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Showing results for tags 'Hospital ward'.
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News ArticleWards at a trust facing an inquiry over the deaths of vulnerable patients have been downgraded to ‘inadequate’ over fresh patient safety concerns. The Care Quality Commission said five adult and intensive wards across three hospitals run by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys (TEWV) Foundation Trust “did not manage patient safety incidents well”. It also criticised the trust’s leaders for failing to make sure staff knew how to assess patient risk. The watchdog rated the trust’s acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units as “inadequate” overall as well as for safety and leadership. The trust was also served a warning notice threatening more enforcement action if the patient safety issues are not urgently addressed. At the previous inspection in March 2020, the service was rated “good”. TEWV said it has taken “immediate action” to address the issues, including a rapid improvement event for staff and daily safety briefings, and will also spend £3.6m to recruit 80 more staff. The trust’s overall rating of “requires improvement” remains unchanged after this inspection. Brian Cranna, CQC’s head of hospital inspection for the North (mental health and community health services), said: “We found these five wards were providing a service where risks were not assessed effectively or managed well enough to keep people safe from harm." “Staff did not fully understand the complex risk assessment process and what was expected of them. The lack of robust documentation put people at direct risk of harm, as staff did not have access to the information they needed to provide safe care." Read full story (paywall) Source: HSJ, 26 March 2021
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News Article
40,600 people likely caught Covid while hospital inpatients in England
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
More than 40,600 people have been likely infected with coronavirus while being treated in hospital in England for another reason, raising concerns about the NHS’s inability to protect them. In one in five hospitals at least a fifth of all patients found to have the virus caught it while an inpatient. North Devon district hospital in Barnstaple had the highest rate of such cases among acute trusts in England at 31%. NHS England figures also reveal stark regional differences in patients’ risk of catching the virus that causes COVID-19 during their stay. Just under a fifth (19%) of those in hospital in the north-west became infected while an inpatient, almost double the 11% rate in London hospitals. Hull University teaching hospitals trust and Lancashire teaching hospitals trust had the joint second highest rate of patients – 28% – who became infected while under their care. The former has had 626 such cases while the latter has had 486. However, the big differences in hospitals’ size and the number of patients they admit mean that the rate of hospital-acquired infection is a more accurate reflection of the success of their efforts to stop transmission of the potentially lethal virus. Doctors and hospitals claim that many of the infections were caused by the NHS’s lack of beds and limitations posed by some hospitals being old, cramped and poorly ventilated, as well as health service bosses’ decision that hospitals should keep providing normal care while the second wave of Covid was unfolding, despite the potential danger to those receiving non-Covid care. “These heartbreaking figures show how patients and NHS staff have been abysmally let down by the failure to suppress the virus ahead of and during the second wave,” said Layla Moran MP, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 March 2021 -
News Article
New partnership to improve patient safety in South East London ICS
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust will work with Omnicell to develop a European technology-enabled inventory optimisation and intelligence service which will be initially implemented across South East London Integrated Care System (ICS). This partnership will encompass all six acute hospital sites within the South East London ICS, including Guy’s & St Thomas’, Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust. The project will have the following goals: Develop analytics and reporting tools with a goal of improving patient safety, achieving increased operational efficiency and cost efficiencies Utilize the analytics and reporting tools with a goal of achieving agreed efficiencies and cost reductions Demonstrate the impact of managing clinical supplies and medicine spend together at scale Build a service model for the ICS which can be scaled up and adopted by other hospital groups in the UK Read the full article here -
News ArticleScotland's Health Secretary Humza Yousaf says the NHS is facing the "biggest crisis" of its existence. There's a shortage of beds, the demand for ambulances is soaring and waits in accident and emergency departments are getting longer. On top of that, COVID-19 admissions have been rising fast as the number of infections in Scotland spiralled at the end of the summer. BBC News share five charts illustrating the enormous pressures currently being felt by NHS Scotland. Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 September 2021
