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  • Royal College of Nursing: Guidance on safe nurse staffing levels in the UK (2010)


    Patient Safety Learning
    • UK
    • Guides and guidelines
    • Pre-existing
    • Original author
    • No
    • Royal College of Nursing
    • Health and care staff, Patient safety leads

    Summary

    This report from the Royal College of Nursing sets out the range of different factors that influence the total demand for staff and highlights the variety of methods for planning or reviewing staffing. However, recognising the complexities and difficulties of ensuring that staffing levels are safe is not an excuse for inaction.  Health care systems are without doubt complex; which provides more reason, not less, to have a rational system in place to ensure that staffing levels and mix are evidence based and patient safety is maintained.

    Content

    Key points

    • Staffing levels have always been an issue: “What is the optimal level and mix of nurses required to deliver quality care as cost-effectively as possible?” is a perennial question.
    • A range of methods to enable the ‘right’ staffing to be determined at a local level exist. The basic principles are nothing new. The different approaches and examples of each are outlined in Section 6 of this paper.
    • Attention is now focussed more sharply than ever on staffing. Public expectation and the quality agenda demand that the disastrous effects of short staffing witnessed at Mid Staffordshire should not be allowed to happen again.
    • In the current financial context there is a real danger that health care providers will look to reduce staffing as a means of short-term savings – but without appreciation of the long terms costs or risk to patient care.
    • In Section 4 this report presents the evidence on why ensuring adequate nurse staffing is critical to the safe delivery of care, and how having sufficient staff to meet demand avoids the unnecessary costs associated with lower quality of care, staff sickness absence, and high staff turnover.
    • While there are tools available to help ensure that staffing is well matched to service need and workload, and that levels are within a safe range, there are no instant solutions to ensuring safe staffing. There is no universal ‘one size fits all’ short cut.
    • Adequate establishments are only a beginning. Having safe staffing levels on a daily basis relies on many other factors, to enable ‘planned’ staffing levels to be realised and that staff are deployed in an effective way. All of this depends on good management and leadership. 
    Royal College of Nursing: Guidance on safe nurse staffing levels in the UK (2010) http://www.weds.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/documents/1076/rcn%20safe%20staffing%20levels.pdf
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