What do you know about Restorative Just Culture?

The Restorative Just Culture campaign started last month, and it’s been a huge success so far, with Dan Tipney and Amanda Joy Oates’ session drawing a crowd of the (mainly!) bright eyed and bushy tailed at SPVS Congress for the Elanco Business Breakfast! Our social media posts and blogs have kick-started more and more of the conversations we want to see happening and be a part of in our profession. The kind that encourage us to think about what we want for our teams, what’s possible, and how we make these changes happen.

Now that this phase of the campaign is over, I wanted to share my understanding of Restorative Just Culture and the hope it holds. (But don’t worry, there are still plenty of ways to get involved in the campaign and implement RJC where you work – keep reading!)

If you’ve had veterinary roles in several practices, you’ve probably witnessed and worked with all kinds of teams, and hopefully, the majority of your experiences have been good ones (although, sadly, maybe not!).Have you ever considered what makes being part of a particular team feel good or bad? Well, a lot of it comes down to workplace culture – the accepted norm or ‘the way we do things around here’ when it comes to behaviour, communication, and even clinical practice:

• The way we treat each other
• The way we treat clients
• The way we work – for example, whether breaks are encouraged or protected, or whether working through breaks is considered normal
• The way we follow procedures and protocols
• The way we respond to mistakes
• The way we rebuild trust and repair relationships

All of these team standards and values shape what it feels like to work within a team. You might be familiar with the terms Blame Culture, No-Blame Culture, and Just Culture, which are commonly thought of as sitting on a spectrum, where Blame Culture is at one end, No-Blame Culture is at the opposite end, and Just Culture lies somewhere in the middle.

A Blame Culture is unpleasant to work in – it’s when people point the finger when something unexpected happens, identifying the person responsible and placing blame on them. This means that opportunities for the team to learn are missed, because people feel distanced from the event and chalk the mistake up to ‘human error,’ either considering that the problem could not have been prevented (because you can’t avoid human error completely), or that the person responsible should just ‘do better’ (what does that even mean?).

A No-Blame Culture isn’t the answer either – I’m sure you can imagine that a veterinary team without any accountability at all would be chaos and absolutely not an environment where learning, growth, and reflection were encouraged.

So, a Just Culture, then. Surely that’s the answer? Where it’s acknowledged that the majority of people working in veterinary turn up wanting to do a good job, and therefore, the story behind any mistake or unexpected event is explored, focusing on the system and how this can be improved, rather than ‘who did it?’ And of course, because this isn’t a No-Blame Culture, there’s still a line in the sand, and a level of accountability where repeat mistakes or actions with intent are not tolerated.

Sounds good, right?

The problem? It’s easy to focus on where you draw the line of accountability and the level of ‘punishment’ required. So, even with good intentions, the culture becomes focused on the action and not the people involved and their needs.

A Restorative Just Culture takes the emphasis away from retribution by instead asking ‘Who was affected by what happened?’ (Hint: this isn’t just a patient’s caregivers, it’s also anyone who made a mistake or feels responsible, and people who witnessed an unexpected event), and ‘What do they need?’ This rebuilding of confidence and trust and repairing of relationships keeps the focus on moving forward together.

As just one person, you might think you can’t influence practice culture, but you can! Every individual who works within a team and maintains their own values despite a strongly different practice culture is doing their bit to break the cycle. So, have those conversations, give those explanations of why you do what YOU do, and let’s make the change!

You can read more about Restorative Workplace Culture in Jess Woolrich’s article on the Improve Clinical Library.

There’s still time to get involved and support the campaign!

Just visit this link. From here, you can register for our FREE webinar, download our FREE RJC guide, or book your place on our online course, Restorative Just Culture for Veterinary Practice, starting in May.

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