Abstract
Patient safety is a key priority for the National Health Service (NHS) and a significant intervention to support this has been the introduction of safety briefings or ‘huddles’. Huddles are short, focused meetings, within the clinical area where the team caring for a specific group of patients can identify, discuss and escalate concerns regarding the patients in their care. This study is set within the researcher’s workplace where an improvement project had introduced huddles. There had been positive outcomes from the huddles for patient care, but this was only examined through patient safety metrics and quantitative data.
The aim of this study was to explore huddles from a qualitative perspective. To understand the culture, characteristics, and psychological safety of huddle participants. Four clinical areas were identified to represent the acute hospital setting in an NHS hospital, and using a focussed ethnographic approach, huddles were explored. Data were collected from observing huddles, interviewing participants and fieldwork collected by the researcher insitu. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the data were analysed into three themes: Stopping still, Standing in the gap and Speaking out.
The contribution to knowledge that this study has made is that psychological safety is a foundational cultural characteristic to huddles in the acute hospital clinical setting. That huddles are supportive of patient safety but also in staff wellbeing. Implications have been developed for individual participants, wards/departments and organisations using huddles. This study has contributed insight into the experience of huddle participants, and the findings have been explained with a figure which can be used in the clinical setting to educate others in using huddles. In a post-pandemic NHS, with changing practice, policy and significant staff retention issues, this study has found that where psychological safety is a foundational characteristic of huddle culture, huddles themselves become fundamental to staff wellbeing as well as patient safety.
The aim of this study was to explore huddles from a qualitative perspective. To understand the culture, characteristics, and psychological safety of huddle participants. Four clinical areas were identified to represent the acute hospital setting in an NHS hospital, and using a focussed ethnographic approach, huddles were explored. Data were collected from observing huddles, interviewing participants and fieldwork collected by the researcher insitu. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the data were analysed into three themes: Stopping still, Standing in the gap and Speaking out.
The contribution to knowledge that this study has made is that psychological safety is a foundational cultural characteristic to huddles in the acute hospital clinical setting. That huddles are supportive of patient safety but also in staff wellbeing. Implications have been developed for individual participants, wards/departments and organisations using huddles. This study has contributed insight into the experience of huddle participants, and the findings have been explained with a figure which can be used in the clinical setting to educate others in using huddles. In a post-pandemic NHS, with changing practice, policy and significant staff retention issues, this study has found that where psychological safety is a foundational characteristic of huddle culture, huddles themselves become fundamental to staff wellbeing as well as patient safety.
| Original language | English |
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| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
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| Award date | 31 Mar 2025 |
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| Publication status | Published - 31 Mar 2025 |