The culture of the healthcare workplace is influential in delivering care that is person-centred, clinically effective and continually improving in response to a changing context. The consequences of ineffective cultures have resulted in highly publicised failings. Since 2000, there has been increasing attention on culture in healthcare particularly organisational and corporate cultures, rather than, the immediate culture experienced by patients and users at the interface of care – the micro-systems level which we term ‘workplace culture’. This is the level at which most healthcare is delivered and experienced and we argue it has to be given greater attention if healthcare reforms are to be implemented and sustained. Drawing on expertise with practice development – a complex methodology that aims to achieve effective workplace cultures that are person-centred, in different healthcare settings, the authors, within the context of an international colloquium on theory in practice development, present the findings of a rigorous concept analysis. Informed by data from a variety of sources the concept analysis identifies the attributes, enabling factors and consequences of an ‘effective workplace culture’. The emerging framework will help those involved in transforming the culture at the patient and client interface to focus on and critique strategies that will directly and positively impact on patients, users and staff.

Implications for practice:

• The framework presented will enable workplace teams to begin to assess their workplace cultures and determine the areas that require action
• Individual clinical leaders may wish to self assess themselves in terms of their own role clarity and their own skill-set as transformational leaders and facilitators of others’ effectiveness

This article by Kim Manley, Kate Sanders, Shaun Cardiff and Jonathan Webster is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.