“They say they listen. But do they really listen?”: a qualitative study of hospital doctors’ experiences of organisational deafness, disconnect and denial

The sharing of information and feedback directly from service-providing staff to healthcare organisational management is vital for organisational culture and service improvement. However, hospital doctors report feeling unable to communicate effectively with management to provide evidence and affect improvement, and this can impact job satisfaction, workplace relations, service delivery and ultimately patient safety. In this paper, we draw on data elicited from a Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) study involving 28 hospital doctors working in Irish hospitals, to explore the barriers preventing them from speaking up and effecting change, and the impact of this on staff morale and services. We identify three major barriers, consistent with previous literature, to effective feedback and communication: (1) organisational deafness, (2) disconnect between managers and frontline staff, and (3) denial of the narratives and issues raised. We draw these together to identify key implications from these findings for healthcare managers, and suggest policy and practice improvements.