The role of the leader in navigating perioperative culture change

The need to initiate culture change in perioperative medicine comes as a result of many internal and external factors. Anesthesia professionals, who habitually work in complex environments and continuously sense and adapt to change, are well-suited to be leaders of perioperative cultural change.

Recent literature on culture change reinforces the importance of communication and trust as the bedrock of change, being steadfast in the determination of the goal while remaining flexible about the pathway toward achieving it, and creating an environment of psychological safety to bridge the gap between the perception of leaders and the operational reality that team members experience.

Leaders are the architects of culture change, but even the most erudite among them are unlikely to achieve successful change without creating agency among the team they work with. In this review, universal strategies will be discussed that support culture change independent of the change model used. These strategies focus on reviewing the embedding mechanisms of change, communication, creating trust, narrowing the gap between leadership and the team, and building psychological safety.