Building a Culture of Respect to Improve Patient Safety, Medical Team Performance and Patient and Staff Satisfaction

May 8, 2019

Disrespectful work environments in health care represent a risk to patient safety and have negative impacts on patient outcomes and satisfaction. Health care employees who experience disrespectful working environments can lead to dissatisfaction and high staff turnover. All of these elements result in an increase of medical costs for institutions. Hear Bettina Siewert, MD and Suzanne Swedeen RN, MSN from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center discuss the impact of disrespectful work environments on health care, explore frequently experienced disrespectful behaviors in the workplace, as well as behaviors that are seen as respectful and share measures for building a strong culture of respect.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the impact of disrespect in the workplace on patient safety, medical team performance and patient and staff satisfaction
• Describe respectful and disrespectful behaviors
• Discuss action items to establish a culture of respect involving all employees from frontline staff to leadership