The power of effective coaching: how coaching improved maternity and neonatal patient safety

Health Innovation Wessex has recently published a case study following the successful implementation of a coaching offer for clinicians working in maternity and neonatal teams. 

This coaching was codesigned by Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) and Rebekah Giffney Consulting Ltd and provided to four trusts: Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust and Isle of Wight NHS Trust.

The coaching focused on culture, behaviours, and outcomes, with the aim to create high performing teams through increased psychological safety, open and supportive communication, civility and co-operation within the perinatal preterm optimisation teams. 

By addressing the challenge of cross-department team working, the project intended to improve patient care and outcomes, team experience, and care bundle progression. 

As a result of the coaching, all units reported a positive change in their psychological safety, and positive feedback was shared by clinicians, as demonstrated by the anonymised quote below:

“I think it certainly accelerated our progress in achieving some of the preterm optimisation outcomes, because actually the performance you can see on our network graphs has shot up on the areas that we focused on, which is absolutely lovely to see and we couldn’t have done that, I don’t think, without having that protected coaching time to meet, to discuss, to sort it out and to make these changes.”

For the full project details and impact, please read our case study, available at the end of this article or within the ‘Resources’ section of our website. 

Our Insight team have also published an independent evaluation of this coaching programme, which can be accessed here.

If you’re interested in finding out more about our work and how we can improve outcomes in your health setting, please get in touch.