Redeployment: A patient safety issue (11 February 2024)

Summary

The press has all been full of headlines about staffing levels in the NHS, but this is probably a problem across healthcare around the country.

What this does is provide the perfect patient safety quandary, how do we keep all the areas safe. This often results in the redeployment of nursing staff to different areas, but does this provide the required levels of safety. It appears that having several areas in an “amber” staffing level is preferable than one red area. It is simple logic, but does this create an unrealistic expectation on staff that means the safety is better but only at a barely satisfactory level? Do we think that any of these decisions influences the efficiency of a ward? Is the ward safe and effective?

In this blog, Chris Elston explores these issues and uses a Safety Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) to show some of the lesser appreciated risks to redeploying staff and consider some ways to reduce the risks.