CORMETIS CONSULTING

The following topics can be provided online or in person as seminars, interactive workshops or short masterclasses. If there is a specific challenge which you would like an intervention designed to address then please get in touch using the website contact form or email me (Tom) at Tom@cormetis.com
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An introduction to wilful blindness:
The presence and impact of wilful blindness lies at the heart of many of the tragedies that have unfolded in health and care. Understanding what wilful blindness is, how it manifests, and how to address it, is key to enabling leaders to provide safer services and avoid becoming the next healthcare headline.​​
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​Building and maintaining patient safe cultures:
Safe high quality patient care is provided when organisations and teams are led by leaders and managers who understand that their role is to create the right conditions in which safe high quality patient care can be provided. Safe services are the product of positive open cultures. ​
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​Engaging compassionately with those affected by poor care:
A large proportion of the complaints lodged and claims made against healthcare services relate to how those affected have been treated after an incident has occurred. How people are perceived, their needs are understood, and how they are communicated with following an incident are vitally important to minimise further harm and ensure learning. ​​
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Engaging effectively and building trust with external stakeholders:
Many healthcare providers have seen trust in themselves and their services eroded in recent years. This has been amplified by the often inappropriate use of public relations which has focused on providing acceptable positive soundbites and good news stories while failing to acknowledge the reality of the challenges healthcare faces. ​​
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Engaging effectively and empathetically with employees:
An engaged workforce is an asset. A disengaged workforce is an accident waiting to happen. The links between an engaged workforce and the provision of safe high quality care are proven. Yet research reveals less than one tenth of employee perceptions about their employer are formed by official internal communication messages, channels and campaigns.   ​
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​Ethics for leaders - The Orange 7th Hat, when and how to use it:
You may be familiar with Edward de Bono's famous and incredibly useful six hats thinking tool which encourages people to look at situations through varying lenses before arriving at a decision. Supplementing six hats thinking with the orange hat of ethics ensures that the ethical dimensions in any situation are not missed or ignored.    ​
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​Handling and learning from patient complaints:
Whether seen as comments, compliments, concerns or complaints, the purposeful proactive gathering and harnessing of feedback from patients and service users, their carers, families and loved ones, is vital in building a learning organisation and ensuring the continuous improvement of services.    ​
Coming soon...
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​Holding better board meetings:
The board meetings of NHS Trusts and the precious time and attention of their board members, directors and senior managers are often consumed by an excessive focus on process, policy and measurable performance metrics at the expense of more important matters and potentially harmful and reputationally damaging situations.  ​
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​How to build a wilfully aware organisation using multi-channel listening:
The great management thinker Tom Peter's said that if managers think everything is okay, they are probably not looking hard enough. His observation has been proven right many times, often with tragic consequences. The key to minimising avoidable harms is to shift from reactive responding to proactive listening. 
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​How to raise concerns and speak up safely:
There is more than a grain of truth in the old saying that it ain't what you do it's the way that you do it. There are many ways to raise concerns and speak up safely even in closed cultures where people have previously been discouraged and ostracised for speaking up and sharing their concerns.​
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Implementing PSIRF (Patient Safety Incident Response Framework) effectively​:
The implementation of PSIRF is the first of the twelve priorities listed in NHS England's Priorities and Operational Guidance for 2024/25. Successfully implementing PSIRF is more than merely establishing new ways of doing the same things. It entails seeing and responding to events in a radically different way. ​
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​Metis Management - understanding multiple perspectives:
Metis was the Titan Goddess of good counsel, wisdom, prudence and deep thought. Her foresight, intelligence and skill in strategic planning is said to have come from her ability to see and interpret situations from many different perspectives. In modern parlance she understood the importance of combining the practical with the political.   ​
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​Modelling positive leadership behaviours to build trust:
Trust is key in creating open, learning, patient safe cultures. Real trust is only created when employees see values being lived in the actions and behaviours of senior staff. Yet busy leaders, directors and managers often rely on the efforts of their colleagues in communications to publicise values and state their importance. ​
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​The myth of the curved ball - from crisis reaction to proactive prevention:
Harmful incidents are not the unforeseeable curved balls many perceive them as. Harmful events and tragedies are often predictable and entirely preventable. Just as excellence is said to be the ultimate collective result of many small identifiable acts and conscious decisions, so also are harm and tragedy.    
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The role of technology in patient safety:
The absence of joined-up technology remains a significant source of risk to patients and service users in healthcare. The use of technology in healthcare not only reduces risk for patients and service users, it facilitates the production of information and data that can be used to predict and prevent harmful events.​​
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​Redefining the role of leaders in the NHS:
It's often said leaders in the NHS have an impossible job. Some feel their role has been reduced to that of dealers in hope. Leaders can strengthen their purpose and redefine their roles as being both responsible for delivering outcomes in the here and now while shaping policy and informing the design and delivery of services for the future. ​
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​Understanding whistleblowing and working with whistleblowers:
Whistleblowing and the treatment of whistleblowers are sensitive topics in healthcare. Many leaders and senior managers are unsure what constitutes whistleblowing and are wary of whistleblowers and unsure of their motives. Whistleblowers are often an organisations most invested employees and an asset to be respected and utilised. ​
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​Using questions to shift perspective and create solutions:
The right questions asked in the right place at the right time and in the right way can be powerful catalysts for change. However, in culturally uniform organisations with strong hierarchical traditions, the asking of incisive questions does not always come naturally to staff and managers who are uncomfortable challenging. ​
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​Wilful blindness and ethical fading in teams and organisations:
An organisational state of wilful blindness creates the conditions in which a process known as ethical fading occurs. This is a cultural state where high ethical standards are not expected and poor ethical behaviours become the widely accepted norm, ultimately leading to staff disengagement and patient harm. ​
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