Episode 19: Renee Thompson – CEO and Founder – Disruptive Behaviors in Healthcare, Creating a Culture of Giving and Receiving Feedback, and How to Build a Strong Clinical Team
Summary
In this episode, our guest is Renee Thompson, CEO and Founder of the Healthy Workforce Institute – a team dedicated to helping healthcare organizations cultivate a professional workforce by addressing workplace bullying and incivility.
Thompson discusses creating a culture of giving and receiving feedback, disruptive behaviors and how they impact patient care, managing anxiety in stressful healthcare settings, how to build a strong clinical team, and why she has a passion for creating healthy workforces.
This is an eye-opening conversation that sheds light on the prevalence of disruptive behaviors in healthcare settings. Thompson’s expertise is enlightening as she offers effective strategies to help workplaces thrive.
Show Notes
Disruptive Behaviors & Their Impact on Patient Care
Thompson begins the conversation by defining disruptive behaviors as any negative behavior that should never occur in healthcare and that disturbs the work that is getting done. This includes behaviors such as bullying, incivility, physical violence, gossiping, public criticism, and even the silent treatment.
Thompson discusses how disruptive behaviors can lead to poor patient care and neglect. She mentions a survey that reported that 71% of nurses and physicians believe there is a significant link between the disruptive behaviors of professionals and medical errors, and 27% believe incivility led to a patient’s death. She also discusses how disruptive behaviors can cause a clinician to disengage from their work, which lowers the quality of patient care.
Creating a Culture of Giving and Receiving Feedback
According to Thompson, human beings have a difficult time receiving constructive feedback which is a huge factor in the prevalence of disruptive behaviors. She shares how talented clinicians often are excused for poor behaviors simply because they are good at their job, which Thompson believes is dangerous and reinforces a harmful workforce culture.
Thompson offers strategies to foster a culture where giving and receiving feedback is a habit. She believes that change begins with clinical leaders and their willingness to admit their own shortcomings. She also references the scholar Amy Edmondson who wrote the book The Fearless Organization which explores how to create psychological safety in the workplace. Thompson has created useful scripts for her clients that give people guidance on what to say when giving or receiving feedback.
Managing Anxiety in Stressful Healthcare Settings
During the pandemic, Thompson noticed a big uptick in disruptive behaviors in healthcare, which she attributes to the increase in stress and anxiety among clinicians. She discusses shares helpful techniques to mitigate anxiety such as reminding healthcare workers to focus on the present.
She also shares a survey tool her organization has created for nurse managers to gauge the prevalence of disruptive behaviors on their teams and open the door for further conversation. Thompson believes that before problems can be solved, a nurse manager must have an accurate understanding of the full situation and what problems are occurring.
How to Build a Strong Clinical Team
Thompson believes that a huge way to decrease disruptive behaviors is for the entire team to set behavioral expectations that are agreed upon by each member instead of one nurse manager deciding guidelines for the whole team. This creates a culture of accountability and teamwork where the burden does not fall solely on the nurse manager but is equally distributed among team members. It also creates a safe environment for people to voice concerns and give feedback to one another.
Thompson discusses the need for nurses to assess their own work environments from an objective perspective so that they can specifically name disruptive behaviors. This practice brings clarity to the situation and allows for productive conversations on how to stop the bad behaviors.
The Value of Kindness
Thompson wraps up the conversation by sharing what sparked her interest in this field. Her own experience with bullying and incivility as well as numerous conversations with other clinicians about their experiences are what fueled her desire to end disruptive behaviors in healthcare. One of her core values is kindness, which makes her passionate about cultivating a culture of kindness in workforces around the globe.
Thompson has written two books that explore this topic in greater depth: Enough! Eradicate Bullying and Incivility in Healthcare: Strategies for Front Line Leaders and "Do No Harm" Applies To Nurses Too!: Strategies to Protect and Bully-proof Yourself at Work.
Closing
Humans in Healthcare is produced by Shearwater Health in Nashville, TN, and hosted by Chief Marketing Officer, Nathan King.