The importance of psychological safety during reflective practice sessions
Creating psychological safety
A psychologically safe environment for participants is essential for effective Connect, Pause and Reflect group sessions.
Participation in the sessions should be voluntary and each clinician should carefully consider their own psychological safety when deciding which group to join.
Psychologically safe reflective practice sessions foster:
- respectful listening
- uninterrupted sharing
- learning
- humility
- humour.
They require a supportive culture and community of practice where participants:
- feel free (but not forced) to share their experiences
- speak their mind without fear of judgement, embarrassment, correction, or humiliation.
There are some practices that really make people feel unsafe. If people feel blamed or attacked, if anything they say is weaponised outside of the meeting, [then] it’s not a treatment situation, it’s a professional support situation. The confidentiality issue is a really key one and that needs to be negotiated with people, I think. Because if people don’t feel safe or they feel it’s going to overflow or they feel it’s going to damage something else, [like] talking about third parties in a bad way, it’s good to discourage. … Generally, people need to know that what you do when they’re not there, is what you do when they are there. Safety is really, really important.
— Paediatric Psychiatrist, NSW
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