Workplace Culture and Patient Safety: Why Civility Saves Lives

Team behaviour in health and social care is not a soft issue. Research shows that prosocial team cultures deliver measurably better patient outcomes, while antisocial behaviours lead to avoidable harm. In this session from the Connected Health & Care Summit 2026, Chris Turner, consultant in emergency medicine and founder of Civility Saves Lives, explores what culture really means, how disagreement shapes decisions and why recognizing good behaviour can help drive lasting cultural change.

Watch Chris Turner, emergency medicine consultant and founder of Civility Saves Lives, explore how team behaviour can influence patient safety and what every leader can do to build a better workplace culture. 

Key themes from the session

This session runs as a condensed interactive workshop, drawing on research and real-world examples from healthcare, social care and elite sport. The key themes were: 

• Culture is everything we accept in our workplace, both the good and the bad, and it is not static 

• Teams with prosocial behaviours, where people feel trusted, heard and valued, save more lives. Teams with antisocial behaviours see avoidable deaths increase 

• When faced with disagreement, people either fight to win, avoid the discomfort, or respond with curiosity. Only the curious consistently make the best decisions 

• Organisations contain hundreds of microcultures. The culture at the top does not automatically reach the frontline 

• The biggest mistake in culture change is starting with the bad stuff. The most effective starting point is acknowledging and reinforcing the good