from higher status to lower status individuals.

CONCLUSION

The conceptualizations of how social power shapes human behaviour are diverse. Often paired with hierarchy, or social arrangement, these social scientific ideas have much to offer our collective study of the ways that health professionals learn and practice. Accordingly, we posit that a consideration of the ways social power works through hierarchies to nurture or harm the growth of learners should be granted explicit consideration in the framing and conduct of medical education research.

Uncovering, creating or constructing problems? Enacting a new role to support staff who raise concerns about quality and safety in the English National Health Service

Employee voice is an important source of organizational intelligence about possible problems in quality and patient safety, but effective systems for encouraging and supporting those who seek to speak up have remained elusive. In the English National Health Service, a novel role known as the 'Freedom to Speak Up Guardian' has been introduced to address this problem. We critically examine the role and its realization in practice, drawing on semi-structured interviews with 51 key individuals, including Guardians, clinicians, managers, policymakers, regulators and others. Operationalizing the new role in organizations was not straightforward, since it had to sit in a complex set of existing systems and processes. One response was to seek to bound the scope of Guardians, casting them in a signposting or coordinating role in relation to quality and safety concerns. However, the role proved hard to delimit, not least because the concerns most frequently voiced in practice differed in character from those anticipated in the role's development. Guardians were tasked with making sense of and dealing with issues that could not always straightforwardly be classified, deflected to the right system or escalated to the appropriate authority. Our analysis suggests that the role's potential contribution might be understood less as supporting whistleblowers who bear witness to clear-cut wrongdoing, and more as helping those with lower-level worries to construct their concerns and what to do with them. These findings have implications for how voice is understood, imagined and addressed in healthcare organizations.

The presence and potential impact of psychological safety in the healthcare setting: an evidence synthesis

INTRODUCTION

Psychological safety is the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. Its presence improves innovation and error prevention. This evidence synthesis had 3 objectives: explore the current literature regarding psychological safety, identify methods used in its assessment and investigate for evidence of consequences of a psychologically safe environment.

METHODS

We searched multiple trial registries through December 2018. All studies addressing psychological safety within healthcare workers were included and reviewed for methodological limitations. A thematic analysis approach explored the presence of psychological safety. Content analysis was utilised to evaluate potential consequences.

RESULTS

We included 62 papers from 19 countries. The thematic analysis demonstrated high and low levels of psychological safety both at the individual level in study participants and across the studies themselves. There was heterogeneity in responses across all studies, limiting generalisable conclusions about the overall presence of psychological safety. A wide range of methods were used. Twenty-five used qualitative methodology, predominantly semi-structured interviews. Thirty quantitative or mixed method studies used surveys. Ten studies inferred that low psychological safety negatively impacted patient safety. Nine demonstrated a significant relationship between psychological safety and team outcomes. The thematic analysis allowed the development of concepts beyond the content of the original studies. This analytical process provided a wealth of information regarding facilitators and barriers to psychological safety and the development of a model demonstrating the influence of situational context.

DISCUSSION

This evidence synthesis highlights that whilst there is a positive and demonstrable presence of psychological safety within healthcare workers worldwide, there is room for improvement. The variability in methods used demonstrates scope to harmonise this. We draw attention to potential consequences of both high and low psychological safety. We provide novel information about the influence of situational context on an individual's psychological safety and offer more detail about the facilitators and barriers to psychological safety than seen in previous reviews. There is a risk of participation bias - centres involved in safety research may be more aligned to these ideals. The data in this synthesis are useful for institutions looking to improve psychological safety by providing a framework from which modifiable factors can be identified.

An Examination of Nurses' Empowerment and Speaking Up During Postanesthesia Clinical Hand Overs

Hierarchical relationships can negatively affect nurses' psychological empowerment and interprofessional hand overs. We explored nurses' perceptions of their psychological empowerment, teamwork, and work engagement; relationships between these concepts during interprofessional clinical hand overs; and observed interactive communication behaviors during hand overs. We used surveys and observations of interprofessional clinical hand overs to collect data from 39 nurses in a postanesthesia care unit in Australia. Nurses reported high scores for psychological empowerment and work engagement. Relationships between empowerment and teamwork (r = 0.41, P = .01) and empowerment and work engagement (r = 0.65, P < .001) were positive and significant. Relationships between nurses' observed communication behaviors and perceptions of empowerment, teamwork, and work engagement were nonsignificant. Additional research is needed to better understand how empowerment, teamwork, and work engagement affect nurses' interactive communication behaviors during interprofessional clinical hand overs in the postanesthesia care unit.

