Meet Lisa & Why Culture Matters

Lesson Overview

This lesson introduces Lisa Spong and explores a core question that runs through the entire course:

Are we delivering care, or are we managing custody?

Many healthcare environments genuinely aim to keep people safe. But under pressure, safety can sometimes become focused on control rather than connection.

Safewards helps close that gap.

Key Insights

Lisa Spong has spent more than a decade supporting healthcare organisations across Australia to reduce restrictive practices, strengthen communication and implement Safewards in meaningful ways.

Her experience includes frontline mental health services, emergency departments, statewide implementation programs and hands-on staff training. This course is grounded in practical healthcare realities - not theory from a distance.

Throughout her work, one question keeps returning:

Are we creating care or custody?

A culture of care focuses on:

• connection

• therapeutic engagement

• dignity

• explanation

• autonomy where possible

• working with people

A culture of custody focuses on:

• control first

• coercive compliance

• doing things to people

• managing behaviour only

• reacting once distress becomes visible

This does not happen because staff do not care. It usually happens because systems are under pressure - short staffing, workload, risk concerns, fear of incidents, burnout and poor environments.

Safewards helps teams recognise those pressures and respond differently.

Communication Is a Clinical Skill

Communication is sometimes treated as a “soft skill.”

In reality, communication affects:

• patient safety

• conflict risk

• complaints

• handover quality

• trust

• emotional regulation

• staff wellbeing

Patients do not experience policy documents or organisational charts.

They experience us.

That is why communication sits at the centre of person-centred care.

Key Takeaways

• Culture is what people feel when they are in our care

• Pressure can push practice toward control

• Communication is a frontline safety skill

• Better care often creates safer outcomes

Reflection

Think about your workplace.

When pressure rises:

• What behaviours demonstrate care?

• What behaviours drift toward control?

• How might patients experience that difference?