Deliberate practices of speaking up and responding skills: the Speak-PREP e-learning module for healthcare professionals

PurposeSpeaking up and responding to others’ concerns promotes patient safety. We describe health professionals’ utilisation of these important skills.MethodWe developed an interactive e-learning module, Speak-PREP, to train healthcare professionals in speaking up and responding strategies. Participants completed interactive video-based exercises that engaged them with entering speaking up and responding statements, augmenting strategies from a list of prompting phrases and responding to a pushback. We report strategy utilisation.ResultsA total of 101 health professionals completed Speak-PREP training. Most frequently used speaking up strategies were: brainstorming to explore solutions (50%), showing consideration of others (45%) and encouraging others’ opinions through invitations (43%). Responding strategies included reflecting the concern expressed by colleagues, discussing next steps and expressing gratitude (70%, 67% and 50%, respectively). When prompted, participants augmented their statements with reframing concerns, asking questions to deepen understanding, using how or what to start questions and expressing curiosity (preflecting the concern and decreasing consideration, curiosity, empathy, expressing gratitude and encouraging others’ opinions (pConclusionsThe Speak-PREP module targeted deliberate practice in speaking up and responding skills. Future work should examine the application of these strategies in the clinical environment.