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News ArticleA retiring chief executive was “astonished” how many junior doctors had never met the senior directors of their hospitals — and stressed how being visible on the wards is “critical” to good leadership. Karen Partington, who has this month stepped down after 10 years leading Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust, said she had made it her mission to understand the feelings and motivations of frontline staff. In an interview with HSJ, she was asked if being visible and spending significant time talking to frontline staff is the most important bit of advice she would give a first-time chief executive. She said: “In my personal opinion, it’s critical. How can CEOs be compassionate leaders without understanding the daily pressures faced by the whole team?" “My executive team and I [would] meet regularly with our junior doctors and do a ‘you said, we did’ session, which really helped us to change their experiences for the better. But it was also an opportunity to ensure our frontline colleagues understood the environment they were working in as well. I have always found that when people understand ‘why’, [then] they will come up with the solutions." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 14 September 2021
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News Article
Sharp rise in acute medical beds occupied by children with nowhere else to go
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A third of all children’s acute hospital beds in parts of England are being occupied by vulnerable children who do not need acute medical care but have nowhere else to go, safeguarding experts have warned. Doctors say they feel like very expensive “babysitters” for vulnerable children, many of whom are in care but whose placements have broken down because of their violent and self-harming behaviour. Others have severe neurodevelopmental or eating disorders and need specialist treatment not available on ordinary children’s wards, where they get “stuck”, sometimes for months at a time. Paediatricians told the Guardian they have had to deal with vulnerable children who were not physically ill but displayed such challenging behaviour that they could not be looked after in children’s homes. “It is estimated that roughly a third of acute hospital beds at the moment are full of these vulnerable young people, many who are subject to child protection plans, or they are already children in care, living in a residential placement that’s falling apart,” said Dr Emilia Wawrzkowicz, a paediatric consultant who is the assistant officer for child protection at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). Though many of these children are in extreme distress, they often have no diagnosable mental illness and do not qualify for a psychiatric “tier four” bed. “Some children have such extreme emotional and behavioural issues or are at risk of exploitation that they can’t get back to their residential placements or their foster parents. They can’t obviously go back to their homes, and we’ve got to keep them safe. So they sit in the hospital because there’s nowhere else to go. There are children sitting on our wards for months,” said Wawrzkowicz. Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Director of Children’s Services, warned that a failure to increase the suitable provision for traumatised children would lead to more child suicides and more children ending up in custody after harming others. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 September 2021 -
News ArticleMore than one in five ‘covid deaths’ were both probably hospital-acquired, and caused at least in part by the virus, at several trusts, according to analysis released to HSJ. HSJ obtained figures from more than 30 trusts which have looked in detail at cases where patients died after definitely, or probably, catching covid in hospital. Thirty-two acute trusts provided HSJ with robust data, out of the total 120 in England. Across all 32, they had recorded 3,223 covid hospital deaths which were either “definitely” or ‘probably’ nosocomial — making up around 17% of their total reported 19,020 hospital deaths. The trusts said 2,776 of the 3,223 deaths also had covid listed on their death certificate, either as an “immediate cause” or as a contributory factor. That constitutes about 15% of all the hospitals’ covid deaths, and 86% of the nosocomial deaths. When approached by HSJ, these trusts said they followed robust infection control practices, and that high community covid prevalence, and covid admissions, were the main cause of hospital-acquired infection. Some trusts also cited their ageing infrastructure. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 September 2021
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News Article
Huge gulf in hospitals' ability to contain Covid
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
New analysis looking at the spread of Covid-19 in hospitals has revealed a massive gulf in ability to contain the virus during the first wave. According to the published data, overall only 1 in 10 people actually caught the virus whilst in the hospital, however 314 UK hospitals showed that ranged from just one in 100 cases caught in hospital, to more than 1 in 4, with an estimate of between 5,700 and 11,900 people who were infected in hospital. Professor Calum Semple, one of the researchers from the University of Liverpool has said, "There will be tragedy behind this story, people that came into hospital with one problem, caught Covid and sadly died." Read full story. Source: BBC News, 13 August 2021 -
News Article
