"Silence Kills: The Seven Crucial Conversations in Healthcare"

Past studies have indicated that nearly three in four medical errors are caused by mistakes in interpersonal communication.

 The research study, "Silence Kills: The Seven Crucial Conversations in Healthcare", was conducted by VitalSmarts in partnership with the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), and builds on these findings by exploring the specific concerns people have a hard time communicating that may contribute to avoidable errors and other chronic problems in health care.

The study identified that people’s ability to hold crucial conversations - emotionally and politically risky discussions - is key to creating a culture of safety in healthcare and also relates to significant gains in quality of care, productivity, and staff turnover, among other crucial issues. For example, healthcare professionals see a colleague take a shortcut, make a mistake, demonstrate dangerous incompetence, fail to support a co-worker, undercut the team, treat someone with disrespect, or abuse their authority.

The study shows that fewer than 10% of healthcare professionals speak up when they have these types of concerns. Why don’t people speak up? It is usually one of the three obstacles – people’s lack of ability, their belief that it is ‘not their job’, and low confidence that it will do any good.

On the positive side, this study shows that the 10 percent of healthcare workers who are confident in their ability to raise these crucial concerns observe better patient outcomes, work harder, are more satisfied, and are more committed to staying in their jobs.

The seven crucial conversations are:

• Broken Rules.  A healthcare professional sees a colleague take a shortcut that could be dangerous to patients.

• Mistakes.  A healthcare professional sees a colleague show poor clinical judgement, or sees someone who has difficulty following directions.

• Lack of Support.  Your colleagues are reluctant to help, impatient, or refuse to answer your questions.

• Incompetence.  You have concerns about the competency of another healthcare professional you work with.

• Poor Teamwork.  You have a colleague who gossips or is part of a clique that divides the team, does not do their share of the work, or makes themselves look good at others expense.

• Disrespect.  You work with someone who is condescending, insulting or rude.

• Micromanagement.  You work with someone who abuses their authority – pulls rank, bullies, threatens or who forcefully pushes their point of view of you.

If you are interested in finding out more about Silence Kills, and how you can break the culture of silence in your organisation, complete the form below and we'll send you some free resources, or visit www.silencekills.com