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Showing results for tags 'Communication'.
Found 1,194 results
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Content ArticleIleostomy is a common treatment option for various gastrointestinal conditions. This study in Surgery aimed to examine how receiving care at different facilities might increase the risk of post-discharge complications and readmission following ileostomy. The authors used a national cohort to explore the associations of care fragmentation among ileostomy patients experiencing adverse outcomes and increased hospitalisation.
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Content ArticleInterprofessional communication is of extraordinary importance for patient safety. To improve interprofessional communication, joint training of the different healthcare professions is required in order to achieve the goal of effective teamwork and interprofessional care. The aim of this pilot study from Heier et al. published in BMC Medical Education was to develop and evaluate a joint training concept for nursing trainees and medical students in Germany to improve medication error communication.
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Content ArticleIn this article for the Journal of Eating Disorders, Alykhan Asaria considers the criteria used in a paper by Guadiani et al. (J Eat Disord 10:23, 2022) to define ‘terminal anorexia nervosa’ and outlines concerns about this new term from a lived experience perspective. The author highlights issues about the ambiguities around how the criteria can be applied safely and the impact of labelling anorexia nervosa sufferers with terms. Further articles on the hub from Alykhan Asaria: ‘Terminal anorexia’: a lived experience perspective
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Content Article
Patient safety and healthcare information are inextricably linked. But how can you be certain the content you’ve produced, or information you have received as a patient, is indeed ‘safe’? The sheer volume of information available is staggering – be it a leaflet about skin cancer, a poster about vaccines in your GP waiting room, a YouTube video about healthy living or a consent form for a surgical procedure. The list goes on and on and, without professional review, there really is no knowing how safe that information is. If you work in the healthcare sector, and especially if you work in the creation of healthcare information, you will probably be familiar with the Patient Information Forum and their ‘PIF TICK’. The PIF TICK provides reassurance that what is being given to patients is: safe reliable accurate accessible. At EIDO Healthcare, we were awarded our first PIF TICK in October 2020 and have had it successfully renewed every year since. In this blog, I will talk about my experience of receiving and maintaining a PIF TICK for our library of information leaflets for patients needing surgery. -
Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Sonia talks to us about how her role at NHS Confederation helps her understand the issues facing NHS staff and why she decided to start drawing graphics to communicate important information to patients and staff. -
Content ArticleJudy Walker looks at the ways in which team learning can contribute to safety in healthcare using tools such as After Action Review (AAR). She explores research highlighted in Amy Edmondson's new book The Right Kind of Wrong that demonstrates the impact on certain safety indicators of flight crews building a team culture through working together consistently. Judy suggests that gaining insights about co-workers through proximity accelerates the process of learning for teams.
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Content ArticleAs part of the 21st Century Cures Act (April 2021), electronic health information (EHI) must be immediately released to patients in the USA. This study in the American Journal of Surgery sought to evaluate clinician and patient perceptions regarding this immediate release of results and reports. Interviews with patients and clinicians found differences in perceived patient distress and comprehension, emphasising the impersonal nature of electronic release and necessity for therapeutic clinician-patient communication.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Scott Ellner, a general surgeon from the US, describes the case of a surgeon colleague who unintentionally harmed a patient, Sarah, during surgery. Sarah ended up in the surgical intensive care unit from septic shock due to a missed bowel injury. Her recovery from what should have been a straightforward procedure was long and complicated. Scott recalls how the surgeon was shocked by the way Sarah's husband responded to him when he explained what had happened—instead of an anger and blame, Sarah's husband expressed compassion for the doctor and reiterated his trust in him. Scott highlights the importance of creating a Just Culture in healthcare systems and outlines challenges to this in the current climate, referring to the case of nurse RaDonda Vaught. He also outlines the impact patient safety incidents and medical errors can have on healthcare professionals, calling on the healthcare community to embrace shared humanity. All of us come with imperfections, vulnerabilities and the capacity for healing and growth.
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Content ArticleThe prevalence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) or chronic diseases is increasing in Europe. NCDs now account for 90% of deaths in the WHO European Region, yet most health systems were developed to treat and care for people with acute conditions. Health care services are still lagging behind in terms of responding to the particular needs of those living with chronic conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease (hypertension and heart failure) and respiratory diseases (asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Policy-makers and health-care managers are working to better organize health services to reflect and cater to the needs of these patients, for example by strengthening integrated primary health-care services. Important work is also needed to increase people’s knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their own conditions on a day-to-day basis, outside of health-care settings. Patients spend on average 2 hours per year with their health professional and the rest of the time they need to take care of their health themselves. Supporting patients to self-manage their condition is crucial to improving outcomes and reducing anxiety and complications. WHO Regional Office for Europe has published a new “how-to” guide for policy-makers, health professionals, and education and training bodies on therapeutic patient education (TPE). The guide covers commissioning, designing and delivering TPE services and training programmes for health professionals. It also looks at the evidence and theory underpinning patient education, outlines key components for delivering a high-quality service and identifies implementation opportunities and barriers.
