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Showing results for tags 'Fatigue / exhaustion'.
Found 340 results
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Content ArticleSamantha Batt-Rawden, Co-founder of the The Doctors' Association UK, discusses the struggles of a junior doctor and how changes in the NHS over the last 14 years has made it so much harder to do an already hard job. In this article published in the Metro, she says "that the combination of spiralling workloads and a decimation of morale and camaraderie has been toxic for the profession." Last year, 55% of UK doctors met the criteria for burnout and ‘emotional exhaustion’, with one in five resorting to the use of drugs or alcohol as a ‘coping strategy’. It’s hardly surprising that we are haemorrhaging doctors out of the profession, and it’s only getting worse. So, how do we fix this? Sally suggests that we need to treat staff like human beings if we are going to have any hope of stemming the exodus of clinicians. It’s as simple as restoring some on-call rooms so we can get our heads down, and stop crashing our cars on the way home. Or it’s as basic as ensuring that junior doctors have leave for our own weddings. Honestly, at this stage, just letting us have access to now-outlawed NHS coffee overnight would be a significant morale boost.
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Content Article
Letter from America: Kick off to a new year of hope
lzipperer posted an article in Letter from America
Football is a popular American pastime. Its focus on collaboration, individual skill reliance and teamwork serves as a touchpoint for the January 2020 Letter from America. Letter from America is a Patient Safety Learning blog series highlighting fresh accomplishments in patient safety from the United States. -
Content Article'Hospitals should remove any barriers to doctors eating and drinking during the working day'. As healthcare providers, it’s easy to forget to look after ourselves at work. We know that taking breaks and eating and drinking regularly is a critical component of being “optimised,” helping to sustain our energy, concentration and performance, and reduce the risk of human error. Yet, for many, the realities of working in busy, modern hospitals get in the way. Medicine is a demanding profession, with days often starting early and finishing late and many fall into the habit of forgetting to take regular breaks, not drinking enough fluids, or missing meals. If we want to improve staff wellbeing and reduce the risk of errors, we need to change this.
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News Article
Health strike: RCN nurses in second day's strike
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
About 9,000 nurses across Northern Ireland have begun a 12-hour strike today in a second wave of protests over pay and staffing levels. More than 2,000 appointments and procedures have been cancelled, including a number of elective caesarean operations. The Health and Social Care Board said it expects "significant disruption" Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director Pat Cullen told BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme that nurses felt "bullied" by health officials. Her comments followed a warning by the heads of Northern Ireland's health trusts on Tuesday that this week's strikes could push the system "beyond tipping point". Valerie Thompson, a deputy ward sister at Londonderry's Altnagelvin Hospital, said concerns over safe staffing levels and pay parity had brought her to the picket line. "We need to have the proper amount of staff to care for our patients, give them the respects, dignity, care they deserve," she said. "We are a loyal workforce; we get on with it, and rally around. But it is difficult. We miss breaks, go home late, staff are just exhausted." Read full story Source: BBC new, 8 January 2020 -
Content ArticleFatigue is a complex phenomenon that has effects on physical characteristics, cognition, behaviours, and physical and mental health. Paramedicine crosses the boundaries of many high-risk industries, namely medicine, transport and aviation. The effects of fatigue on paramedics need to be explored and considered in order to begin to identify appropriate interventions and management strategies. This article, published in the Irish Journal of Paramedicine, demonstrates that fatigue is associated with increased errors and adverse events, increased chronic disease and injury rates, depression and anxiety, and impaired driving ability. It has suggested that paramedic services and paramedics need to work collaboratively to identify and action appropriate measures to reduce the effects of fatigue on the wellbeing of the workforce and mitigate its effects on clinical performance and safety.
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Content ArticleThis article from Peden et al. reviews of some of the key topics and challenges in quality, safety, and the measurement and improvement of outcomes in anaesthesia. Topics covered include medication safety, changes in approaches to patient safety, payment reform, longer term measurement of outcomes, large-scale improvement programmes, the ageing population, and burnout. The article begins with a section on the success of the specialty of anaesthesia in improving the quality, safety, and outcomes for our patients, and ends with a look to future developments, including greater use of technology and patient engagement.
