Creating trust and psychological safety with new team members: Leadership lessons from a locum tenens emergency physician | Helena Halasz, MD

Episode 116 | Duration: 24:33

Emergency medicine requires clinicians to build trust quickly, often in high-stakes situations and under significant pressure. For locum tenens physicians, whose work assignments are temporary, the challenges with building trusted relationships with new team members can be compounded by the uncertainty of varying organizational cultures and navigating unfamiliar environments inside and outside the hospital.

In this episode of Caring Greatly, emergency physician Helena Halasz, MD, shares how she fosters human connections and creates psychological safety when joining new care teams. From early introductions to encouraging questions from residents and new nurses, Helena describes the small behaviors that can establish an environment of openness and mutual respect, even when relationships may last from only a single shift to a few weeks.

Helena also explores the realities of navigating high-stress situations in the emergency department, including caring for aggressive or combative patients. She reflects on learning to balance respect for patient autonomy with her responsibility to protect care team members, and how transparently communicating her clinical reasoning is a practice that can help build trust when her approach differs from established practices at a location.

The conversation also examines what healthcare organizations can do more broadly to support locums clinicians. Helena discusses the importance of thoughtful onboarding, access to safety reporting systems, closing the loop when incidents are reported, and proactively providing information about physical safety and workplace resources. Ultimately, she argues that leadership is not dependent on tenure or title: the energy and behaviors clinicians bring into a shift can influence the psychological and emotional safety of everyone around them.

Helena Halasz, MD, is an emergency medicine physician who works as a locum tenens attending across many U.S. healthcare facilities. Her experience moving between clinical environments gives her a unique perspective on team culture, psychological safety, workplace violence and the ways individual clinicians can contribute to safer, more connected care environments.

Dr. Helena Halasz is a leader who cares greatly.

Related link:

• Blog post: Starting Strong in Locum Tenens: Dr. Helena Halasz's Early-Career Perspective
• Helana's Instagram: A Young Doctor's Journey