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Content ArticleEfforts to increase physician engagement in quality and safety are most often approached from an organisational or administrative perspective. Given hospital-based physicians’ strong professional identification, physician-led strategies may offer a novel strategic approach to enhancing physician engagement. It remains unclear what role medical leadership can play in leading programmes to enhance physician engagement. In this study, Rotteau et al. explore physicians’ experience of participating in a Medical Safety Huddle initiative and how participation influences engagement with organisational quality and safety efforts. They found that The Medical Safety Huddle initiative supports physician engagement in quality and safety through intrinsic motivation. However, the huddles’ implementation must align with the organisation’s multipronged patient safety agenda to support multidisciplinary collaborative quality and safety efforts and leaders must ensure mechanisms to consistently address reported safety concerns for sustained physician engagement.
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Content ArticleThe ethnicity data gap pertains to three major challenges to address ethnic health inequality: Under-representation of ethnic minorities in research Poor data quality on ethnicity Ethnicity data not being meaningfully analysed. These challenges are especially relevant for research involving under-served migrant populations in the UK. This study in BMC Public Health aimed to review how ethnicity is captured, reported, analysed and theorised within policy-relevant research on ethnic health inequities. The authors concluded that the multi-dimensional nature of ethnicity is not currently reflected in UK health research studies, where ethnicity is often aggregated and analysed without justification. Researchers should communicate clearly how ethnicity is operationalised for their study, with appropriate justification for clustering and analysis that is meaningfully theorised.
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Content ArticleThe aim of this project was to introduce and evaluate the Call 4 Concern© (C4C) service, which provides patients and relatives with direct access to critical care outreach services (CCOS). This allows patients and relatives an additional platform to raise concerns related to the clinical condition and facilitate early recognition of a deteriorating patient. The introduction of Call 4 Concern at a district general hospital was inspired by the Royal Berkshire Hospital, where staff have been pioneering the service in the UK since 2009. They were able to demonstrate the potential to prevent clinical deterioration and improve the patients' and relatives' experiences. The project was originally inspired by the Condition H(elp) system in the USA, which was set up following the death of an 18-month-old child who died of preventable causes. Similar tragic cases in the USA and the UK have prompted campaigning by affected families, resulting in the widespread adoption of comparable services. The project was rolled out in the authors' trust for all adult inpatients. There was a 2-week implementation phase to raise awareness. Between 22 February 2022 and 22 February 2023, the CCOS team received 39 C4C referrals, representing approximately 2.13% of the total CCOS activity. Clinical deterioration of a patient was prevented in at least three cases, alongside overwhelming positive feedback from service users.
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Content ArticleThe Patient Experience Toolkit (PET+) is an evidence-based approach to enhancing patient experience developed through research led by the Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group. The toolkit is a facilitator’s guide to listening to patients, and the frontline teams who deliver their care, and how to use improvement and engagement methods to support positive changes.
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Content ArticleIn a study published in Rheumatology, researchers used the example of neuropsychiatric lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease that is particularly challenging to diagnose, to examine the different value given by clinicians to 13 different types of evidence used in diagnoses. This included evidence such as brain scans, patient views, and the observations of family and friends.
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Content Article
The Cultural Awareness Hub
Sam posted an article in Safety culture programmes
The Cultural Awareness Hub is a national service which provides interactive, expert experience and sustainable workshops which offer unique insights into culture and history for all organisations working with and supporting the public. It helps organisations to understand and identify barriers to services, while providing realistic and achievable solutions to ensure effective and efficient collaborative engagement is embedded with all communities. The training is developed to transform knowledge and empower both participants and the communities they are supporting. Understanding and respecting different cultures and communities is essential to ensure all services provide personalised care. Training provided through The Cultural Awareness Hub is subject to a fee, please contact us for more information. To find out more and to discuss creating your own training package, please contact TheCulturalAwarenessHub@EELGA.gov.uk. -
Content Article
D-Coded is an online resource that presents easy-to-understand summaries of diabetes research studies. It aims to make the latest knowledge and developments accessible to people who don't have a medical or scientific background. In this blog, Jazz Sethi, Founder and Director of the Diabesties Foundation and part of the global team that developed D-Coded, discusses the need for the resource and outlines how it will help people living with diabetes to better understand and manage their condition. -
Content ArticleIn this video and accompanying transcript, clinical decision support researcher F Perry Wilson looks at the importance of health records and databases indicating whether or not a patient is deceased. If they are not up to date and sharing this information with the right staff and processes, inappropriate messages can be sent to healthcare professionals or the deceased patient's family. He argues that as well as being a waste of resources, sending communications requesting procedures or offering appointments in this situation undermines confidence and trust in health systems, in both staff and members of the public.
