The Simulation Team and Maternity Services at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust have developed this staff education film to support open and honest dialogue, in line with a using a systems-based approach. The film was inspired by real service user and staff experiences and has been reviewed by members of our Maternity Neonatal Voice Partnership MNVP “It outlined scenarios that service users can experience and gives more direct information from the service user perspective as opposed to representatives” “After watching the film, I understood more about how busy the nurse, midwife and doctor are”. MNVP service users
How to use this film:
This film encourages the use of the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety SEIPS model, to help explore potential contributory factors within a work system, such as unconscious bias, stereotyping, workload, incivility, societal pressures and environmental factors under the six entity headings.
- Watch the animated explanation of SEIPS, followed by a short fictional maternity scenario and consider any relevant contributory factors.
- Get into small (ideally interprofessional) groups to share and discuss thoughts for around 5-10 mins.
- Have a facilitated whole group discussion, ASK: Did the contributory factors help or hinder the situation? What was the impact? How do the things we have discussed today impact patient care in your area? Ensure discussions explore contributory factors across all six entities.
This film works best when:
- Used in the context of an interprofessional classroom activity, neutrally facilitated by an educator trained in Human Factors and Systems-based approaches.
- Group psychological safety is gained and maintained throughout.
- Discussions are genuine and curious.
- Interactions within the wider work system (which includes people) are considered and overly focusing on individual behaviour is avoided.
- System level improvement ideas, as opposed to less effective person level actions such as reflection or retraining are encouraged.
Using a systems-based approach to safety and improvement discussions can help to promote a Just Culture, reduce blame and supports the implementation of PSIRF. You can use this film to link into Culture, PSIRF and QI work streams, where the output of the systems-based discussions could be anonymised, themed and fed back to the division/organisation safety and improvement profiles.
If you would like to discuss this will the Epsom and St Helier team please get in contact with esth.simulation@nhs.net