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Showing results for tags 'Fatigue / exhaustion'.
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Content ArticleThis blog by consultancy firm Gallup highlights seven questions leaders should ask to about their huddles, to ensure they are effective in improving patient safety and preventing staff burnout.
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Content Article
Fatigue and alertness: Keeping the rail industry alert
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Techniques
Whether you work in an office or on the front line, drive your car home from work or a train full of passengers, you need to be awake and alert to do your job safely and efficiently. Managing fatigue is everybody’s responsibility. RSSB's aim is to make sure that everyone, at all levels, understands their role in managing fatigue. Based on their research and consultation with the rail industry, RSSB have put together a range of resources to help with this. -
News ArticleThe Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control editorial team chose the top 10 patient safety issues for healthcare leaders to prioritise in 2021, presented below in no particular order, based on news, study findings and trends reported in the past year. COVID-19 Healthcare staffing shortages Missed and delayed diagnoses Drug and medicine supply shortages Low vaccination coverage and disease resurgance Clinical burnout Health equity Healthcare-associated infections Surgical mistakes Standardising safety efforts. Read full story Source: Becker's Healthcare, 30 December 2020
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News Article"There can be no debate: this is now much, much worse than the first wave", says a NHS consultant. "Truly, I never imagined it would be this bad. Once again Covid has spread out along the hospital, the disease greedily taking over ward after ward. Surgical, paediatric, obstetric, orthopaedic; this virus does not discriminate between specialities. Outbreaks bloom even in our “clean” areas and the disease is even more ferociously infectious. Although our local tests do not differentiate strains, I presume this is the new variant. The patients are younger this time around too, and there are so many of them. They are sick. We are full." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 January 2020
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News ArticleEngland’s chief nurse has said that NHS and care staff are working incredibly hard to cope with record numbers of COVID-19 patients, amid concern that frontline staff are close to burnout. Ruth May pleaded with the public to follow the coronavirus advice to help relieve the pressure on hospital staff, after two days of record hospital admissions. Adrian Boyle, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Breakfast that health employees were “tired, frustrated and fed up”. He said: “What is it going to be like over the next couple of months? I don’t know, I am worried. We are very much at battle stations. “There will be short-term surges of morale but people are tired, frustrated and fed up, as everybody is, whether they work in hospital or not. The people who go into emergency medicine expect it to be tough from time to time. “There is a real worry about burnout.” Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 January 2021
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Content ArticleOver 3 million people in Britain—more than 1 in 8 of the workforce—regularly work at night, many providing essential, critical services on which Britain’s smooth running depends. They are doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, paramedics, transport and maintenance crews, cleaners, call-centre workers, bakers, security guards, factory workers … all ensuring your life runs like clockwork in the daytime. For them, the experience of working against their body clocks, of feeling jet-lagged, isn’t an occasional annoyance due to travel—it’s a regular fact of life. We must recognise that when we ask people to work at night that there are consequences. As well as increased risks of long-term health problems associated with shiftworking, night workers are vulnerable in other ways, including a significantly increased risk of death by accident just trying to get home to their beds in the morning.
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News ArticleA major London trust’s critical care staff have urged leaders to review elective work targets amid serious concerns over workload, safe staffing and burnout, HSJ has learned. In a letter to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust’s board, staff represented by trade union Unite said they had “repeatedly” raised concerns about the provider’s approach to elective work, as well as winter pressures and second wave planning, and the implications this has had for “the health, safety and wellbeing of both staff and patients”. The letter — which was also addressed to the trust’s health and safety committee and has been seen by HSJ — said: “Our primary concern is that the trust’s endeavours, and understandable need to square these circles, may be unrealistic given the current pressures on staffing and the high rates of sickness and burnout the trust is continuing to experience. “This is especially in critical care, where we are concerned this may compromise patient safety and is already damaging staff wellbeing and morale.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 December 2020
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News Article
‘We don't have enough nurses to keep all our patients safe,’ says RCN leader
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
There are not enough nurses to safely care for patients in the UK, according to the body that represents the profession, and many of those who are working are suffering from anxiety and burnout after a gruelling nine months treating Covid patients. A year after the prime minister pledged during the 2019 election campaign to add 50,000 nurses to the NHS, the Royal College of Nursing has accused Boris Johnson of being “disingenuous” for claiming the government is meeting this 2025 target. Johnson claimed last week that the government had “14,800 of the 50,000 nurses already” during prime minister’s questions in the Commons. Yet the latest NHS figures show there were 36,655 vacancies for nursing staff in England in September, with the worst shortages affecting mental health care and acute hospitals. Staff in some intensive care units (ICUs) have quit since the pandemic, with those whom the Observer spoke to choosing to work instead in supermarkets or as dog-walkers. Dame Donna Kinnair, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary, said: “The simple, inescapable truth is that we do not have enough nursing staff in the UK to safely care for patients in hospitals, clinics, their own homes or anywhere else.” She said that even before the pandemic, “heavy demand” was rising faster than the “modest increases” in staff numbers. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2020 -
Content ArticleIn this powerful article, GP Katie Musgrave, says that the profession is overwhelmed and under resourced. She argues that they are unable to provide the service that patients deserve and that action is needed to prevent patents from suffering harm. Her suggestions include:A COVID-pressures support fund, where part time GPs can be offered extra protected sessions in their own surgeriesThe extension of the ARRS to cover nurse practitioners or GPsA suspension of all but the most crucial bureaucracy: we certainly don’t need to be thinking about QOF this winter.
