Culture In Health is an educational programme run by Seventeen Seconds, specialists in organisational development for the NHS. This programme was created in response to internationally educated workers sharing their feelings of being undervalued, unwelcomed, and speaking of challenges around cultural differences. From this data and stakeholder engagement, the programme established three key aims to support the overall goal of developing culturally competent leaders:
- To create safe supportive environments where cultural differences are shared and understood.
- To build cohesive, professional, and integrated teams that deliver high quality patient care.
- To embody curiosity, compassion and courage to support and lead teams.
The pilot for this programme took place in March 2023, with 203 participants across 33 trusts. The programme ran as a four-week course with online social learning and 90-minute online workshops. The programme asks delegates to undertake a pre and post cultural competence self-assessment, analysis of which highlighted a significant positive shift across a number of indicators from those who participated in the pilot.
Hear from the organisation
The Race Equality programme spoke to Dom Patterson, founder and managing director of Seventeen Seconds about implementation of this programme, its strengths and limitations, its impact and next steps.
- Focussing on the immediate line manager does not lead to culture change across the whole organisation. To build a culturally safe organisation and have wider impact, trust leaders need to consider how cultural awareness and anti-racism education and learning is shared across the organisation.