What became of the 'eyes and the ears'?: exploring the challenges to reporting poor quality of care among trainee medical staff

The importance of trainee medical staff in alerting Trusts to patient safety risks and low-quality care was established by the Francis Report, yet many remain hesitant about speaking up. Known barriers include lack of feedback, sceptical attitudes to the likelihood of change and fear of consequences. The author explores other factors including moral orientation in the workplace, role modelling by senior clinicians, discontinuity, 'normalisation of deviance', human reactions to burnout/moral injury, loyalty and the spectrum of motivation. The issues of absent feedback and fear are discussed in detail. Challenges met by those receiving reports are also described, such as how to collate soft intelligence, putting concerns into context (the 'bigger picture') and stewardship of resources. Initiatives to encourage reporting of trainees' concerns such as speak up guardians, 'Speak Up for Safety' campaign and simulation training are described. A proposal to embed proactive intelligence-gathering arrangements is presented.

[Safety culture in orthopedics and trauma surgery : A qualitative study of the physicians' perspective]

Hintergrund

Krankenhäuser in Deutschland betreiben ein Risikomanagement, welches die Prävention und systematische Aufarbeitung unerwünschter Ereignisse unterstützen kann. Ein wichtiger Aspekt davon ist die Etablierung einer Sicherheitskultur. Die Erhebung der Sicherheitskultur findet im deutschsprachigen Raum bisher selten und fast ausschließlich durch quantitative Instrumente statt. Im Fachbereich Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie ist in Deutschland eine hohe Zahl an bestätigten Behandlungsfehlern und Risikoaufklärungsmängeln verzeichnet. Deshalb untersucht die vorliegende Studie die Sicherheitskultur in diesem Fachbereich.

Fragestellung

(I) Wie nehmen Ärzte der Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie den Umgang mit unerwünschten Ereignissen im klinischen Alltag wahr, und (II) was sind die relevanten Bestandteile einer Sicherheitskultur aus ärztlicher Perspektive?

Material und Methoden

Es wurden 14 Einzelinterviews mit Ärzten der Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie geführt. Die Interviews wurden audioaufgezeichnet, transkribiert und anhand der Thematic Analysis nach Braun und Clarke und des Yorkshire Contributory Factors Framework analysiert. Zur Organisation der Daten wurde die Software MAXQDA verwendet.

Ergebnisse

Es konnte ein starker Einfluss der Führungskräfte auf den Umgang mit unerwünschten Ereignissen im ärztlichen Team festgestellt werden. Von Chefärzten wurde erwartet, eine gute Sicherheitskultur vorbildhaft vorzuleben, da sie durch ihr Verhalten die Handlungsweisen des Teams in sicherheitsrelevanten Situationen beeinflussen.

Diskussion

Der Einbezug von Chefärzten in die Entwicklung von Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Sicherheitskultur in der Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie sollte aufgrund der Bedeutsamkeit hierarchischer Strukturen in Betracht gezogen werden.

Zusatzmaterial online

Die Online-Version dieses Beitrags (10.1007/s00113-020-00917-0) enthält weitere Informationen zu Material und Methoden der Studie. Beitrag und Zusatzmaterial stehen Ihnen auf www.springermedizin.de zur Verfügung. Bitte geben Sie dort den Beitragstitel in die Suche ein, das Zusatzmaterial finden Sie beim Beitrag unter „Ergänzende Inhalte“.

The role of the informal and formal organisation in voice about concerns in healthcare: A qualitative interview study

The 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. In this article, we argue that the enduring sociological concepts of the informal organisation and formal organisation offer analytical purchase in understanding the causes of such problems and how they can be addressed. We report a qualitative study involving 165 interviews across three healthcare organisations in two high-income countries. Our analysis emphasises the interdependence of the formal and informal organisation. The formal organisation describes codified and formalised elements of structures, procedures and processes for the exercise of voice, but participants often found it frustrating, ambiguous, and poorly designed. The informal organisation-the informal practices, social connections, and methods for making decisions that are key to coordinating organisational activity-could facilitate voice through its capacity to help people to understand complex processes, make sense of their concerns, and frame them in ways likely to prompt an appropriate organisational response. Sometimes the informal organisation compensated for gaps, ambiguities and inconsistencies in formal policies and systems. At the same time, the informal organisation had a dark side, potentially subduing voice by creating informal hierarchies, prioritising social cohesion, and providing opportunities for retaliation. The formal and the informal organisation are not exclusive or independent: they interact with and mutually reinforce each other. Our findings have implications for efforts to improve culture and processes in relation to voice in healthcare organisations, pointing to the need to address deficits in the formal organisation, and to the potential of building on strengths in the informal organisation that are crucial in supporting voice.