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Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Tracey talks about how her lived experience of navigating the criminal justice and healthcare systems as a victim of serious violent crime has shaped her role as a Patient Safety Partner. Tracey is passionate about speaking up for patients and families, and she highlights the need to prevent compounded trauma by ensuring services meet their needs. She calls for a more joined-up approach between public services and outlines the importance of clear, compassionate communication following a patient safety incident or other traumatic event. -
News Article
USA hospitals' latest PR concern: The Netflix documentary
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
After the $261 million verdict against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, health system public relations departments have a new concern: unwillingly becoming the subject of a streaming service documentary. Released on Netflix in June, "Take Care of Maya" tells the story of Maya Kowalski, whose family brought her to the St. Petersburg, Fla., hospital's emergency department in 2016 with chronic pain. After physicians suspected child abuse, the then-10-year-old was kept there apart from her loved ones for nearly three months, during which time her mother killed herself. Millions of viewers watched the documentary, which detailed the family's then-unsuccessful attempt to sue the hospital. In November, a Florida jury awarded the Kowalskis the nine-figure sum for damages on counts including medical negligence and false imprisonment. "The level of global exposure and awareness of this case helped drive the interest, engagement and discussions in the community," Karen Freberg, PhD, professor of strategic communication at University of Louisville (Ky.), told Becker's. "This is a situation where hospitals across the board must evaluate their crisis communication plans from this experience and see how they would address this situation if it happened to them." She said any reputation-fixing lessons for this case, then, will come not from hospitals that have lost big lawsuits, but from companies that have been the subject of unflattering documentaries. Read full story Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 7 December 2023 -
Content ArticleThe second annual Safety For All conference was held at the Royal College of Physicians in London on Tuesday 5th December 2023. Over 100 members of the healthcare community attended this event, including occupational health professionals, patient safety experts, frontline staff, patients and academics. The conference was hosted by the Safer Healthcare and Biosafety Network and Patient Safety Learning as part of the Safety For All campaign, supported by B. Braun, BD, Boston Scientific and Stryker. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from two keynote speakers: Lynn Woolsey, UK Deputy Chief Nurse at the Royal College of Nursing and Dr Henrietta Hughes, Patient Safety Commissioner for England. The conference was chaired and facilitated by Dr Rob Galloway, A&E Consultant at Brighton and Sussex Hospital NHS Trust, with a welcome introduction from Dr Ian Bullock, CEO of the Royal College of Physicians. There were a number of panel sessions and presentations throughout the day which are summarised in the attachment below, including on sustainability, antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic underdosing, violence at work, clinical communications, human factors, implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), and women's health and the menopause.
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Content ArticleThe Patients Association has been working with NHS England and the Royal College of Physicians on the development of an outpatient strategy for the past year. In this series of three blogs, they discuss what they have heard from patients about the state of outpatient care and what patients would like to see change. What patients want from an outpatient strategy Kindness, reasonable adjustments and consistency needed across outpatients Personalising care and offering patients choice
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Content ArticleHospitalised adults whose condition deteriorates while they are on hospital wards have considerable morbidity and mortality. Early identification of patients at risk of clinical deterioration has traditionally relied on manually calculated scores, and outcomes after an automated detection of clinical deterioration have not been widely reported. The authors of this article published in The New England Journal of Medicine developed an intervention program involving remote monitoring by nurses who reviewed records of patients who had been identified as being at high risk. Results of this monitoring were then communicated to rapid-response teams at hospitals. They compared outcomes among hospitalised patients whose condition reached the alert threshold at hospitals where the system was operational, with outcomes among patients at hospitals where the system had not yet been implemented. The authors found that using an automated predictive model to identify high-risk patients, for whom interventions could then be implemented by rapid-response teams, was associated with decreased mortality.
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Content Article
Developing cultural change in healthcare: Part 2 – by Dawn Stott
Dawn Stott posted an article in Good practice
In a two-part blog for the hub, Dawn Stott, Business Consultant and former CEO of the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP), talks about the strategies that can help you develop cultural change in your organisation. In part one, Dawn set out the steps to develop a programme of change to support you to achieve good solutions. In part two, Dawn gives you tips on how to assess the culture of your organisation and establish a programme of standardisation. -
Content Article
From Autumn 2023, NHS organisations in England are changing the way they investigate patient safety incidents. NHS England has introduced this new approach, which is called the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF). NHS England has produced detailed resources for patient safety leaders and policy makers about the purpose of PSIRF and what organisations are expected to do to deliver this part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy. However, discussions with frontline clinicians, patient safety managers, educators and Patient Safety Partners have highlighted the need for a simple guide that helps communicate PSIRF to a wide range of stakeholders, including those who do not work in healthcare. This guide provides information about what PSIRF is and why it’s been introduced. It also outlines what patients, carers and family members can expect from an investigation if they are involved in a patient safety incident. -
Content Article
In a multicultural society, individuals from diverse linguistic backgrounds may face language barriers when seeking healthcare. Effective communication is essential to ensure that patients can accurately express their symptoms, concerns and medical history, and understand the information given to them by healthcare providers. In this blog, Kathryn Alevizos discusses some of the common language barriers non-native English speaking patients can experience, and offers practical advice on how we can all improve our intercultural communication skills.
