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Showing results for tags 'Lack of resources'.
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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 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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- Mental health
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Content ArticleA candid account from a healthcare professional on how it feels to have to tell a patient in intensive care that their treatment is to be delayed. Part of the Guardian newspaper's Blood, sweat and tears series.
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Content ArticleThis study from Dall'Ora et al., published in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, explores the association between the levels of temporary nurse staffing and patient mortality. They found that heavy reliance on temporary staff is associated with higher risk for patients dying. The risk of death increased by 12% for every day a patient experienced a high level of temporary staffing – defined as 1.5 hours of agency nursing a day per patient. For an average ward, this increased risk could apply when between a third and a half of the staff on each shift are temporary staff. However, there is no evidence of harm associated with modest use of temporary registered nurses so that required staffing levels can be maintained.
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- Nurse
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Content Article
NHS East London: Safer staffing levels
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Safe staffing levels
The Chief Nursing Officer and the National Quality Board published a paper in November 2013: How to Ensure the Right People with the Right Skills are in the Right Place at the Right Time: A Guide to Nursing, Midwifery and Care Staffing Capacity and Capability. One of the actions from this paper is for all healthcare providers to be open and transparent with patients and the public, regarding staffing capacity and capability. It is important that patients, their families/carers and the public know that we have the appropriate number of staff on duty with the right skill mix to provide care that is safe, of high quality and compassionate. Every month, NHS East London Foundation Trust publish information about their staffing levels on their website. -
Content ArticleGrowing evidence indicates that improved nurse staffing in acute hospitals is associated with lower hospital mortality. Current research is limited to studies using hospital level data or without proper adjustment for confounders which makes the translation to practice difficult. In this observational study published in BMC Health Services Research, Haegdorens et al. analysed retrospectively the control group of a stepped wedge randomised controlled trial of 14 medical and 14 surgical wards in seven Belgian hospitals. All patients admitted to these wards during the control period were included in this study. Pregnant patients or children below 17 years of age were excluded. The records showed that, on average, three out of every thousand patients in the hospital died ‘unexpectedly’. A death is considered as unexpected when a patient suddenly dies during active treatment, with no care plan for the end of their life having been started. Their results are in accordance with previous research and confirm the association between higher nurse staffing levels and lower patient mortality. Furthermore, they also found that a higher proportion of bachelor’s degree nurses is related to a reduction in patient mortality. They proposed a new method to estimate optimal staffing levels using ward level data.
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Content ArticleIn this data briefing, John Appleby looks at nursing workforce figures and questions if the NHS can balance flexibility with demand.
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- Quantative
- Safe staffing
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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 ArticleThe prison population of England and Wales is around 86,000 prisoners. This report by the NHS Benchmarking Network summarises the results of an audit that has taken place across Health and Justice Commissioning services, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and NHS England Specialised Commissioning to quantify the extent of prisoners waiting for assessment and waiting for transfer to mental health facilities (secure and non-secure services).
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- Service user
- Mental health
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Content ArticleThis is the Health Foundations third annual report analysing the staff profile and trends in the NHS workforce in England. It is intended to be read as an annual update, examining changes in the overall profile of NHS staffing in 2018.
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Content ArticleThis discussion paper published in Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) examines the possible barriers and facilitators to patient engagement drawn from a literature search. It proposes a framework with recommendations to address these barriers and promote patient-provider engagement.
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- Patient
- Patient factors
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Content ArticleNHS doctors, nurses and other staff are being encouraged to ask themselves ‘Why not home? Why not today?’ when planning care for patients recovering from an operation or illness, as part of NHS England and NHS Improvement's campaign – called ‘Where Best Next?’ – which aims to see around 140,000 people every year spared a hospital stay of three weeks or more.
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- Increased length of stay
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Content ArticleThis study from Landefeld et al., published in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine, looks at the perceptions of healthcare providers about barriers to improved patient safety in the Indian state of Kerala. Five focus group discussions were held with 16 doctors and 20 nurses across three institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary care centers) in Kerala, India and transcripts were analysed by thematic analysis.
