Restorative Practice at Work: Six Habits for Improving Relationships in Healthcare Settings

Restorative practice is emerging in healthcare settings and systems as a highly effective means of improving relationships and enabling positive change. It consists of a set of theories, principles, skills and processes that shape our thinking around the way we interact with others. When restorative practice is adopted consistently within and between teams, it becomes ’the way we do things round here’, a set of restorative practice ’habits’ that we all recognise, use and refer to.

Restorative Practice at Workidentifies a set of six complementary habits which will help to change and improve everyday communications, conversations and accountability in healthcare. These habits demonstrate how restorative practice can help toimprove day-to-day communications, in the form of behaviour, language and conversations, ease some of the daily challenges faced in healthcare and foster more effective working relationships, potentially leading to improvements in patient care and patient safety.They are:

1. Navigating the Mountain: Looking beyond challenging behaviour
2. Recognising Needs: Noticing, and responding to, needs and unmet needs
3. Engaging Brains and Behaviours: Informing our responses to outward behaviours
4. Remembering the Relational Window: Solving problems together
5. Running Circle Meetings: An alternative meeting process
6. Drawing on Restorative Enquiry: Processing incidents and problems

Lesley firmly believes that restorative practice habits can ease the current pressures on the health service by enabling better relationships, improved communication and a focus on positive mental health. It can also be part of key solutions: staff engagement and retention, team cohesion, patient safety and care, culture change and improvement.

The book offers practical and engaging takeaways to helpyou get started with restorative practice and includes reflective learning opportunities and transferrable lessons supported by evidence from case studies and contributions from experienced healthcare professionals.

The aim ofRestorative Practice at Workis to make a notable, positive difference to your daily workplace experience, whether you are a public-facing receptionist, member of a clinical team, administrator, manager, senior leader, cleaner or consultant, or, indeed if you have any other role in healthcare.This book will challenge and support your knowledge, understanding and thinking around restorative practice as a workplace philosophy in healthcare.

Suitable for NHS leaders, managers, clinicians and staff and those in other healthcare settings such as researchers, academics, HR professionals and educators.