Designing healthcare for clinician wellbeing and patient safety: Key insights from the Oxford Open Grand Round

Wellbeing starts with the basics

Healthcare professionals work in complex, high-pressure environments, but their fundamental needs remain simple: food, water, rest, physical and psychological safety, and a sense of belonging.

Drawing on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the panel highlighted how failing to meet these basic needs can contribute to stress and make it harder for clinicians to learn, develop and perform at their best.

Resilience is not just an individual responsibility

The discussion challenged the idea that resilience is simply about an individual's ability to cope. Supportive relationships and workplace culture are equally important.

Mentorship was highlighted as one practical way to support clinicians through demanding career transitions. As Lilli put it, 'resilience is between us, not only within us.' Creating environments where people feel able to ask for help, acknowledge uncertainty and learn from colleagues can strengthen both individual and team resilience.

Small changes can make work easier

Improving wellbeing does not always require major organisational change. The panel highlighted the impact of frequent interruptions and task switching, alongside the importance of protecting genuine rest away from work.

Physical environments matter too. From providing appropriate rest facilities to positioning computers so they do not create a barrier between clinicians and patients, relatively small design choices can influence staff experience and patient care.

Healthcare should be designed with the people who use it

Equipment, environments and processes can create unnecessary risks when they are designed without sufficient input from clinicians and patients.

Co-design and simulation offer ways to understand how work actually happens before introducing new equipment, spaces or processes. Simulation can help teams identify problems and make adjustments in a safe environment before patients are exposed to potential risks.

Technology needs human-centred design too

As AI tools become more common in healthcare, the panel stressed that technology should reduce rather than add to clinicians' cognitive burden.

Successful implementation requires more than introducing a new tool. Healthcare organisations need to understand how it fits into existing workflows, whether clinicians trust its outputs, and how issues such as accuracy, explainability, governance and patient data will be managed.

Supporting clinicians when things go wrong

Adverse events can have a significant psychological impact on healthcare professionals. The panel emphasised the importance of compassionate support and creating a culture where clinicians feel able to talk openly about difficult experiences.

Laura also highlighted the distinction between checking in with staff immediately after an incident, providing a later psychological debrief, and conducting a formal safety investigation. Psychological support should provide a safe space for reflection rather than becoming another form of incident analysis. 

Looking ahead

Clinician wellbeing and patient safety should not be treated as separate priorities. Designing safer healthcare means considering the people working within the system - from the spaces and equipment they use to their workload, rest, training, relationships and workplace culture.

Ultimately, healthcare systems should not simply expect clinicians to cope with difficult working conditions. They should be designed to help people perform safely, learn continuously and support one another.

Watch the full discussion on the NDS YouTube channel.