Up to 8,700 patients died after catching Covid in English hospitals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Up to 8,700 patients died after catching Covid-19 while in hospital being treated for another medical problem, according to official NHS data obtained by the Guardian. The figures, which were provided by the hospitals themselves, were described as “horrifying” by relatives of those who died. Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, said that hospital-acquired Covid “remains one of the silent scandals of this pandemic, causing many thousands of avoidable deaths”. NHS leaders and senior doctors have long claimed hospitals have struggled to stop Covid spreading because of shortages of single rooms, a lack of personal protective equipment and an inability to test staff and patients early in the pandemic. Now, official figures supplied by NHS trusts in England show that 32,307 people have probably or definitely contracted the disease while in hospital since March 2020 – and 8,747 of them died. That means that almost three in 10 (27.1%) of those infected that way lost their lives within 28 days. “The NHS has done us all proud over the past year, but these new figures are devastating and pose challenging questions on whether the right hospital infection controls were in place”, said Hunt, who chairs the Commons health and social care select committee. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 May 2021 -
EventuntilIn order to support the NHS Priorities set out for 2022/2023 in delivering significantly more elective care to tackle the elective backlog and to reduce long waits, this exclusive webinar from GovConnect will take a look at the developing approaches to patient care using collaborations with providers delivering treatments in the home in order to support patient flow. This webinar will explore: How teams have innovated to provide hospital-at-home during the Covid-19 crisis and what’s needed to maintain the momentum of change? What is the future direction for hospital-at-home, post-pandemic, and what will accelerate or prevent adoption at scale? Evaluation and evidence required to support the case for change. There will be the first virtual wards presentation from Tim Staughn and the first one to case study the Covid virtual ward from Dr Andrew Barlow. Speakers: Jill Ireland, Chief Executive and Clinical Director, HomeLink Healthcare Jon Green, Consultant and Former NHS CEO Dr Andrew Barlow, Director of medicine, West Hertfordshire hospitals NHS trust Tim Straughan, Director of NHS @home NHS England & Improvement Register
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EventuntilIn order to support the NHS Priorities set out for 2022/2023 in delivering significantly more elective care to tackle the elective backlog and to reduce long waits, we take a look at the developing approaches to patient care using collaborations with providers delivering treatments in the home in order to support patient flow. This webinar will explore: How teams have innovated to provide hospital-at-home during the Covid-19 crisis and what’s needed to maintain the momentum of change? What is the future direction for hospital-at-home, post-pandemic, and what will accelerate or prevent adoption at scale? Evaluation and evidence required to support the case for change. Register
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EventuntilThis is the third in a series of online lectures organised by the International Shared Decision Making Society (ISDM). This lecture will be hosted by Kristen Pecanac, UW-Madison School of Nursing. Join the webinar
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EventThis Hospital at Night Summit focuses on out of hours care in hospitals delivering high quality safe care at night. Through national updates, networking opportunities and case studies this conference provides a practical guide to delivering a high quality hospital at night, and moving forward during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference will also focus on improving staff well-being at night and reducing fatigue. For more information visit: https://www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/virtual-online-courses/hospital-at-night-summit or email nicki@hc-uk.org.uk hub members receive a 20% discount. Please email info@pslhub.org for discount code Follow on Twitter @HCUK_Clare #hospitalatnight
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Content ArticleThis study in the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology aimed to determine the extent to which asymptomatic individuals infected with Covid-19 transmitted the disease to other patients and staff on a hospital ward. The authors found that a comprehensive symptoms and signs assessment, in combination with adequate follow-up, allows for a more precise determination of Covid-19 symptoms. The results of the study revealed that asymptomatic infection was quite uncommon amongst adults in this setting.
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Content ArticleThis is the annual report of the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit–Harms (NaDIA-Harms) programme, which aims to monitor and reduce instances of key life-threatening diabetes specific inpatient events. The programme covers hypoglycaemic rescue, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), hyperosmolar hyperglycaemic state (HHS) and diabetic foot ulcer. Overall 4,605 inpatient harms were submitted to the NaDIA-Harms audit between May 2018 and October 2020; the majority of which related to hypoglycaemic rescue (69%). This report also covers: the number of submissions of each inpatient harm. the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on inpatient harms. patient profiles of people that experience each inpatient harm. These include demographics, diabetes characteristics, treatment targets, care processes, admission characteristics and comorbidities.
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Content ArticlePatients recovering from an episode in an intensive care unit (ICU) frequently experience medication errors on transition to the hospital ward. This systematic review in BMJ Quality & Safety aimed to examine the impact of medication-related interventions on medication and patient outcomes on transition from adult ICU settings and identify barriers and facilitators to implementation.
