For clinical leaders, the Covid-19 crisis has placed two important priorities including patient care and employee health and safety. Navigating that tension is an extraordinary challenge that will continue to increase as patient volumes rise, supplies dwindle, and staff fall ill. How you communicate PPE shortages or fluctuating expectations to staff is critical to sustaining their resilience in both the immediate and long term. Below, we outline two principles to keep in mind as you communicate with staff about continued PPE shortages.
1. Be timely and transparent
Because of the rapid pace of change of PPE supply, communicate frequently. Leaders should use all available channels to keep frontline staff up-to-date on the state of play concerning PPE. Where you can, give staff decisions around PPE use are difficult ones and invariably place patient health and safety first. However, you want to make clear that staff health and safety is also an important priority and explain how decisions reflect leadership’s ambition to balance those priorities.
2. Be prepared conversations about PPE shortage with staff
Team members who are frustrated and scared are still likely to engage you directly, and in some cases, in a confrontational manner. If this happens, start with your own emotions when talk about PPE shortage. In order to care for that team member, you need to manage your own emotions first. Give them space to share their own feelings and concerns. Be attentive, be caring, be curious.
In addition to hearing them out, you have the opportunity to learn from what they’re saying. For instance, you might learn that your communication needs to be more comprehensive, frequent, broad-based about PPE. The net result is that you are able to both identify any blind spots in your communication or PPE strategy and leave your team member feeling genuinely cared for.
Both PPE shortages and the tensions they present are likely to continue well beyond the Covid-19 surge. When in doubt, over-communicate and continue to empathize with the range of emotions and responses you may encounter from your clinical teams over the weeks ahead.