Comparison of the effects of simulation training and problem-based scenarios on the improvement of graduating nursing students to speak up about medication errors: A quasi-experimental study

BACKGROUND

Medication administration errors are common among new nurses. Nursing students might be less willing to speak up about errors because of a lack of knowledge and experience.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the effects of simulation training and problem-based scenarios on speaking up about medication errors among graduating nursing students.

DESIGN

Prospective, controlled experimental study design.

SETTING

A university four-year nursing program in Taiwan.

PARTICIPANTS

In total, 93 graduating nursing students in their last semester were recruited. Sixty-six students who received both a problem-based scenario and medication administration simulation training comprised the experimental group, while 27 students who received problem-based scenarios alone comprised the control group.

METHODS

Experimental group students underwent 2 h of simulation training. This training class was designed based on Kolb's experiential learning theory for knowledge development and speaking up about errors. Students in both groups administered medications in problem-based scenarios with eight embedded errors. Students' performance in speaking up about medication errors was directly observed and graded using an objective structured checklist. The McNeamer Chi-squared test, paired t-test, Z test, t-test, and Hedges' g effect size were conducted.

RESULTS

The number of times participants spoke up about medication errors significantly improved in both the experimental group (pre-test: 2.05 ± 1.12 and post-test 6.14 ± 1.25, t = 22.85, p<0.001) and control group (pretest: 2.04 ± 1.16 and post-test: 4.26 ± 1.63, t = 6.33, p<0.001). However, after the intervention, the mean number of times participants spoke up about medication errors in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (t = 5.99, p<0.001) in the post-test.

CONCLUSIONS

Simulation training exhibited more-significant improvements than problem-based scenarios. Nursing schools and hospitals should incorporate simulation training or at least problem-based scenarios to improve medication safety.

Whistleblowing over patient safety and care quality: a review of the literature

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to review existing research on whistleblowing in healthcare in order to develop an evidence base for policy and research.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

A narrative review, based on systematic literature protocols developed within the management field.

FINDINGS

The authors identify valuable insights on the factors that influence healthcare whistleblowing, and how organizations respond, but also substantial gaps in the coverage of the literature, which is overly focused on nursing, has been largely carried out in the UK and Australia, and concentrates on the earlier stages of the whistleblowing process.

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS

The review identifies gaps in the literature on whistleblowing in healthcare, but also draws attention to an unhelpful lack of connection with the much larger mainstream literature on whistleblowing.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Despite the limitations to the existing literature important implications for practice can be identified, including enhancing employees' sense of security and providing ethics training.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

This paper provides a platform for future research on whistleblowing in healthcare, at a time when policymakers are increasingly aware of its role in ensuring patient safety and care quality.

Understanding the factors influencing doctors' intentions to report patient safety concerns: a qualitative study

OBJECTIVES

To investigate doctors' intentions to raise a patient safety concern by applying the socio-psychological model 'Theory of Planned Behaviour'.

DESIGN

Qualitative semi-structured focus groups and interviews.

SETTING

Training venues across England (North West, South East and South West).

PARTICIPANTS

Sampling was purposeful to include doctors from differing backgrounds and grades.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Perceptions of raising a patient safety concern.

RESULTS

While raising a concern was considered an appropriate professional behaviour, there were multiple barriers to raising a concern, which could be explained by the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Negative attitudes operated due to a fear of the consequences, such as becoming professionally isolated. Disapproval for raising a concern was encountered at an interpersonal and organisational level. Organisational constraints of workload and culture significantly undermined the raising of a concern. Responses about concerns were often side-lined or not taken seriously, leading to demotivation to report. This was reinforced by high-profile cases in the media and the negative treatment of whistle-blowers. While regulator guidance acted as an enabler to justify raising a concern, doctors felt disempowered to raise a concern about people in positions of greater power, and ceased to report concerns due to a perceived lack of action about concerns raised previously.