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Content ArticleThis publication presents UK-focused analysis of The Commonwealth Fund’s 2019 International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Doctors in 11 Countries. This includes responses to several UK-specific questions funded by the Health Foundation. The Health Foundation present their analysis of the data, including comparisons with the 2015 survey where possible, under three main themes: how GPs view their job what care GPs are providing and how it is changing how GPs work with other professionals and services.
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- General Practice
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Content ArticleWhite paper on nurse staffing levels for patient safety and workforce safety was produced in 2019 by the Saudi Patient Safety Center and the International Council of Nurses. The paper brings together evidence from a wide range of sources, covering different countries and contexts, showing that having the right numbers of nurses, in the right place and at the right time, delivers quality and safety for the populations they serve, and will help to retain nurses.
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Content ArticleIn this PharmaTimes article, Anna Smith discusses a survey, published by Medicspot, that has revealed that pharmacists are “worried” about the supply of medicines to the UK, after we officially left the European Union (EU) on 31 January 2020.
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Content ArticleSingle-use N95 respirators are critical to protect staff and patients from airborne infections, but shortages may occur during disease outbreaks and other crisis situations. Wearing an N95 respirator for hours at a time (i.e. extended wear) or reusing a respirator several times (i.e., donning and doffing between uses) are practices used to ease shortages. The potential risks and benefits of these practices may vary greatly across locations and may evolve rapidly during a crisis. This report’s conclusions are not intended as a practice endorsement or call to action. Rather, this report is intended to provide practical guidance on the potential risks and benefits that clinical centers should consider during decision making about N95 respirator reuse or extended use. ECRI is a US-based organisation.
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- Infection control
- Equipment shortages
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Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping across the length and breadth of the UK. As a result, NHS England has issued guidelines for effective triaging of urgent cancer 'two-week wait' referrals. The intention of this guideline is to minimise the disruption to cancer services. In order to fully understand the implications of this manual triage approach, this article, Data-Drive Triage Automation – YouDiagnose’s fight against COVID-19, will first explain the triage process during normal circumstances, and then highlight the additional impacts due to the coronavirus emergency. Finishing with a suggested solution (from YouDiagnose) to improve the efficiency of the triaging process and save lives during the pandemic.
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Content ArticleA powerful essay from Dr Joshua Lerner, an Emergency Room (ER) doctor who currently works at the Leominster campus of UMass Memorial Health Alliance-Clinton Hospital in the US...
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- Medicine - Infectious disease
- Lack of resources
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Content ArticleWritten by Benjamin W. Starnes, MD (professor and chief) and Niten Singh, MD (professor and associate chief) in the division of vascular surgery at the University of Washington, Seattle. This letter, published in Vascular Specialist, provides statistical and personal insight into how coronovirus is playing out for hospitals, and the measures they are having to put in place to deal with overwhelmed services.
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- Medicine - Infectious disease
- Staff safety
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Content Article
COVID-19: advice for staff (updated 18 March 2020)
PatientSafetyLearning Team posted an article in Guidance
Please note, this is an evolving situation and the advice changes based on the latest published Public Health England guidance.- Posted
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- Staff safety
- Medicine - Infectious disease
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Content ArticleThis paper, published in BMC Public Health, reports the results of a qualitative study that explored UK healthcare worker's (HCW) views about working during an influenza pandemic, in order to identify factors that might influence their willingness and ability to work and to identify potential sources of any perceived duty on HCWs to work.
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- Safe staffing
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Content ArticleThis video, from US news channel abc6, shows a nurse on the front line expressing a dire need for protective gear to help keep the most vulnerable out of the hospitals. The Ohio Council for Home Care and Hospice is calling on Governor Mike DeWine to act now.
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- Public health
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Content ArticleNHS staff are asking the same questions as everyone else about coronavirus. How deadly is it? How do we protect ourselves? Are the government’s tactics right? And how will the health service cope when – and it is when – it leaves large numbers of people seriously ill, many fighting for their lives? A senior consultant at a leading hospital for respiratory conditions such as pneumonia and cystic fibrosis talks to the Observer about his concerns.
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- Medicine - Infectious disease
- Staff safety
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