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Content ArticleStaff are pulling together to meet increasing demands in an overstretched health service; working more intense hours, routinely missing breaks and dealing with inadequate rest facilities. We know this is bad for staff and our patients. This charter from the BMA outlines simple steps that can be taken to improve facilities and reduce fatigue, so we can safely, effectively and efficiently care for our patients.
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News Article
The battle for survival in Britain's intensive care units
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Across Britain, intensive care nurses and doctors are being pushed to their limits as they try to save lives from coronavirus. During 12-hour shifts in sweltering conditions, they are faced with technical and emotional challenges that many have never faced as they tackle a virus that has swept across the globe in a matter of days, threatening to kill tens of thousands in the UK. Britain has yet to even hit the peak of infections, but intensive care specialists are already asking how long they can keep working relentlessly. “We are trained for and used to dealing with difficult and emotional scenarios, but this is like a major incident that never ends,” says critical care nurse Karin Gerber. As an advanced nurse practitioner in critical care outreach, the 47-year-old sees patients in hospital who are getting sicker and may need to be admitted to intensive care. She says she has never seen anything “at this intensity”. The Royal London Hospital is at the forefront of the capital’s fight against the virus and has created more than 200 extra beds at its Whitechapel site in east London. They are filled with COVID-19 patients. Simon Richards, senior charge nurse at the Royal London’s critical care unit, tells The Independent: “In 20 years as a nurse this situation is by far the worst I have ever seen and totally unexpected, but the team spirit that people have shown has been amazing. “It’s extremely difficult, we are working so hard. The whole team is being pushed to their limit and you do wonder how long can this be sustained for? I wish we could see light at the end of the tunnel.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 24 November 2020 -
News Article"I still have nightmares most nights about being completely out of my depth." Gemma, a ward nurse in Northern Ireland, was redeployed to a critical care unit at the end of March when the first wave of coronavirus struck. "I had never looked after a critically ill intensive care patient in my life," she says. "I just thought, I'm coming in here and I'm going to die. I'm going to catch Covid and I'm going to be one of those patients in the beds." As the second wave of the pandemic takes deep root across parts of the UK, thousands of NHS workers are struggling to recover from what they have already been through. "We were all in PPE all the time," recalls Nathan, a senior intensive care nurse at a hospital in the Midlands. "All you can see is people's eyes, you can't see anything else." He describes trying to help junior members of staff survive long and difficult days. "And I'd see these eyes as big as saucers saying help me, do something. Make this right. Fix this." "The pressure was insane, and the anxiety just got me," he says. "I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't eat, I was sick before work, I was shaking before I got into my car in the morning." Nathan ended up having time off with severe anxiety, but he is now back at the hospital, waiting for the beds to fill up again. The BBC has spoken to a number of nurses and doctors across the UK who are deeply apprehensive about what lies ahead this winter. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 October 2020
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News ArticleMany unpaid carers looking after vulnerable friends or relatives during the coronavirus crisis say they are worried about how they will cope this winter. Almost 6,000 unpaid carers completed a Carers UK online questionnaire. Eight in 10 said they had been doing more, with fewer breaks, since the pandemic began - and three-quarters said they were exhausted. The government said it recognised the "vital role" of unpaid carers. In the Carers UK survey, 58% of carers said they had seen their physical health affected by caring through the pandemic, while 64% said their mental health had worsened. People also said day centres and reductions in other services meant the help they once got had reduced or disappeared, leaving many feeling worn out and isolated. Carers UK wants such services up and running again as a matter of urgency. Helen Walker, chief executive of Carers UK, said: "The majority of carers have only known worry and exhaustion throughout this pandemic. "They continue to provide extraordinary hours of care, without the usual help from family and friends, and with limited or no support from local services." "It's no surprise that carers' physical and mental health is suffering, badly. I am deeply concerned that so many carers are on the brink and desperately worried about how they will manage during the next wave of the pandemic." Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 October 2020