CONCLUSIONS

Intentions to raise a concern were complex and highly contextual. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is a useful model to aid understanding of the factors which influence the decision to raise a concern. Results point to implications for policymakers, including the need to publicise positive stories of whistle-blowers and providing greater support to doctors.

Walking the tightrope: how rebels “do” quality of care in healthcare organizations

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore and conceptualize how healthcare professionals and managers give shape to the increasing call for compassionate care as an alternative for system-based quality management systems. The research demonstrates how quality rebels craft deviant practices of good care and how they account for them.

Design/methodology/approach

Ethnographic research was conducted in three Dutch hospitals, studying clinical groups that were identified as deviant: a nursing ward for infectious diseases, a mother–child department and a dialysis department. The research includes over 120 h of observation, 41 semi-structured interviews and 2 focus groups.

Findings

The research shows that rebels’ quality practices are an emerging set of collaborative activities to improving healthcare and meeting (individual) patient needs. They conduct “contexting work” to achieve their quality aims by expanding their normative work to outside domains. As rebels deviate from hospital policies, they are sometimes forced to act “under the radar” causing the risk of groupthink and may undermine the aim of public accounting.

Practical implications

The research shows that in order to come to more compassionate forms of care, organizations should allow for more heterogeneity accompanied with ongoing dialogue(s) on what good care yields as this may differ between specific fields or locations.

Originality/value

This is the first study introducing quality rebels as a concept to understanding social deviance in the everyday practices of doing compassionate and good care.

Understanding determinants of infection control practices in surgery: the role of shared ownership and team hierarchy

Background

Despite a large literature on surgical site infection (SSI), the determinants of prevention behaviours in surgery remain poorly studied. Understanding key social and contextual components of surgical staff behaviour may help to design and implement infection control (IC) improvement interventions in surgery.

Methods

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with surgeons (n = 8), nurses (n = 5) theatre personnel (n = 3), and other healthcare professionals involved in surgery (n = 4) in a 1500-bed acute care London hospital group. Participants were approached through established mailing lists and snowball sampling. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded and analysed thematically using a constant comparative approach.

Results

IC behaviour of surgical staff was governed by factors at individual, team, and wider hospital level. IC practices were linked to the perceived risk of harm caused by an SSI more than the development of an SSI alone. Many operating room participants saw SSI prevention as a team responsibility. The sense of ownership over SSI occurence was closely tied to how preventable staff perceived infections to be, with differences observed between clean and contaminated surgery. However, senior surgeons claimed personal accountability for rates despite feeling SSIs are often not preventable. Hierarchy impacted on behaviour in different ways depending on whether it was within or between professional categories. One particular knowledge gap highlighted was the lack of awareness regarding criteria for SSI diagnosis.

Conclusions

To influence IC behaviours in surgery, interventions need to consider the social team structure and shared ownership of the clinical outcome in order to increase the awareness in specialties where SSIs are not seen as serious complications.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s13756-019-0565-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The institutional impact after enacting student solutions to decrease barriers in reporting unprofessional behaviors

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. A two-year study was conducted to evaluate medical student perceptions on professionalism, including barriers to reporting misconduct and solutions to address barriers. Institutional changes occurred based on Year One findings: 1) a streamlined system (EthicsPoint®) was introduced to simplify the process of reporting and allow anonymous reports; 2) curriculum was revamped to include improved didactics on professionalism, instructions on using the EthicsPoint® system, and clerkship orientations that provided clear expectations of behavior by students, house-staff, and faculty; 3) semi-annually, students were asked to document witnessed misconduct, reassured that reports would be confidential, and reassured about protection from reprisal. In Year Two, we assessed changes in the culture of professionalism after institutional changes. Comparing Year Two to Year One, students demonstrated an increase in perceived confidence in ability to identify unprofessional behavior (p<0.01) and increased trust in protection from reprisal (p<0.01). In Year Two, students were more likely to report misconduct related to derogatory remarks about patients (p<0.01) and informed consent (p<0.01). By enhancing clarity about expectations for professional behavior, encouraging transparency through a streamlined and anonymous reporting process, and fostering trust that allows students to feel protected from reprisal, the culture of professionalism at an institution can be improved.