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Content ArticleDisruptive and unprofessional behaviours occur frequently in healthcare and adversely affect patient care and healthcare worker job satisfaction. These behaviours have rarely been evaluated at a work setting level, nor do we fully understand how disruptive behaviours are associated with important metrics such as teamwork and safety climate, work-life balance, burnout and depression.
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Content ArticleSchool mental healthcare often is provided by teams contracted from community mental health agencies. The team members that provide this care, however, do not typically receive training in how to work effectively in a team-based context. Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) provides a promising, evidence-based strategy for improving communication and climate in school-based teams. The authors of this study adapted and piloted TeamSTEPPS for use with school mental health teams. TeamSTEPPS was feasible and acceptable to implement, and leadership emerged as an important facilitator. Barriers to implementation success included staff turnover, lack of resources, and challenges in the school mental health team relationship. Results suggest that TeamSTEPPS is promising for school mental health teams but additional modifications are likely needed.
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Content ArticleWe tend to think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable by “learning to say no,” more yoga, better breathing techniques, practicing resilience — the self-help list goes on. But evidence is mounting that applying personal, band-aid solutions to an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon may be harming, not helping, the battle. With “burnout” now officially recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO), the responsibility for managing it has shifted away from the individual and towards the organisation.
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Community PostI would be interested to know, if overnight, patients who score 0-2 on NEWS which has not changed with no concerns since the last set of observations, what your trust policy is on observation frequency? Does your trust require observations to be carried out 4 hourly minimum regardless of patients NEWS score and stability? Or if there are no concerns and the patient is clinically stable with consecutive NEWS 0-2 that they do not have observations taken overnight? Looking forward to hearing what other trust practices are.
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Content Article
MedLed: Breaking the burnout cycle
PatientSafetyLearning Team posted an article in Workforce and resources
This article looks a some of the research into clinician burnout and the importance of early intervention. Perhaps the 72% of doctors, in a study in 2018, who said that they would go to work even when unwell or not resilient enough to work safely provides the most powerful evidence of this being both an organisational and individual problem that needs immediate attention. -
Content Article
RCOG: Video briefing on human factors and situational awareness
Claire Cox posted an article in Maternity
Each baby counts is the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist's national quality improvement programme to reduce the number of babies who die or are left severely disabled as a result of incidents occurring during term labour. Watch the Each baby counts human factors video for information on how to address issues within your unit. -
Content ArticleIn this article in The Guardian, a junior doctor tells us how a small act of kindness from her patient kept her going.
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Content ArticleThe number of doctors entering GP training is higher than ever, yet the overall number of full-time equivalent GPs keeps decreasing. This is one of the reasons that patients report increasing dissatisfaction with their ability to access general practice, although they are satisfied with their care once they are seen. In this blog for the King's Fund, Abigail Heller, a current GP trainee discusses the results of a recent survey of 840 trainees about their career intentions. Abigail and many of the respondents hope to pursue other clinical or non-clinical interests alongside general practice, with interests ranging from expedition medicine to medico-legal work to give them the opportunity to broaden their skills However, despite this desire for a more flexible career, the trainees have concerns about an unmanageable workload. The intensity of the working day remains the leading factor in not wishing to undertake full-time GP work.
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Content Article
How do you initiate change within a pressure cooker?
Anonymous posted an article in Florence in the Machine
Frontline staff are being told to work harder, discharge more patients, be quicker, be more efficient, but are also expected to innovate and give safer care. Where can we find the time to innovate? The time to discuss and implement new ideas? One nurse gives her thoughts in this insightful blog.- Posted
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Content Article
A day in the life of an NHS GP (October 2018)
Claire Cox posted an article in Blogs and vlogs
Ever wondered what GPs do in a day? Watch this short video to find out. -
Content ArticleEver wondered what a day in the life of a neurosurgeon on-call is like? Watch this video to follow a neurosurgery resident in a UK major trauma centre as he works a 28 hour shift.