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Content Article
Safe care for people with diabetes in hospital (January 2020)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Diabetes
This article in the journal Clinical Medicine looks at the safety of people with diabetes when they are admitted to hospital as an inpatient. Having diabetes in hospital is associated with increased harm. Although the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit has shown that inpatient care for people with diabetes has slowly improved over the last few years, there are still challenges in terms of providing appropriate staffing and education. Progress is still needed to ensure the safety of people with diabetes in hospital. The authors look at some of the key areas of concern for people with diabetes in hospital, including increased risk of hypoglycaemia, hyperglycaemia (including diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and hyperosmolar hyperglycaemia state), medication errors, hospital acquired foot ulcers, increased length of stay and overall increase in death. -
Content ArticleThis study in BMC Health Services Research aimed to evaluate the impact of an Internet of Things intervention in a hospital unit. The Internet of Things refers to a network of physical objects that are connected by sensors, software and other technologies in order to transfer data and interact with one another. This study demonstrates the effects of smart technologies on patient falls, hand hygiene compliance rate and staff experiences. The authors reported some positive changes that were also reflected in interviews with staff. They identified behavioural and environmental issues as being particularly important to ensure the success of Internet of Things innovations in a hospital setting.
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Content ArticleCheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership has published this consensus document on the interface between primary and secondary care. It aims to ensure healthcare providers ensure access to the right care to give patients the best outcomes. It contains a set of clinically-led principles to ensure pathways have a common structure of good quality, patient-centred communication. It includes a number of guiding principles that encourage staff to ensure: the patient is at the centre of decision making actions taken are completed in a timely way actions are undertaken by the most appropriate individual or team decisions and actions are understood by all.
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Content ArticleSince 2010/11, the NHS has lost almost 25,000 beds across the UK. The evolving nature of healthcare provision means that the role of hospital admission has changed, but hospital beds still represent an essential part of healthcare, and the number available to the NHS should be carefully considered. A broad consensus has developed in recent years that the reduction in beds has happened too quickly. The outcome is that the NHS is now under-bedded. This has important consequences; patients must now endure long waits to be admitted with emergency department staff providing care normally provided in wards even as they continue to care for new arrivals; ambulance handover delays increase and there are delays to calls for an ambulance; planned operations are cancelled. Reducing long stays in emergency departments requires adequate staffing, space, efficient processes, and sufficient inpatient bed capacity. This report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) focuses on inpatient bed capacity. While the unit of measurement is a bed, it must be remembered that a bed requires medical, nursing and other staff to safely function.
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Content ArticleThis French study in the Journal of Hospital Infection evaluated the frequency and factors associated with environmental air and surface contamination in rooms of patients with acute Covid-19. It aimed to increase understanding of how the virus is transmitted in hospitals. The authors found that surfaces seemed to be more frequently contaminated with Covid-19 than air or mask samples, and noted that viable virus was rarely found. They suggest that samples from the inside of patients' face masks could be used to identify patients with a higher risk of contamination.
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Content ArticleThis video is based on research interviews with acute medical patients and examines how staff and patients in hospital can create safe care together. It includes quotes from real-life patient experiences and highlights the importance of listening to and reassuring patients, and involving them in their care.
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Content ArticleIn 2020, over 2,000 people over the age of 60 fell and fractured their hip while staying in hospital in England and Wales. This graphic has been produced by the National Audit of Inpatient Falls (NAIF), which audits the delivery and quality of care for patients over 60 who fall and fracture their hip or thigh bone across England and Wales. It features the three most important findings of the 2021 NAIF Report, chosen by the patient and carer panel. The infographic covers the following questions: How can falls be prevented? What should happen after a fall? How can I help to improve care in hospital?
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Content ArticleDefining whether a diagnostic error has occurred can be difficult, but in order to reduce harms from diagnostic errors, hospitalists must first understand how these errors occur and then develop practical strategies to avoid them. This article in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine explores these issues and highlights new opportunities for reducing diagnostic error in hospitals.
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Content ArticleEuropean Union Directive 2010/32/EU legally enforces a set of strategies aimed at preventing sharps injuries and determining the risk of bloodborne infections and psychological distress in healthcare workers. This article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health looks at the results of a national survey conducted in Italy in 2017 and repeated in 2021 to evaluate the progress of the Directive's implementation. The authors assessed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on implementation.