Healthcare scandals and the failings of doctors

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether official inquiries are an effective method for holding the medical profession to account for failings in the quality and safety of care.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

Through a review of the theoretical literature on professions and documentary analysis of key public inquiry documents and reports in the UK National Health Service (NHS) the authors examine how the misconduct of doctors can be understood using the metaphor of professional wrongdoing as a product of bad apples, bad barrels or bad cellars.

FINDINGS

The wrongdoing literature tends to present an uncritical assumption of increasing sophistication in analysis, as the focus moves from bad apples (individuals) to bad barrels (organisations) and more latterly to bad cellars (the wider system). This evolution in thinking about wrongdoing is also visible in public inquiries, as analysis and recommendations increasingly tend to emphasise cultural and systematic issues. Yet, while organisational and systemic factors are undoubtedly important, there is a need to keep in sight the role of individuals, for two key reasons. First, there is growing evidence that a small number of doctors may be disproportionately responsible for large numbers of complaints and concerns. Second, there is a risk that the role of individual professionals in drawing attention to wrongdoing is being neglected.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

To the best of the authors' knowledge this is the first theoretical and empirical study specifically exploring the role of NHS inquiries in holding the medical profession to account for failings in professional practice.

Assessing ethical climates in critical care and their impact on patient outcomes

Intensive care units with a "good" ethical environment are more likely to identify perceived excessive patient care. Patients with perceived excessive care were more likely to die and time to death was shorter in units with a "good" ethical environment. http://ow.ly/vnFP30neAZN.

How to be a very safe maternity unit: An ethnographic study

Maternity care continues to be associated with avoidable harm that can result in serious disability and profound anguish for women, their children, and their families, and in high costs for healthcare systems. As in other areas of healthcare, improvement efforts have typically focused either on implementing and evaluating specific interventions, or on identifying the contextual features that may be generative of safety (e.g. structures, processes, behaviour, practices, and values), but the dialogue between these two approaches has remained limited. In this article, we report a positive deviance case study of a high-performing UK maternity unit to examine how it achieved and sustained excellent safety outcomes. Based on 143 h of ethnographic observations in the maternity unit, 12 semi-structured interviews, and two focus groups with staff, we identified six mechanisms that appeared to be important for safety: collective competence; insistence on technical proficiency; monitoring, coordination, and distributed cognition; clearly articulated and constantly reinforced standards of practice, behaviour, and ethics; monitoring multiple sources of intelligence about the unit's state of safety; and a highly intentional approach to safety and improvement. These mechanisms were nurtured and sustained through both a specific intervention (known as the PROMPT programme) and, importantly, the unit's contextual features: intervention and context shaped each other in both direct and indirect ways. The mechanisms were also influenced by the unit's structural conditions, such as staffing levels and physical environment. This study enhances understanding of what makes a maternity unit safe, paving the way for better design of improvement approaches. It also advances the debate on quality and safety improvement by offering a theoretically and empirically grounded analysis of the interplay between interventions and context of implementation.

Making soft intelligence hard: a multi-site qualitative study of challenges relating to voice about safety concerns

Background

Healthcare organisations often fail to harvest and make use of the ‘soft intelligence’ about safety and quality concerns held by their own personnel. We aimed to examine the role of formal channels in encouraging or inhibiting employee voice about concerns.

Methods

Qualitative study involving personnel from three academic hospitals in two countries. Interviews were conducted with 165 participants from a wide range of occupational and professional backgrounds, including senior leaders and those from the sharp end of care. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method.

Results

Leaders reported that they valued employee voice; they identified formal organisational channels as a key route for the expression of concerns by employees. Formal channels and processes were designed to ensure fairness, account for all available evidence and achieve appropriate resolution. When processed through these formal systems, concerns were destined to become evidenced, formal and tractable to organisational intervention. But the way these systems operated meant that some concerns were never voiced. Participants were anxious about having to process their suspicions and concerns into hard evidentiary facts, and they feared being drawn into official procedures designed to allocate consequence. Anxiety about evidence and process was particularly relevant when the intelligence was especially ‘soft’—feelings or intuitions that were difficult to resolve into a coherent, compelling reconstruction of an incident or concern. Efforts to make soft intelligence hard thus risked creating ‘forbidden knowledge’: dangerous to know or share.

Conclusions

The legal and bureaucratic considerations that govern formal channels for the voicing of concerns may, perversely, inhibit staff from speaking up. Leaders responsible for quality and safety should consider complementing formal mechanisms with alternative, informal opportunities for listening to concerns.