Safety culture

Developing and sustaining a culture of safety to benefit everyone

The culture of an organisation and the teams within it is shaped by the behaviour of everyone in it. In maternity and neonatal services, a safety culture improves the experience of care for women and babies and supports staff to thrive. Positive cultures exist in many services, and we want everyone to experience a positive culture at work – poor cultures need to be challenged. The failures in care identified in Bill Kirkup’s report on East Kent stemmed from flaws in culture including a lack of teamworking, professionalism, compassion, listening, and learning. The three areas for developing and sustaining a safety culture for everyone are: developing a safety culture, learning and improving, and support and oversight.

Culture is everyone’s responsibility – especially leaders; evidence shows that compassionate, diverse and inclusive leadership is key to enabling cultural change.

Most of the care delivered in maternity and neonatal services leads to good experiences and outcomes. A continuous learning and improvement approach will promote safer care for all.

Our ambition is framed by the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) which provides a consistent approach across clinical disciplines, including for maternity and neonatal.

While some maternity and neonatal services are supported by their trust to improve and deliver change; others are not. Good oversight is about understanding the issues faced by leaders and helping to resolve them, including intervention before serious problems arise.