Having A Seat At The Table Isn’t Enough: Inclusive Facilitation Skills for Palliative Care Spaces

Key Message: Facilitation is a core skill in educational and administrative settings. Just as we teach communication techniques for patient care, we can teach inclusive facilitation to improve team learning, safety, and collaboration. This session offers practical tools to help palliative care teams engage quieter voices, embrace disagreement, and elevate every perspective.

Abstract: Interprofessional teamwork is central to palliative care, but true collaboration doesn’t happen by accident. Research shows that diverse teams perform better when all members feel safe to speak up and disagree, improving engagement and patient outcomes.(1,2) Yet power dynamics, exclusion, and silence persist in both clinical and educational spaces (3). Inclusive facilitation offers teachable, high-impact tools to balance power and promote voice equity (4,5).

Our interprofessional team spans four institutions and has applied these approaches in administrative meetings, clinical discussions, and interprofessional education. Participants across these settings have reported increased inclusion, greater safety in speaking up, and stronger engagement across roles and identities. In one of our serious illness communication skills programs, participant ratings on “helpful facilitation” and “safe learning environment” increased after implementing inclusive facilitation training, with the largest changes seen in social workers and chaplains.

This session draws on anti-oppression facilitation strategies from AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance) and applies them to healthcare contexts. We focus on two critical skills: (1) facilitating equitable engagement and (2) embracing principled disagreement. These practices help teams include historically marginalized voices, foster psychological safety, and strengthen collaborative decision-making.

Session Structure:
I. Introduction
– Define inclusive facilitation
– Present evidence for impact in health care and education
II. Promoting Engagement
– Identify barriers to participation
– Teach three high-yield engagement strategies
– Practice one via interactive exercise
III. Embracing Disagreement
– Reframe disagreement as an opportunity and learn how embrace it as facilitators and team members
– Teach three tools for principled disagreement
– Practice one via interactive exercise

Participants will leave with skills to facilitate more inclusive, impactful discussions in both clinical and educational settings.

References: 1.Bresman H, Edmondson AC. Exploring the relationship between team diversity, psychological safety and team performance: evidence from pharmaceutical drug development. Harv Bus Sch Work Pap. 2022 Feb;(22-055).

2. Gurin P, Dey EL, Hurtado S, Gurin G. Diversity and higher education: theory and impact on educational outcomes. Harv Educ Rev. 2002;72(3):330–366.

3. Peddie N, Hoegh J, Rice G, Shetty S, Ure A, Cogan N. Health and social care professionals’ experience of psychological safety within their occupational setting: a thematic synthesis review. Nurs Rep. 2025;15(4):131.

4. Nembhard IM, Edmondson AC. Making it safe: the effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. J Organ Behav. 2006;27(7):941–966.

5. Anti‑Oppression Resource and Training Alliance. Anti‑oppressive facilitation for democratic process: making meetings awesome for everyone. Arts Campout; updated June 2017 [cited 2025 Jul 14]. Available from: https://arts‑campout‑2015.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/02/AORTA_Facilitation‑Resource‑Sheet‑JUNE2017.pdf