From:                                                       Culture of Care <cultureofcare@thepsc.co.uk>

Sent:                                                         19 December 2024 12:39

To:                                                            Culture of Care

Subject:                                                   Creating a Culture of Care - how can we feel psychologically safe?

 

Greetings from the Staff Care and Development team!

 

For those who were able to make it to our first Community of Practice last week, thank you for giving your Wednesday afternoon for it, and for bringing such a positive energy and passion for making change. We hope you all heard something helpful to take away with you, and are already looking forward to the next one! In the meantime, we have some more thoughts to share with you…

 

 

Let’s talk about: building psychological safety

So much of cultural change is about recognising and holding difficult conversations, which often feel risky or uncomfortable for everyone involved. When we feel psychologically safe to admit our ignorance and our mistakes, we are more equipped to have hard conversations in a constructive way, and so work through challenges together. So how do we get there?

 

Muscular arm with solid fillBe brave to be trusted
Brené Brown says vulnerability is the secret ingredient to building authentic relationships that offer support - basically, the more open we are about our feelings and limitations, the more everyone else feels safe to do the same. Trust is the foundation of this vulnerability, and Brown’s BRAVING model gives us a roadmap to get there - setting and explaining Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (confidentiality), Integrity, Non-judgement, and Generosity when interpreting the intentions of others.

 

Sparkling Heart with solid fillI forgive my mistakes (so I’ll forgive yours)
What are mistakes? Carol Dweck (architect of the ‘growth mindset’) says they’re opportunities to learn. Research shows that teams that report more mistakes perform better overall, so embrace those errors! This includes practising self-compassion when we feel the sting of shame—recognizing it, acknowledging it, and then reaching out for support instead of hiding ourselves and our missteps. Once we can forgive ourselves, we can also forgive others, and give truly non-judgemental support.

 

Handshake with solid fillRebuild the burned bridges
In all teams, especially in high-pressure inpatient environments, ruptures (moments of conflict or miscommunication) are inevitable. When they do happen, it’s important to take time to rebuild any relationships we’ve bruised. To help navigate difficult conversations in these rupture and repair cycles, we have an IDEA: only start once you have positive Intent (and only with consent), objectively Describe the situation and what to improve, listen in a two-way Exchange, and agree on 1-2 tangible Actions.

 

As you begin implementing your plans and establishing your updated reflective practice approach, we’d like to leave you with a question to consider:

 

How can you show yourself, and your team, that it’s safe to admit a mistake?

 

 

Pinhoe View | Acute Inpatient Mental ...A view from the ward: Clyst Ward

Clyst Ward, an 18-bed female acute ward in Devon, wants to help make difficult conversations within the team easier by strengthening their psychological safety. Starting with conversations with individuals to explore what this means for them, the group wants to build on the understanding developed in these 1-1s to run focus groups on key themes in January. The team is planning to use the focus groups to work through its psychological safety toolkit (see the following section for more details), to boost the team up towards challenger safety.

 

The team is also bringing in lived experience with the valuable input of a peer support worker to share their expertise, and help engage with service users. As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve got an eye to the future and want, with the benefit of stronger psychological safety, to have open and deep conversations about racism, unconscious bias and inclusion within the team… Watch this space!

 

 

Something for your toolbox: Fostering Psychological Safety and more

Building psychological safety means diving into difficult and often emotive conversations. The irony is, if there’s something you feel uncomfortable raising with your team, that might be exactly the topic that is most important to talk about… Opening up spaces to have productive discussions about these topics can feel like a risky and scary thing to do in its own right.

 

As you prepare to take the plunge, we’ve got a template to share with you, to help plan what things to cover with your team. Step 1: does everyone know that you expect the team to keep learning, and not get it ‘right the first time’? Step 2: can you make it clear that you don’t have all the answers, and that you want to keep asking questions rather than always jumping straight to an opinion? And step 3: can you show you’ve listened appreciatively to the people who’ve shared vulnerable things, and that you can respond to violations of boundaries without making it a painful experience to share bad news?

 

We’re by no means the only people who have been thinking about psychological safety, so we’ve also found some other great resources which we’d love to direct you to:

 

 

Updates from the Culture of Care team

Daily calendar with solid fill20th & 27th January: additional Reflective Practice training course (online)

Offer

Updates

Project coaching for teams
  • Most 2nd, and many 3rd, team sessions have been held.
  • Teams are focusing on finalising their plans and working through the first steps to implement their project.

Individual coaching
  • The first 1:1 development coaching sessions have been held, and most ward teams still have slots available to use.

Reflective practice training
  • Supervision sessions have begun, supporting facilitators to explore how they might establish and run their first group, and how to connect with existing arrangements.
  • An additional training and supervision round will be beginning in January, with training held on Mondays 20th and 27th January 2025.
  • If you haven’t been trained and are interested, get in touch with nhserp@groupanalysis-uk.co.uk to register interest in January training. (Priority for wards without a trained facilitator.)

Community of practice
  • We are reflecting on the first event on 11th December, and will share a summary of the conversations in the next newsletter.
  • We’re already planning for the second event in early 2025.
  • Get in touch with cultureofcare@thepsc.co.uk if you have a story you want to share, or a topic you want to discuss at the next event.

 

 

That’s all for now! We’ll talk more about anti-racism next time, in January. In the meantime, you can find everything above and more on our website: www.cultureofcare.thepsc.co.uk.

 

 

Best wishes,

 

The Culture of Care: Staff Care and Development team

 

Envelope with solid fillcultureofcare@thepsc.co.uk

 

World with solid fillwww.cultureofcare.thepsc.co.uk

 

 

This email relates to the Staff Care and Development strand of the Culture of Care programme. The other five strands are being managed separately. For information on the other strands, please visit the websites of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) and the Foundation of Nursing Studies (FONS).

 

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