Post Author: Beth Boynton, RN, MS, CP
Beth Boynton is a nurse consultant and author specializing in research, training, and writing about emotional intelligence, communication, teamwork, and complexity leadership. She’s a pioneer in developing medical improv as a teaching modality for health care professionals and the founder, Boynton Improv Education. Find out more about upcoming open events, videos, and articles related to medical improv. She can also be reached on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Her current work primarily focuses on teaching health care and mental health care leaders how to use a “YES AND” philosophy and simple experiential activities from improv for staff, team, leadership, and organizational development. She believes that training leaders to integrate these activities into ongoing meetings can provide continuous practice and enhance outcomes in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner.
Signature workshops:
Game-Changing Experiential Activities for Interdisciplinary Team Development
“YES AND” 101 for Healthcare & Mental Healthcare Visionaries
Medical Improv for Interprofessional Students and Faculty (with ImprovTalk)
The Gift of Presence: An Experiential Approach to Skillful Communication (with Korabek Training)
Beth Boynton is a nurse consultant and author specializing in research, training, and writing about emotional intelligence, communication, teamwork, and complexity leadership. She’s a pioneer in developing medical improv as a teaching modality for health care professionals and the founder, Boynton Improv Education. Find out more about upcoming open events, videos, and articles related to medical improv. She can also be reached on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Her current work primarily focuses on teaching health care and mental health care leaders how to use a "YES AND" philosophy and simple experiential activities from improv for staff, team, leadership, and organizational development. She believes that training leaders to integrate these activities into ongoing meetings can provide continuous practice and enhance outcomes in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner.
Signature workshops:
Game-Changing Experiential Activities for Interdisciplinary Team Development
"YES AND" 101 for Healthcare & Mental Healthcare Visionaries
Medical Improv for Interprofessional Students and Faculty (with ImprovTalk)
The Gift of Presence: An Experiential Approach to Skillful Communication (with Korabek Training)
Three nurses are at the nurses’ station. Two are talking about managing a patient’s pain, and a third, Donna, is reviewing a patient’s lab results and finding it difficult to concentrate.
Which is Donna’s best statement?
1) Shhh, stop talking!
2) I’m frustrated with your talking. It’s hard to concentrate, and I’d appreciate it if you would quiet down.
Answer: It depends on the relationships and Donna’s preferences. If Donna has a positive history …
Read more…
Setting limits, asking for help, delegating, or even saying “no” are important assertiveness skills. Health care professionals should be proficient in assertiveness because of the potential impact on patient safety, patient experience, workforce health, and cost-effectiveness.
Assertiveness examples
How might these assertive statements influence outcomes?
- “I haven’t had training in using that IV pump and need help.”
- “Stop! Don’t make that incision! It is the wrong leg.”
- “I cannot keep seeing patients …
Read more…
Patient safety, patient experience, workforce health, and cost-effectiveness are critical outcomes that share important common roots. They are all impacted by our ability to communicate effectively and respectfully. This can be challenging, in part, because communication involves underlying emotional intelligence, which is hard to develop and practice, especially in high-stakes, high-stress work environments or toxic cultures.
Furthermore, our ability to communicate affects our capacity to establish healthy professional relationships, collaborate in …
Read more…
The skill
Patient safety, patient experience, workforce health, and cost-effectiveness are critical outcomes with an important common root. They’re all impacted by our ability to communicate effectively and respectfully. Additional terms to describe these skills include people, interaction, interprofessional, relationship, and social skills. They can even be used to describe behaviors inherent in many properties of complex adaptive systems, such as the butterfly effect, flexibility, and adaptability. The more we understand …
Read more…
Leading an organization from a culture of bullying or blaming to a culture of safety is a daunting initiative. Unhealthy alignments are deeply embedded in toxic cultures, and informal power dynamics may influence how people behave. Instead of respectful communication where giving and receiving constructive feedback is ongoing, common behaviors include:
- gossip
- exclusion
- humiliation
- sabotage
- withholding
All of which perpetuate a cycle of broken trust and poor conduct.
While patients, the workforce, …
Read more…
If we are going to take on the challenge of improving communication and related behavior, a.k.a. “soft” skills among health care professionals, we should be realistic. As nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals, we are keenly aware of how difficult changing behavior can be. We see it daily in our patients’ efforts regarding healthy choices and lifestyles. For example, it can be hard to lose weight, exercise regularly, or …
Read more…
Distinguishing between the terms “bully” and “bullying” is an important step that we can take in order to eliminate or at least minimize any disruptive or undermining behaviors that are often associated with bullying. Yelling at, humiliating, excluding, gossiping about others are a few of ways we humans cleverly demonstrate disrespect for others. And we all know that lack of respect is a persistent and pervasive problem in health care.
As …
Read more…
