Unravelling Workplace Culture in Healthcare: A Guide for Practitioners to Explore, Understand and Change

This book explores the factors that create or sustain a toxic or problematic workplace culture in the healthcare sector, and what can be done about it at the individual level. It aims to equip healthcare workers with the knowledge and understanding to challenge the social and cultural practices that contribute to health inequalities and poor healthcare experiences. Throughout the book, examples of problematic practices are unravelled and new perspectives are provided from a wide range of cultural and creative studies, socio-cultural research and educational theories to enable an understanding of the behaviours and factors that support problematic workplace culture in the healthcare sector. It develops individual insight about system politics and hierarchy as well as power dynamics and normative roles in healthcare, and highlights how inequalities are created and maintained for both patients and staff. This book is aimed at healthcare professionals, including nurses, midwives, doctors, policymakers, researchers and health students who wish to engage in practical, personal and professional development that contributes to creating a positive healthcare work culture. Reflective exercises throughout the book enable the application of theory-based action across a range of healthcare settings and prompt exploration of why and how individual behaviour can impact wider culture, practice, and policy.