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News ArticleDoctors and nurses in areas of northern England with some of the highest Covid infection rates have described being “physically and emotionally” exhausted, as the NHS braces itself for the second wave of the pandemic. Most of the north has been put into the tier 2 “high risk” category, with Merseyside in the highest – tier 3 – bracket. While politicians debate whether a nationwide circuit breaker would be a more effective instrument to curb spread of the virus, frontline staff – still scarred from the first wave – are under no illusions as to what lies in store. Carmel O’Boyle, a nurse in Liverpool, who is also chair of the Royal College of Nursing’s Greater Liverpool and Knowsley branch, said members of the public had used A&E and primary care sparingly during the first national lockdown but mixed messages and a lack of trust in the government had led to people throwing caution to the wind and attendances were rising accordingly. “The nurses across my branch are frightened and exhausted – physically and emotionally,” she said. “They’ve been dealing with this for months and now there are more people in hospitals than there were in March. Although we know a little bit more about how to treat people and the kind of path of the disease process, it’s still frightening. It’s just so demanding and so draining to be nursing people in this manner without any family involvement and with the complications that there are.” A consultant in Manchester, who did not want to be named, said her hospital coped with the first wave but “the difference this time is that we’re trying to continue all of the elective activity and that’s going to be challenging. “I do think that we will manage the Covid cases. I just now worry about whether we will be able to continue to keep the normal care for people who need their operations [and] need care for cancer." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2020
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News ArticleGruelling 12-hour shifts, exhaustion and burnout are leading growing numbers of nurses to quit the NHS within three years of joining, new research reveals. Stress, lack of access to food and drink while at work, and the relentless demands of caring for patients are also key factors in the exodus, the King’s Fund thinktank found. The NHS must make it an urgent priority to tackle the worryingly poor working conditions nurses and midwives face in many hospitals or face worsening workforce shortages, it said. “Staff stress, absenteeism and turnover in the professions have reached alarmingly high levels,” the thinktank said after investigating the working conditions faced by NHS nurses and midwives. “This has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has laid bare and exacerbated longer-term issues including chronic excessive workload, inadequate working conditions, staff burnout and inequalities, particularly among minority ethnic groups.” Read full story Source: 23 September 2020
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Content Article
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17 September 2020 marks the second annual World Patient Safety Day. The theme this year is 'Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety'. In the run up to this special event, Patient Safety Learning are publishing a series of interviews with staff from across the health and care system to highlight key issues in staff safety and gain a clearer idea of the kind of change that needs to take place to keep staff, and ultimately patients, safe. In this interview, Yvonne Coghill, Director, Workforce Race Equality, NHS London and nurse by background, shares her insight. -
Content Article17 September 2020 marks the second annual World Patient Safety Day. The theme this year is 'Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety'. In the run up to this special event, Patient Safety Learning are publishing a series of interviews with staff from across the health and care system to highlight key issues in staff safety and gain a clearer idea of the kind of change that needs to take place to keep staff, and ultimately patients, safe. In this video, Neal Jones, Director of Patient Safety at Liverpool University Hospitals, discusses the challenges staff are currently facing and the support that they need. A transcript of the video is also included below.
