Workplace culture is crucial to our vision of healthcare
Intended for healthcare professionals
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Workplace culture is crucial to our vision of healthcare

Jonathan Webster Professor of practice development, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Kate Sanders Practice development facilitator, Foundation of Nursing Studies, London

The importance of workplace culture has been at the forefront of practice development for many years. As early as 2004, Garbett and McCormack identified the transformation of cultures of care as an essential purpose of practice development.

Nursing Older People. 34, 3, 5-5. doi: 10.7748/nop.34.3.5.s1

Published: 31 May 2022

Since then, our insights into workplace cultures, their effect on providers and recipients of care, and how to develop good cultures have multiplied. But does our workplace culture enable us to grow and thrive, or wither and lose joy in our work?

Several reports have highlighted significant failings in care due to the effect of workforce shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result of these failings, we need to focus on the development of effective workplace cultures in older people’s nursing as in all care settings – cultures in which individuals and teams can grow and develop together, share a vision, and look forward to a future of well-being, compassion and care.

Our organisations have a vital role in setting the context of workplace culture, which is created by us and our colleagues, and reflected in the norms of everyday practice.

We need help to make sense of our workplace culture, and to understand what is happening and why. This involves seeing care through the eyes of patients and their loved ones.

As our continuing professional development article on page 34 discusses, we must ask what we can do to make our workplaces better, for ourselves and our colleagues, but above all for the people we care for.

‘We need to make sense of our workplace culture by seeing care through the eyes of patients’

References

  1. Garbett R, McCormack B (2004) A concept analysis of practice development. In McCormack B, Manley K, Garbett R (Eds) Practice Development in Nursing. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 10-32.

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