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Showing results for tags 'Policies'.
Found 132 results
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Content ArticleThis improvement plan sets out targeted actions to address the prejudice and discrimination – direct and indirect – that exists through behaviour, policies, practices and cultures against certain groups and individuals across the NHS workforce. It has been co-produced through engagement with staff networks and senior leaders.
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Content ArticleThis is the government’s formal response to the recommendations made by the Health and Social Care Committee in its Seventh report - Integrated care systems: autonomy and accountability, published on 30 March 2023. This document also sets out its response to the recommendations made in the Hewitt Review, which was commissioned by the government in November 2022 and published shortly after the committee’s report on 4 April 2023.
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Content ArticleDespite their widespread use, the impact of commissioners’ policies for body mass index (BMI) for access to elective surgery is not clear. Policy use varies by locality, and there are concerns that these policies may worsen health inequalities. This study in BMC Medicine aimed to assess the impact of policies for BMI on access to hip replacement surgery in England. The authors used National Joint Registry data for 480,364 patients who had primary hip replacement surgery in England between January 2009 and December 2019. They found that rates of surgery fell after localities introduced policies restricting access to surgery based on BMI, whereas rates rose in localities with no policy. Localities with BMI policies have higher proportions of independently funded surgery and more affluent patients receiving surgery, indicating increasing health inequalities, and policies enforcing extra waiting time before surgery were associated with worsening mean pre-operative symptom scores and rising obesity. The authors recommend that BMI policies involving extra waiting time or mandatory BMI thresholds are no longer used to reduce access to hip replacement surgery.
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Content ArticleThere has been growing concern about doctors’ conflicts of interests (COIs) but it is unclear what processes and tools exist to enable the consistent declaration and management of such interests. This study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine mapped existing policies across a variety of organisations and settings to better understand the degree of variation and identify opportunities for improvement. The analysis of organisational policies revealed wide variation in what interests should be declared, when and how. This variation suggests that the current system may not be adequate to maintain a high level of professional integrity in all settings and that there is a need for better standardisation that reduces the risk of errors while addressing the needs of doctors, organisations and the public.
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Content ArticleJohn Tingle and Amanda Cattini discuss some recent reports on patient safety and clinical negligence, considering the need for policy makers to look forward as well as to react to crises
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Content ArticleThe Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) commissioned Ipsos to conduct an online poll of UK adults aged 16-75 to better understand their views on emergency care. The poll revealed that confidence in the UK Government’s approach to tackling long waits for patients in A&E is low, with 59% of respondents expressing a lack of confidence that the UK Government has the right policies to tackle long patient waiting times in A&E departments in hospitals. RCEM’s five priorities below for UK Governments will #ResuscitateEmergencyCare to ensure the emergency care system is there for us all in our time of need.
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Content ArticleAll countries of the WHO European Region currently face severe challenges related to the health and care workforce (HCWF). This report focuses on identifying effective policy and planning responses to these HCWF challenges across the Region. The report presents an overview of the HCWF situation in the Region (focusing on medical doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, pharmacists and physiotherapists, for whom data are available) and identifies relevant policy options, their expected benefits and potential facilitators or barriers to successful implementation. Examples of sound evidence-informed practices in countries are also provided. The aim of the report is to describe the data, rather than to analyse. Data supplied by countries have been used, but in many cases these have been incomplete. It is expected that data will grow progressively in future. No data on informal health workers are included.
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Content ArticleThis letter to NHS mental health trusts, Integrated Care Boards and Commissioners outlines NHS England's position on the use of Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) in NHS mental health services. SIM is a model of care that has been used with people with mental health issues who are considered high-intensity users of emergency services. It is a controversial approach as it instructs services providing emergency care not to provide support to these individuals.
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Content ArticleThe UK Rare Diseases Framework was published in January 2021 and set out a shared vision for addressing health inequalities and improving the lives of people living with rare diseases across the UK. This is England’s second Rare Diseases Action Plan, following the commitment to publish action plans annually during the lifetime of the UK Rare Diseases Framework. This action plan has been developed in close collaboration with delivery partners across the health system and the rare disease community. It reports on progress against the 16 actions set out in the first Rare Diseases Action Plan and announces 13 new specific, measurable actions for the next year under the framework’s priority areas and underpinning themes.
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Content Article
WHO: Introducing the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in WHO
The Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative (PSFHI) aims to address the burden of unsafe care in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. It helps institutions in countries of the Region to launch comprehensive patient safety programmes, with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO). -
Content ArticleThis policy provides a national framework for health and disability providers in New Zealand to continually improve the quality and safety of services for consumers, whānau and healthcare workers. It provides a consistent way to understand and improve through reporting, reviewing and learning from all types of harm. The policy will guide the process for reporting to the Health Quality & Safety Commission in New Zealand and for using the information gathered from learning reviews, along with quality improvement approaches, to strengthen system safety.
