A systematic review of factors that enable psychological safety in healthcare teams.
O’Donovan R, McAuliffe E. A systematic review of factors that enable psychological safety in healthcare teams. Int J Qual Health Care. 2020;32(4):240-250. doi:10.1093/intqhc/mzaa025.
This systematic review analyzed 36 articles exploring factors enabling psychological safety in healthcare teams. The review identified five themes of enabling factors: (1) priority for patient safety, such as safety culture or leadership behavior; (2) improvement or learning orientation leading to a culture of continuous improvement or change-oriented leadership; (3) support from peers, leadership or the organization; (4) familiarity between and across teams and with team leaders, and; (5) status, hierarchy and inclusivity. These themes can aid future objective measures of psychological safety and interventions to improve psychological safety within teams.