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About Us

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Dr Chris Turner

Coventry

I’m a consultant in emergency medicine, working in a tertiary trauma centre in the West Midlands. I feel passionately about the importance of civility in medicine and have been working hard to increase awareness of it’s impact.

 

Dr Joe Farmer

Coventry

I'm a psychiatry CT3 doctor in the West Midlands. I graduated from Warwick Medical School in 2015, completing my Foundation Training in the West Midlands. I have a keen interest in civility and medical education. I have worked with Dr Turner in A&E and remain working with him in projects. The work surrounding Civility Saves Lives inspired me to get involved and help promote and research the impact of rudeness in clinical practice. I have been involved in situations where the negative impact has been apparent, and to be able to promote awareness and reduce this is something I am passionate about.

Dr Penny Hurst

Coventry

I am an ST4 doctor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, currently working in a large teaching hospital. I graduated from Warwick Medical School in 2015. I completed my foundation year training in the West Midlands. After helping form Civility Saves Lives, I realised how much incivility I had seen in day to day medicine and the effect it has had on my colleagues and myself. I am keen to spread the word more and support other people who feel it is something they simply need to expect and accept.

 

Dr Heena Yousaf

Coventry

I’m a foundation doctor currently working in the West-Midlands with an interest in Paediatrics and baking! I met Chris as a student at Warwick Medical School. When I was first introduced to the concept of civility, I immediately thought of the incivility I had experienced and how this affected not only myself but also my colleagues and patients.  I would like to help reverse this by promoting the positive civility we experience within the NHS. By sharing experiences through ‘kindness of others’ I hope we can raise awareness of the impact of civility.  

 

Denise Guzdz

Sherwood Forest Trust

I am currently a Patient Safety and Governance Advisor in the Operating Theatres with some 43 years in the NHS.

Prior to this post I was the Department Leader within the Operating Theatres.

I have always been passionate about how we behave towards each other; even in times of stress we should always consider how our behaviour and words affect people/patients.

I read about Civility Saves Lives and contacted the team as I knew I had to get involved. I am so passionate about being respectful of each other and the importance of team work in achieving positive patient outcomes.

I have witnessed incivility and tidied up the aftermath of that in my career and feel privileged to be able to raise awareness of this. I want the message to be; it is simply not acceptable to be spoken to in a manner which has undervalued that staff member or patient.

 

Jo Dawson

Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust

I am a Children’s Nurse currently working as a Freedom to Speak up Guardian at the University Hospitals of Leicester.

I heard about this brilliant website from a colleague and like Denise I wanted to be involved, Chris kindly introduced me to the rest of the team.

In my current role I encourage all staff to “Speak Up” with regards to behaviours and cultures, as negative behaviours can have a real impact on us all and most importantly it can impact on our patients. We have all seen rudeness at work whether it is directly towards us or we’ve been a bystander and it’s important for us all to call it out.  

The message is so effective and simply “ Civility Saves Lives” 

 

Dr Josie Cheetham

South East Wales

I am a CT2 ACCS (Anaesthetics) trainee working in SE Wales, having completed my foundation training in the West Midlands after graduate entry medicine at Birmingham University.

After a number of encounters with incivility in clinical environments, and its immediate and longer-term negative impact on clinical teams and patients, I am delighted to have the opportunity to promote discourse about, and research into, the importance of civility at work through Civility Saves Lives.

I believe that unlike many other aspects of working in healthcare, being civil and encouraging civility in others are both eminently within our control and can have immediate, positive and diverse effects. I am particularly interested in the interaction between human factors, professionalism, positive workplace cultures and civility in clinical environments.

 

Tom Dixon

Warwick Medical School

I’m a medical student, studying at Warwick University. Before studying medicine, I completed a degree in psychology, then worked in an inpatient mental health setting where I witnessed first-hand how civility (or lack thereof) could be the pivotal factor in whether patient crises escalated or were resolved without harm. When Chris introduced me to Civility Saves Lives, I found substantiation to ideas that were intuitive to me, yet hard to fully articulate in the heat of the moment. I am hopeful that by empowering healthcare professionals to uphold the important notion of Civility, we will start to see a genuine culture shift within the stressful environments in which we work.

 

Dr Louise Lea

Lewisham and Greenwich

I am a new consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust. I heard Chris speak at an RCOG/RCSEd event on tackling bullying and undermining in the NHS. His work inspired me to address incivility with the learning from Civility Saves Lives in an SI report I was working on at the time. I have presented this work within our trust to a variety of audiences and the impact has been profound. My key interests are labour ward and medical education, in particular interprofessional education. I have worked with our professional development midwife to include the messages from Civility Saves Lives in our regular mandatory obstetric multidisciplinary skills training days across sites. I hope to collaborate with other sites across London to increase awareness and promote research to work towards culture change within our NHS.

 

Jess Wadsworth

NHS London

My name is Jess and I am a senior nurse educator in simulation and human factors. I am passionate about interprofessional education and creating opportunities for improved interprofessional collaboration, as I believe fostering good interpersonal staff relationships ​is key to safer working practices and fundamental to creating a Just Culture. 

Calling out incivility when we experience or witness it, and gaining more self awareness of when we may also instigate it, is critical if we are to challenge the given and start to develop an alternative culture of active kindness. Patient safety and staff wellbeing is at the heart of everything I do which is why I wanted to make a difference by joining the Civility Saves Lives campaign. I hope to work with the team to raise awareness both locally and nationally around incivility and promote the concept of active kindness. 

 

Claire Moore and Julia Seez

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust

We contacted the team about  Civility Saves Lives when researching the project on Compassionate Service that we are leading on as part of initially a Clinical Support Services division initiative. Both of us are passionate about a service that makes a difference as well as an interest in human behaviours.

Our project is about inspiring and empowering others to make a difference individually - with patients, relatives and colleagues - in order to create a more compassionate culture. We started in 2019 and by May 2020 hope to have run sessions for over 1000 staff. It is a fantastic opportunity to be part of the Civility Saves Lives project so that we can tie in, learn and contribute to the work that is being done - and hopefully make civility and compassion part of everyone’s development in the NHS.

Want to be part of the team? Get involved in your area?
Get in touch, we're more than happy to chat!

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