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Content Article
The health policy year in review 2022 (The Kings Fund 2023)
Patient_Safety_Learning posted an article in Policies
In this review piece Siva Anandaciva, Chief Analyst at The Kings Fund, looks back at 2022. Reflecting through a health policy lens, Siva uses statistics and graphics to illustrate the activity month-by-month. He concludes that it was a year "dominated by yet more political change at the top of government, a cost-of-living crisis, a looming winter of strike action, growing fears of a two-tier health system based on ability to pay, and the continued second-class citizenship of an adult social care system that saw its charging reforms delayed once again." -
Content Article
Safety culture: learning from best practice (15 November 2022)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Culture
This document outlines NHS England's approach to learning from safety culture best practice. It covers: Safety culture context within the NHS patient safety strategy Leadership Continuous learning and improvement Measurement and systems Teamwork and communication Psychological safety Inclusion, diversity and narrowing healthcare inequalities Case studies -
News Article
Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals. The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians. Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust. In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The dropoff has left four major types of medical specialities that have longstanding doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment – failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an ageing population. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2022 -
Content ArticleHow have the numbers of doctors in the NHS who come from the EU and the European Free Trade Association changed since the Brexit referendum in 2016? And do certain specialties face particular problems? Martha McCarey and Mark Dayan take a closer look at what’s happened since the vote.
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Content ArticleThis article in the HSJ explores the challenges in implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and looks at how it will help achieve effective learning and improvement. Liz Hackett, health advisory partner at Hempsons law firm, addresses the following questions: Who does PSIRF apply to? How does PSIRF help achieve effective learning and improvement? What is required? Involving patient safety and addressing inequalities The challenge
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Content ArticleThe aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the impact menopause is having on the workforce, as well as to issue recommendations and help healthcare organisations, managers, and employers to better support health care workers so that they do not leave the workforce or suffer in silence if they struggle with managing menopause symptoms.
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News Article
Prescribing art and gardening for patients may be a waste of money
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The “social prescribing” of gardening, singing and art classes is a waste of NHS money, a study suggests. Experts found that sending patients to community activity groups had “little to no impact” on improving health or reducing demand on GP services. The research calls into question a major drive from the NHS and Department of Health to increase social prescribing as a solution to the shortage of doctors and medical staff. In 2019 the NHS set a target of referring 900,000 patients for such activities via their GP surgeries within five years. Projects receiving government funding include football to support mental health, art for dementia, community gardening and singing classes to help patients to recover from Covid. However, the study, published in the journal BMJ Open, said there was “scant evidence” to support the mass rollout of so-called “social prescribing link workers”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 18 October 2022 -
Content ArticleSocial prescribing is a way of linking people with complex needs to non-medical supports in the community. There are different models of social prescribing, ranging from online signposting services to individual support from a link worker to access community resource. The aim of this study from Kiely et al. was to establish the evidence base for the effects on health outcomes and costs of social prescribing link workers (non-health or social care professionals who connect people to community resources) for people in community settings focusing on people experiencing multimorbidity and social deprivation. The study found that there is an absence of evidence for social prescribing link workers. Policymakers should note this and support evaluation of current programmes before mainstreaming.
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Content ArticleHealthcare simulation is an established technique for improving patient safety, through training individual skills, teamwork behaviours, and by testing healthcare systems for latent safety threats. However, healthcare simulation may present risks to safety, especially when delivered ‘in situ’—in real clinical environments—when lines between simulated and real practice may be blurred. Brazil et al. developed a simulation safety policy (SSP) after reading reports of adverse events in the healthcare simulation literature, editorials highlighting these safety risks, and reflecting on our own experience as a busy translational simulation service in a large healthcare institution. The process for development of a comprehensive SSP for translational simulation programs is unclear. Personal correspondence with leaders of simulation programs like our own revealed a piecemeal approach in most institutions. In this article, the authors describe the process we used to develop the simulation safety policy at our health service, and crystalize principles that may provide guidance to simulation programs with similar challenges.
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News Article
Mental health policies for drug users not being followed in Scotland, say experts
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Scotland’s health services are failing to tackle a mental health crisis affecting thousands of people with drug or alcohol problems because the right policies are not being followed, an expert body has found. The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland, a statutory body founded to protect the human rights of people with mental illness, said only a minority of health professionals were using the correct strategies and plans for at-risk patients. Dr Arun Chopra, its medical director, said there had been a “collective failure” to act: few local services were using the correct procedures despite so much evidence about the scale of Scotland’s drugs and alcohol problems. Nearly four in five of those professionals said their patients were not given the documented care plans required by national policy. Of the 89 family doctors interviewed, 90% had experienced difficulties referring patients to mental health services or addiction services. In some cases, mental health services then rejected patients because they were addicts, without helping them find the right support. The commission recommended far clearer policies, protocols, auditing and monitoring by health boards and the Scottish government, with better training for professionals. Health workers needed to stop stigmatising patients and see patients as people affected by trauma. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 September 2022 -
Content ArticleAn open letter to Brandon Lewis, the justice secretary, and the Sentencing Council for England and Wales warns that pregnant women in jail suffer severe stress and highlights evidence suggesting they are more likely to have a stillbirth. The signatories include the Royal College of Midwives and Liberty.
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Content ArticleUnsafe maternity care has cost the National Health Service in England (NHS) £8.2bn in 15 years. How many more surveys of women’s experiences, reports of poor quality care and failings of senior management at NHS maternity units do we need to know that there is still a massive problem with maternity services in England? Judy Shakespeare, Elizabeth Duff and Debra Bick discuss why a joined-up policy and investment in maternity services is urgently needed.
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Content ArticleThis study in the journal Health Policy uses an innovative methodology to provide further understanding of the implementation process in the English NHS, using the examples of two distinctly different National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guidelines. The authors conclude that NICE and other national health policy-makers need to recognise that the introduction of planned change ‘initiatives’ in clinical practice are subject to social and political influences at the micro level as well as the macro level.
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Content ArticleBy placing patients at the heart of care, the future of healthcare looks promising. However, we must remember that technology is not used in isolation and has to be developed and implemented with and for the user.
