“Paging Dr. Rypple!”
At the Centre for Innovation in Complex Care (CICC) at Toronto’s University Health Network, our objectives are to look for new and innovative solutions that can be implemented directly in the clinical environment with the goal of:
- improving patient care
- enhancing the experiences of both patients and healthcare professionals, and
- positively enhancing our overall systems & practices.
As you can imagine, getting feedback is a major aspect of the CICC culture. After all, it’s impossible to make improvements and successfully implement change without listening to the needs, concerns, and successes of everyone around you.
The Feedback Challenge
In contrast to a normal business, the feedback process can be different and difficult in a healthcare environment because:
- the stakes are high
- hours are long (sometimes more than 100 hours/week)
- turnover is frequent.
Furthermore, while an interprofessional team with various skills, expertise, and perspectives is key to providing quality patient care, it can often result in misunderstandings and a lack of communication among team members where feedback is concerned.
Nevertheless, we strongly believed that in order to deliver on our objectives, our teams needed to be able to give and discuss feedback. Teamwork is absolutely critical in this unique environment, and communicating feedback among the team members is just as vital.
People have to talk to each other and understand each other’s unique view points, but they need a comfortable platform that can enable a safe and constructive discussion. Enter Rypple.
The Solution
I had been using Rypple for my own professional development after giving presentations, chairing meetings and giving lectures, and saw its potential for team-based use in the clinical environment. The anonymity aspect of Rypple makes it ideal for people who may be afraid to speak up or who are new to the team, while its ease of use makes it ideal for people who are on-call and working those long hours.
Our healthcare teams have started using Rypple to drive continuous feedback into their daily routine by asking about and commenting on team-based issues and concerns. To do this we’ve developed a regular “feedback recipe” where the team:
- requests feedback from their fellow team members every week
- shares the feedback with their team
- holds live team discussions where they brainstorm on actionable solutions
- post those solutions to a physical “Rypple board” (shown below) to share in each others actions and results.
The Rypple Board at the CICC
Not only does this practice encourage communication and transparency, but the nature of the experience can spark entirely new and unexpected ideas as they relate to each other’s experiences.
While our usage of Rypple is ongoing, we’re constantly learning how to tailor the process for our environment and are excited to start collaborating with other healthcare organizations to share our Rypple experience.
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