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Content ArticlePhysicians, particularly trainees and those in surgical subspecialties, are at risk for burnout. Mistreatment (i.e., discrimination, verbal or physical abuse, and sexual harassment) may contribute to burnout and suicidal thoughts. In a study published in NEJM, Hu et al. carried out a cross-sectional national survey of general surgery residents administered with the 2018 American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination assessed mistreatment, burnout (evaluated with the use of the modified Maslach Burnout Inventory), and suicidal thoughts during the past year. They found mistreatment occurs frequently among general surgery residents, especially women, and is associated with burnout and suicidal thoughts.
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Content ArticlePatient-centred, high-quality health are relies on the well-being, health and safety of healthcare clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the US are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organisation, and culture of healthcare. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.
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Content ArticleThe current crisis of clinician burnout is a complex problem. As rates of burnout (the workplace syndrome consisting of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and loss of meaning) reach disturbing levels among clinicians, we continue to struggle to understand how to address workplace suffering. An under-examined area of burnout is how the increasing complexity of healthcare, combined with our tentative recognition of complexity science (the study of systems governed by interactions, dependencies and relationships), impacts the well-being of clinicians. Please note this article, published in BMJ Quality and Safety, is paywalled.
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News ArticleMore than a third of maternity doctors are “burnt out,” and at risk of lacking empathy for the women in their care, researchers have warned. The study of more than 3,000 obstetricians and gynaecologists found high levels of long-term stress and overwork, especially among trainee medics. Researchers said the findings – from the largest UK study on the topic – were “very worrying,” with serious implications for patients. Overall, 36% of those surveyed met the criteria for “burnout,” which is associated with emotional exhaustion, lack of empathy and connection with others, researchers said. Medics who met the criteria for burnout were three times as likely to report anxiety, irritability and anger. They were also four times more likely than colleagues to practice “defensively”- meaning they tried to avoid difficult cases, or else carried out more interventions than necessary, for fear of error. Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 26 November 2019
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Content ArticleIn this study published in BMJ Open, Bourne et al. determined the prevalence of burnout in doctors practising obstetrics and gynaecology, and assess the association with defensive medical practice and self-reported well-being. They carried out a nationwide online cross-sectional survey study of 5661 practising obstetrics and gynaecology consultants, specialty and associate specialist doctors and trainees registered with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, between December 2017 and March 2018. They found high levels of burnout were observed in obstetricians and gynaecologists and particularly among trainees. Burnout was associated with both increased defensive medical practice and worse doctor well-being. These findings have implications for the well-being and retention of doctors as well as the quality of patient care, and may help to inform the content of future interventions aimed at preventing burnout and improving patient safety.
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Content ArticleThe first edition of Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care and Patient Safety took the medical and ergonomics communities by storm with in-depth coverage of human factors and ergonomics research, concepts, theories, models, methods, and interventions and how they can be applied in healthcare. Other books focus on particular human factors and ergonomics issues such as human error or design of medical devices or a specific application such as emergency medicine. This book draws on both areas to provide a compendium of human factors and ergonomics issues relevant to health care and patient safety.
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Content ArticleThis article, published by Forbes, looks at the airline industry and discusses the value in not only studying what pilots do wrong, but also what they do right. This can be translated into healthcare, we know lots about what has gone wrong in healthcare but not so much about the small, quiet things that go right. 'In aviation safety, it’s like we’ve been trying to learn about marriage by only studying divorce.' Written by Kirsty Kiernan a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who teaches and conducts research in unmanned systems and aviation safety.
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Content Article
Blood gas brain break: a stress management technique
Claire Cox posted an article in High risk areas
When working at the sharpest end of healthcare it can get stressful, especially when caring for the most sick patients in the hospital. This poster, spotted in a hospital in the UK, encourages staff to take a few seconds out of their busy day, have a few deep breaths and try to relax.