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News ArticleIn April, when the coronavirus outbreak was at its peak in the UK and tearing through hospitals, junior doctor Rebecca Thornton’s mental health took a turn for the worse and she ended up having to be sectioned. Even now, three months later, she cannot face going back to her job and thinks it will take her a year to recover from some of the horrors she saw while working on a Covid ward in a deprived area of London. “It was horrendous,” Thornton recalls. “It’s so harrowing to watch people die, day in, day out. Every time someone passed away, I’d say, ‘This is my fault’. Eventually I stopped eating and sleeping.” Thornton’s case may sound extreme but her experiences of working through Covid are far from unique. More than 1,000 doctors plan to quit the NHS over the government’s handling of the pandemic, according to a recent survey, with some citing burnout as a cause. A psychologist offering services to NHS staff throughout the UK, who asked to remain anonymous, has witnessed the toll on staff. “I’ve seen signs of PTSD in some healthcare workers,” she says. “Staff really stood up to the plate and worked incredibly hard. It was a crisis situation that moved very quickly ... After it subsided a little bit, the tiredness became very clear.” Roisin Fitzsimons, who is head of the Nightingale Academy, which provides a platform to share best practice in nursing and midwifery, and consultant nurse at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust, also worries about the looming threat of an uncertain future. “Are our staff prepared? Do they have the resilience to go through this again? That’s the worry and that’s the unknown. Burnout is hitting people now. People are processing and realising what they’ve gone through.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 September 2020
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Content Article
Eric Kutscher: First, do no harm—but did I?
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Blogs
The cost of providing care during a pandemic is seeing firsthand the evolution of medical knowledge, and wishing current data could have guided past decisions, says Eric Kutscher in this BMJ Opinion article. -
News ArticleOver 1,000 doctors plan to quit the NHS because they are disillusioned with the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and frustrated about their pay, a new survey has found. The doctors either intend to move abroad, take a career break, switch to private hospitals or resign to work as locums instead, amid growing concern about mental health and stress levels in the profession. “NHS doctors have come out of this pandemic battered, bruised and burned out”, said Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, president of the Doctors’ Association UK, which undertook the research. The large number of medics who say they will leave the NHS within three years is “a shocking indictment of the government’s failure to value our nation’s doctors,” she added. “These are dedicated professionals who have put their lives on the line time and time again to keep patients in the NHS safe, and we could be about to lose them.
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Content Article
Faded rainbows
Claire Cox posted an article in Blogs
As the colourful rainbows in people's windows are beginning to fade, is the public support for our frontline workers also fading? Has gratitude and thank you's been replaced with frustration and anger from the public? In her latest blog, critical care outreach nurse Claire reflects on the impact this is having on the wellbeing of already exhausted frontline staff. -
News ArticleWomen working in the NHS are suffering from serious stress and exhaustion in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, a troubling new report has found. Some 75% of NHS workers are women and the nursing sector is predominantly made up of women – with 9 out of 10 nurses in the UK being female. The report, conducted by the NHS Confederation’s Health and Care Women Leaders Network, warns the NHS is at risk of losing female staff due to them experiencing mental burnout during the global pandemic. Researchers, who polled more than 1,300 women working across health and care in England, found almost three quarters reported their job had a more damaging impact than usual on their emotional wellbeing due to the COVID-19 emergency. Read full story Source: The Independent, 25 August 2020
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Content ArticleWhen you are ill or recovering from an illness, you are likely to have less energy and feel tired. A simple task, such as putting on your shoes, can feel like hard work. This guide from the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT) uses the 3 Ps principle (Pace, Plan and Prioritise) to help you find ways to conserve your energy as you go about your daily tasks. By making these small changes you’ll have more energy throughout the day.
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News Article
Health committee launches inquiry into NHS staff burnout
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
MPs have launched an inquiry examining workforce burnout across the NHS and social care, and the system’s ability to manage staff stress amid increased pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The House of Commons health and social care committee said it aims to produce a report showing the levels of staff needed in health and social care to tackle exhaustion and meet future challenges. The committee is calling for evidence on how workforce shortages impacted staff well-being and patient care during the pandemic and the areas that need to see recruitment most urgently. Read full story Source: Pulse, 3 August 2020 -
Content Article
Your Life In My Hands: a Junior Doctor's Story
Claire Cox posted an article in Recommended books and literature
'I am a junior doctor. It is 4 a.m. I have run arrest calls, treated life-threatening bleeding, held the hand of a young woman dying of cancer, scuttled down miles of dim corridors wanting to sob with sheer exhaustion, forgotten to eat, forgotten to drink, drawn on every fibre of strength that I possess to keep my patients safe from harm.' How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life? To toughen up the hard way, through repeated exposure to life-and-death situations, until you are finally a match for them? In this heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today's health service, former television journalist turned doctor, Rachel Clarke, captures the extraordinary realities of ordinary life on the NHS front line. From the historic junior doctor strikes of 2016 to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice, calling for junior doctors to draw on extraordinary reserves of what compelled them into medicine in the first place - and the value the NHS can least afford to lose - kindness.
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