RESPECT: Radiology Employees Striving for Productive and Effective Communication

Ineffective communication is commonly listed as a root cause of sentinel events and other adverse events in the health care setting. The psychological safety of all employees is considered to be a factor that promotes effective communication. Recently, leaders of a radiology department learned that many of the frontline staff did not feel they were being treated respectfully by radiologists during routine interactions. On a baseline survey, only 48% of technologists, reading room assistants, and child life specialists rated their interactions with radiologists as very good or excellent. An improvement team was formed, representing radiologists, technologists, reading room assistants, and child life specialists throughout the department. The improvement team launched a series of interventions with a goal of increasing the percentage of interactions rated as very good or excellent from 48% to 90%. The improvement team focused interventions on three topics: in-person interactions, telephone interactions, and trainee interactions. By the time of this publication, the median percentage of interactions rated as very good or excellent improved to 75%, with a maximum surveyed value of 90%.Online supplemental material is available for this article.^©RSNA, 2020.