Emergency medicine is basically just navigating uncertainty together.
Patient after patient.
Shift after shift.
We are quite familiar with good team behaviours that allow us to do so.
We train for things like…
Closing the loop
Recaps
Graded assertiveness
Communication
But as a community we have spent less energy on understanding and deliberately supporting the type of organizational and team culture that is a necessary pre-requisite for those good behaviours to happen.
Things like…
Trust
Familiarity
Feeling valued
Case in point. Jane.
Early in the pandemic Jane noticed resus teams doffing incorrectly. I asked her if she told them…she said,
“Well I wouldn’t say anything to anybody…I am just a janitor.”
Ooof. Hierarchy, power, fear – getting in the way of doing our best.
But COVID intubations aren’t special.
We need to be able take interpersonal risks – big and small.
The nurse challenging the drug dose.
The consultant seeking feedback on a tough case.
The orthopaedic tech suggesting a different management.
Jane telling me I am doffing wrong.
The ability for members of the team to take interpersonal risks is known as psychological safety. It is critical for teams to perform at their best.
Read anything and everything @AmyCEdmondson has written about it.
Many have worked to flatten hierarchy and we value collegiality. But my research – and many stories like Jane’s – make it clear that we have a long way to go.
The trouble is those who have the greatest power to change culture are least likely to realize there is a problem.
Jane taught me that my team is not as safe as I think it is.
.
.
.
…..neither is yours.
There is some good news.
My team may not be as safe as I think it is… but it can be!
And it’s simpler than you think.
We have found that psych safety in the ED is generated through familiarity.
SMALL MOMENTS that inject familiarity can be woven into our everyday work.
The Shift Huddle.
Taking 5 minutes to gather the team, learn names, and chat at the beginning of the day sets up expectations for teamwork and lowers the threshold for future communication. It’s a clear demonstration of respect for the team.
A small moment that matters.
The Team Briefing.
Briefing the team in advance or on the arrival of a patient is a critical moment to build familiarity. It creates shared knowledge of roles, goals, mutual respect, and teamwork expectations.
A quick convo after a shift, after a transfer, after a resus etc etc etc - is a powerful way for the team to grow together.
It’s evidence of psychological safety, and a way to build it!
A small moment that matters.
The small moments matter…
And the big decisions matter too.
Departments must commit to prioritizing familiarity for their teams in decisions they make – think rostering, geographic podding, staff orientation, meetings etc.
So…
Your team is not as safe as you think it is.
But it can be.
Thrilled to share our latest research on ED teams.
Psychological safety - the ability to take interpersonal risks - is critical to team performance across industries...we have put a spotlight on the concept in emergency medicine.
To help, we MUST apply the best evidence from teamwork science with the same fervour we apply evidence for interventions for conditions like sepsis/STEMIs.
Our teams and patients deserve it.
Psychological safety is a great place to focus attention because the evidence for its importance across industries (and in healthcare) is well documented. Just read anything @AmyCEdmondson or @roisinODonovan4 have written.
I am simultaneously 1) amazed by the work of ED teams - they are the primary buffer in our system and 2) troubled by tensions and threats posed to our specialty.
We harnessed the power of clinicians (ED physicians and nurses) on the ground to understand the impact of COVID-19 on our department.
The department used the data to guide real-time decision making and we used the data to better understand EM culture and the impacts of COVID.
We found that in the early response to COVID the resources mobilized gave a glimpse of how EM could and should work. This highlighted problems predating the pandemic.
Psychological safety - a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking – has been a focus for sim facilitators. Giants have shown how psych safety can be fostered in the confines of the simulation space.
But psychological safety is even more critical in real workplaces. It is central to how teams accomplish complex work, how they learn together, and how they grow.
The acute phase of COVID-19 was a time of cultural magnification and transformation in emergency medicine. It was a time when we could see who we are, recognized what aligned with those values and identified what conflicted with them. #ACEMWS21@Qemerg
A group of clinicians @Qemerg@KingstonHSC engaged in a rapid cycle collaborative ethnography by gathering >50,000 words in field notes and >40 interviews with staff during 12 week period (March-May 2020). Weekly we reported the "pulse" of the ED to department + hospital leaders.
This work highlighted aspects of pandemic reality that aligned with our core values, beliefs, and practices. For example, managing uncertainty is core to emergency medicine. Many thrived in doing so in the early days.
Moments of crisis, like #COVID19, are moments of cultural compression...Moments when values and beliefs of a group are more easily identified and then shaped.
Moments that can tell organizations an awful lot about who we are, what matters most, and who we might become. #EDAC2020
It turns out that psychological safety, the ability for team members to take interpersonal risks, is critical for groups to do their work. In moments of crisis we can clearly see when psychological safety is intact....and...when it is not.
So...how might we shape an organizational culture that fosters psychological safety so that we can be our best during crisis, but perhaps even more importantly during normal times??? #EDAC2020