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Speak-up training is often used in corporate, educational, and various organizational settings—including healthcare—to promote ethical practices, enhance teamwork, improve decision-making, and foster a culture of openness and accountability.
Speak-up training encourages and empowers individuals to voice their concerns, opinions, or observations, especially in the workplace or group settings. During the training, participants strengthen their inner and outer voices to speak up for themselves and the ideas and issues that matter most to their companies.
In healthcare companies, and the pharmaceutical and life science industries, this could include a discussion of why speaking up is important to on-the-job safety and how to improve patient safety.
Speak-up training, which at its core is about how to speak up and influence, usually emphasizes these elements:
Speak-up training is crucial for how to improve patient safety in healthcare, pharmaceutical, and life sciences industries for several key reasons:
Proactive Risk Management
Speak-up training encourages those in healthcare professions to report potential safety issues or errors as soon as they notice them. Early identification of risks allows for timely interventions, and this openness is vital for creating an environment where patient safety is the top priority.
Trust and Communication
When healthcare professionals speak up about safety concerns, it builds trust with patients, who understand and appreciate that their well-being is considered. Speak-up training builds confidence among employees, who know their concerns are heard and addressed, which leads to greater job satisfaction and retention.
Team Collaboration
Effective communication is critical in high-stakes, healthcare environments. Speak-up training ensures that all team members share important information, which leads to better coordination and is a key element of how to improve patient safety.
In the pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors, collaboration across different disciplines is essential. Speak-up training facilitates this by encouraging open dialogue and knowledge sharing.
Ethical Decision-Making
In industries where patient safety and well-being are paramount, speak-up training empowers employees to raise ethical concerns about practices that might compromise safety. Encouraging staff to speak up reinforces accountability, ensuring that how to improve patient safety is always at the forefront of decision-making.
Continuous Improvement
When employees are encouraged to speak up, organizations learn from mistakes and near-misses, leading to continuous improvement in safety practices. Speak-up training creates a feedback loop where safety practices are regularly evaluated and improved based on real-time input from employees.
Failure to speak up has been linked to a range of adverse outcomes in healthcare, including medication errors, surgical complications, and patient harm.
Statistics show that communication failures are a significant factor in patient safety incidents, with many healthcare professionals feeling reluctant to speak up due to fear of retaliation and the perception of being insubordinate or “difficult.”
Communication issues are estimated to contribute to over 70 percent of serious adverse events in hospitals. Unfortunately, a significant number of healthcare professionals admit to witnessing safety concerns but not reporting them, which means patient safety is often compromised by preventable mistakes.
Implementing speak-up training can help foster a culture where all staff feel confident in raising concerns, ultimately reducing errors and making key advances in how to improve patient safety. It is particularly essential in environments where the consequences of a mistake can be life-threatening, making it a key component in patient safety strategies across healthcare industries.
Failure to speak up in pharmaceutical companies and the life sciences sector can have significant implications, ranging from ethical breaches to safety issues.
A survey conducted in 2022 revealed that 38 percent of employees in the pharmaceutical sector admitted they had observed misconduct but chose not to report it, primarily due to fear of retaliation or skepticism about the effectiveness of the reporting system. And according to a survey by the Healthcare Compliance Association, 40 percent of employees in the life sciences feared retaliation if they reported unethical behavior or safety concerns.
The failure to speak up about risks or inefficiencies in pharmaceutical and biotech companies led to significant operational setbacks, with estimates suggesting that 25 percent of product recalls in 2022 could have been prevented if employees had felt empowered to report concerns earlier.
These examples highlight the critical need for effective speak-up training and a supportive culture where employees feel safe to voice concerns about how to improve patient safety. Improving these aspects can lead to better patient outcomes, fewer operational disruptions, and a more ethical and transparent industry overall.
Below are several examples of successful internal speak-up training programs in healthcare settings:
Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP)
This program emphasizes a culture of safety where staff at all levels are encouraged to speak up about potential safety issues. It includes training, regular safety rounds, and feedback mechanisms.
By focusing on teamwork, communication, and a structured process for identifying and addressing safety hazards, CUSP has had a significant impact on reducing medical errors and has made meaningful progress in improving patient safety.
Cleveland Clinic’s Speak Up Award
This initiative recognizes and rewards employees who speak up about safety concerns. It has led to increased reporting of potential issues and proactive solutions, which underscores the importance of a culture where employees feel empowered to speak up about potential safety issues without fear of retaliation or negative consequences.
By recognizing and rewarding employees who speak up, the Cleveland Clinic not only enhances patient and workplace safety but also strengthens its overall organizational culture, making it one where safety is everyone’s responsibility.
Mayo Clinic’s Patient Safety Program
This comprehensive, system-wide initiative integrates evidence-based practices, continuous improvement, technology, and a strong culture of safety to ensure the highest standards of patient care. Components include an anonymous reporting system, regular safety huddles, and a non-punitive response to errors, encouraging staff to report safety concerns without fear of retribution.
The program has led to a significant reduction in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) through rigorous infection control practices and adherence to evidence-based protocols. It has driven system-wide improvements in safety culture, resulting in measurable decreases in adverse events, medication errors, and surgical complications.
