Perception of others: How our perceptions influence psychological safety

One of the current challenges to increase patient safety is to improve the patient safety culture (Verbakel et al., 2014). An important factor in a good patient safety culture is psychological safety (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). It is important that personnel feels free to speal up about mistakes or possible improvement to enhance patient safety. However, speaking up about mistakes may harm the perception towards your competence as an individual. Therefore, the perception of others is important when speaking up about mistakes, and may harm the psychological safety someone experiences. To increase the psychological safety it is therefore important to understand the influence of the perception of others on psychological safety. In this study two goals are formulated: 1) map the perception of others in the three departments in Hospital A. 2) Investigate the relation between the perception of others and psychological safety. The second goal is investigated with use of the following...Show moreOne of the current challenges to increase patient safety is to improve the patient safety culture (Verbakel et al., 2014). An important factor in a good patient safety culture is psychological safety (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). It is important that personnel feels free to speal up about mistakes or possible improvement to enhance patient safety. However, speaking up about mistakes may harm the perception towards your competence as an individual. Therefore, the perception of others is important when speaking up about mistakes, and may harm the psychological safety someone experiences. To increase the psychological safety it is therefore important to understand the influence of the perception of others on psychological safety. In this study two goals are formulated: 1) map the perception of others in the three departments in Hospital A. 2) Investigate the relation between the perception of others and psychological safety. The second goal is investigated with use of the following hypotheses: 1) Physician Assistants have a high perceived competence score, compared to Nurses, 2) Nurses have a high warmth score and low competence score, compared to Physician Assistants, 3) Specialists gave a high competence score, as perceived by Physician Assistants and Nurses, 4) The psychological safety level is lower in Nurses, compared to Physician Assistants. To answer these hypotheses mixed-methods design is used, gathering data from online questionnaires (N = 39), which were the SCM questionnaire (Fiske et al., 2002) and the Psychological safety questionnaire (Garvin et al., 2008), observations of quality meetings (N = 13) and semi-structured interviews (N = 3). The questionnaires were first tested on a M-Turk sample of healthcare personnel, to identify the internal consistency of the questionnaires in a healthcare setting. Results showed a significant difference in perception of the competence score of Physician Assistants, with Nurses perceiving the competence level lower than the Physician Assistants. Moreover, the perceived warmth score of Nurses were found to be significantly higher within Physician Assistants, compared to Nurses. This result was not found in the perceived competence score of the Nurses. Furthermore, the perceived competence score of Specialists was found to be non-significant when comparing the perception of Nurses and Physician Assistants. At last, the psychological safety level of Nurses and Physician Assistants did not differ significantly. These results indicate that the experienced hierarchy in Hospital A is less present than originally thought. Furthermore, no correlation was found between the perception of others and psychological safety within Hospital A. However, due to the small sample size we must be cautious with drawing conclusion of the results and more research is needed to gain more insight in the current situation at Hospital A.Show less

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Perception of others: How our perceptions influence psychological safety