Restorative initiatives: emerging insights from design, implementation and collaboration in five countries

Area of Science:

• Healthcare systems
• Patient safety
• Organizational psychology

Background:

• Restorative systems emphasize human-centered, relational principles.
• Emerging evidence suggests restorative approaches can mitigate and respond to harm in healthcare.
• Adverse events in healthcare necessitate innovative response strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To share insights from an international network developing restorative policy and practice.
• To explore the application of restorative approaches to adverse events in healthcare.
• To offer reflections on enabling and constraining factors for restorative practice development.

Main Methods:

• International collaboration across five countries since 2019.
• Co-designing, implementing, and evaluating restorative responses to adverse events.
• Sharing collective reflections on development processes.

Main Results:

• Work is at varying stages of maturity across participating countries.
• Identified core principles and emerging evidence for restorative systems.
• Shared reflections on factors influencing the development of restorative practices.

Conclusions:

• A restorative lens offers potential for enhanced patient and family involvement in patient safety.
• Transparent critique of current restorative work is valuable for future development.
• Continued development of restorative policy and practice is recommended.