Kaiser Permanente’s Safety Connect
This program provides a platform for staff to report safety concerns anonymously. It includes a follow-up system to ensure that reported issues are addressed and resolved. The program has led to measurable reductions in safety incidents, such as medication errors and patient falls, and resulted in higher engagement and job satisfaction for the healthcare system’s employees.
Intermountain Healthcare’s Safe and Reliable Healthcare Program
This program incorporates training for staff on how to speak up, a robust reporting system, and regular feedback on the outcomes of reported concerns.
Since the program’s inception, Intermountain Healthcare has been recognized nationally for its leadership in patient safety and quality, receiving awards and accolades from various healthcare organizations and accrediting bodies. Its focus on standardization and reliability has led to consistent improvements across the healthcare system, making Intermountain a model for safe, high-quality healthcare delivery.
Speak-up training in healthcare, pharmaceutical companies, and life sciences should ideally be provided to all employees across various roles and levels to foster a culture of safety, transparency, and ethical behavior.
Here are some of the most important populations to serve:
Across the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and life science sectors, executives and leaders, legal and compliance officers, and patient safety advocates also benefit from speak-up training, as it can enhance ethical standards, ensure compliance, and protect the integrity of their companies’ scientific and business practices.
Healthcare, pharmaceutical, and life sciences speak-up programs often face several common pitfalls, which undermine their effectiveness. Here are some of the primary issues:
Fear of Retaliation
According to studies by McKinsey & Company and Deloitte, speak-up programs often fail to protect employees from retaliation. Fear of negative consequences, such as job loss or demotion, remains a significant barrier.
Many speak-up programs fail to guarantee true anonymity for whistleblowers. Employees fear that their identities might be revealed despite assurances of confidentiality, deterring them from reporting misconduct. Instances where confidentiality has been compromised in the past lead to widespread distrust.
Cultural Barriers
Healthcare, pharmaceutical, and life sciences companies are known to have hierarchical environments that don’t always encourage speaking up, even when speak-up training is in place. If senior leaders do not visibly support and actively participate in their company’s speak-up program, it sends a message that the program is not a priority.
According to the McKinsey and Deloitte studies, employees who do speak up often do not receive feedback on their reports, which leads to the perception that their concerns are ignored. And if this happens in companies that have implemented speak-up training, delays in addressing reported issues or ineffective resolutions can further erode trust in the program.
Psychological Safety
Many speak-up programs in healthcare and the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries focus on the skills and techniques needed to raise concerns, but they may not address the broader organizational culture. If the culture penalizes or does not fully support speaking up, employees will feel unsafe, regardless of the training they have received.
Speak-up training also might not adequately address individual psychological barriers such as low self-esteem, fear of confrontation, or past trauma, which can inhibit speaking up.
For speak-up training to be successful, it’s important not to push individual vocal empowerment without also looking at the institutional factors, such as bias against certain employees or privileging some staff voices over others, that often compromise psychological safety.
Lack of Role-Play and Experience Navigating Discomfort
While numerous speak-up training programs emphasize theoretical knowledge—such as the importance of speaking up or understanding communication models—they lack practical application, including interactive components like role-playing.
Program facilitators might also avoid incorporating exercises that induce discomfort, fearing that it could alienate participants or lead to resistance. However, this discomfort is crucial for preparing individuals for real-life situations where speaking up is challenging, including times when they must advocate for how to improve patient safety.
What makes Step into Your Moxie’s speak-up programs in healthcare different and highly effective?
The Step into Your Moxie® vocal empowerment system is at the root of each of its training programs and enables healthcare employees to enter any conversation and speak up for themselves, for patient safety, and communicate the ideas and issues that matter to your company.
While many communication development programs look at confidence, presence, and what to say in various communication contexts, Step into Your Moxie® training experiences support participants to develop their inner and outer voices.
Employees leave Step into Your Moxie® speak-up training not only understanding what they are supposed to say but with the ability to navigate through the discomfort that often arises during high-stakes speaking situations. They learn to project confidence, remain calm, and stay focused in the moment, particularly when raising concerns, so they can move people to take action.
In addition, Step into Your Moxie® speak-up training is trauma-sensitive and incorporates somatic awareness as well as psychological safety. We know that little “t” and big “T” traumas shape people’s relationships with their voices and contribute to discomfort with speaking up. All of our facilitators are trauma-sensitive and help participants identify how trauma may show up in their communication. They create an environment where employees feel safe and comfortable voicing their concerns, and ideas, and giving and receiving feedback while addressing the possibility of negative consequences.
During Step into Your Moxie® speak-up training, facilitators give participants the opportunity to use improv activities to practice and solidify their communication skills. Through improv, your employees will rehearse conversations and incorporate somatic awareness when they notice their bodies tensing up during high-stakes communication.
Click here to learn more about how Step into Your Moxie® speak-up programs increase employee confidence and prepare them to speak up about how to improve patient safety.
To learn more about Alexia Vernon, founder and CEO of Step into Your Moxie, and her keynote and public speaking programs, click here.
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