Culture and Values

There is increasing recognition of the importance of culture and values in the running and improvement of health, care and wider community services. Culture, or ‘the way we do things round here’, has been connected to the quality and safety of such services both positively and negatively. An enabling and learning culture is seen to promote opportunities for identifying, reflecting and acting on any concerns, whilst a controlling and blaming culture is seen to stifle such concerns being raised and so responded to appropriately. In turn values, both those expressed by an organization within its mission and strategy and those which practically underpin the everyday decisions made by teams are a key component of institutional culture. Personal values based on professional standards and individual beliefs further influence the choices and priorities of practitioners. Any organization seeking to achieve effective change must take account of these multi-layered and multi-dimensional factors. Integrated care initiatives, which commonly bring together professionals, practitioners and services from established silos add yet more complexity. The clashes in values and culture which can emerge through their new arrangements can be a powerful obstacle as the parties involved are exposed to alternative ways of seeing and interpreting the world. Inter-professional learning and inter-professional teams provide a means to positively respond to diversity in culture and values, and enable professionals to collaborate successfully together.