Behaviors That Undermine Trust at Work for Frontline Healthcare Workers

Discover the behaviors that erode trust among frontline healthcare workers. Proactively addressing these issues helps create environments where trust thrives, enhancing job satisfaction for healthcare professionals and improving patient care outcomes.

Trust is not just a buzzword in healthcare; it's a lifeline. Healthcare trust isn't just a nice-to-have; it's essential for patient outcomes, team collaboration, and organizational success. When trust between healthcare workers and teams is strong, it paves the way for open communication between patients and their healthcare providers and distributed healthcare teams, ensuring the best possible care. Simply put, trust among healthcare workers and teams directly impacts patient mortality rates. 

A recent study, Good Working Relationships: How Healthcare System Proximity Influences Trust Between Healthcare Workers, underscores the gradual trust-building process, starting from introductions and progressing through ongoing communication and collaborative patient care efforts. However, for healthcare professionals in distributed settings, establishing trust poses challenges. They often rely heavily on individual efforts due to a lack of effective tools at the interprofessional or systemic levels. As healthcare increasingly relies on distributed collaborations, developing tools and strategies that support trust in these contexts is critical.

As individual efforts are timely and costly, what are other ways healthcare organizations can help teams foster more trust in their teams? First, let's explore the impact and find the common behaviors below.

The Impact of Trust in Healthcare

Patient Outcomes

Research like that highlighted in the Harvard Business Review consistently shows that patients treated by teams with higher trust levels have better clinical outcomes and lower mortality rates. Trust facilitates seamless coordination, reduces errors, and enhances overall patient satisfaction.

Team Efficiency

Trust fosters a supportive environment where healthcare team members feel safe to ask for help, share critical information, and collaborate effectively. This environment leads to quicker decision-making, improved workflow, and higher job satisfaction among healthcare workers.

Mental Health and Well-being

A trusting workplace is crucial for mitigating stress and burnout among healthcare professionals. Studies cited in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology indicate that high-trust environments correlate with lower rates of emotional exhaustion and higher resilience in healthcare teams.

Common Behaviors That Undermine Trust

Gossip and Backbiting

In one case study, unchecked gossip about a team member's personal life in a hospital department led to plummeting morale, negatively impacting teamwork and patient care.

Inconsistent Communication

Poor communication during shift changes has been linked to medication errors, highlighting the critical need for clear, consistent updates and protocols to ensure patient safety.

Unreliable Behavior

A nurse's repeated failure to complete patient handovers on time caused treatment delays, undermining team reliability and patient care.

Lack of Accountability

A surgeon's reluctance to take responsibility for surgical errors, instead blaming equipment malfunction, damaged team trust, and compromised patient safety.

Favoritism and Bias

Supervisors who consistently show favoritism by assigning favorable shifts to a select few can lead to staff resentment and division, which can impact team cohesion and patient care quality.

Withholding Information

Failure to promptly share test results with the healthcare team resulted in delayed diagnoses and patient dissatisfaction, illustrating the consequences of information hoarding in a healthcare setting.

Showing Up Late to Meetings

A doctor's habitual lateness to interdisciplinary meetings disrupted planning and coordination efforts, impacting patient care timelines and team effectiveness.

Lack of Proactiveness in Taking Required Training

Staff reluctance to complete mandatory training on new equipment led to avoidable errors during patient care, emphasizing the critical need for ongoing education and compliance in healthcare settings.

Conclusion

By strengthening leadership behaviors and addressing behaviors that undermine trust and highlighting their consequences, healthcare organizations can proactively work towards cultivating environments where trust thrives, ultimately improving patient outcomes and staff satisfaction. Healthcare trust isn't just a luxury—it's a necessity ensuring the best care for those who need it most.

Move your healthcare professionals to new levels of trust.

New Level Work offers solutions to build trust by strengthening the leadership skills of charge nurses, clinical leaders, supervisors, administrators, and other healthcare managers and leaders. Contact us to learn more about our leadership development solutions can make a difference in your organization.