Safety Culture and Workforce Well-Being Associations with Positive Leadership WalkRounds

Background Interventions to decrease burnout and increase well-being in health care workers (HCW) and improve organizational safety culture are urgently needed. This study was conducted to determine the association between Positive Leadership WalkRounds (PosWR), an organizational practice in which leaders conduct rounds and ask staff about what is going well, and HCW well-being and organizational safety culture. Methods This study was conducted in a large academic health care system in which senior leaders were encouraged to conduct PosWR. We used data from a routine cross-sectional survey of clinical and non-clinical HCWs, which included a question about recall of exposure of HCW to PosWR: “Do senior leaders ask for information about what is going well in this work setting (e.g., people who deserve special recognition for going above and beyond, celebration of successes, etc.)?”—along with measures of well-being and safety culture. T-tests compared work settings in the first and fourth quartiles for PosWR exposure across SCORE domains of safety culture and workforce well-being. Results Electronic surveys were returned by 10,627 out of 13,040 possible respondents (response rate 81%) from 396 work settings. Exposure to PosWR was reported by 63% of respondents overall, with a mean (SD) of 63.4% (20.0) across work settings. Exposure to PosWR was most commonly reported by HCWs in leadership roles (84%). Compared to work settings in the fourth ( 88%) quartile revealed a higher percentage of respondents reporting good patient safety norms (50% vs. 70%, p Conclusions Exposure to PosWR was associated with better HCW well-being and safety culture.