Search the hub
Showing results for tags 'Resilience'.
Found 92 results
-
Content ArticleGovernment must seize the post-pandemic opportunity to mandate long-term improvements to infection control in commercial, public and residential buildings to reduce the transmission of future waves of COVID-19, new pandemics, seasonal influenza and other infectious diseases, according to a report published by the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC). Infection control must also be coordinated with efforts to improve energy efficiency and fire safety, to support the three goals of safe, healthy and sustainable buildings. Commissioned in 2021 by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance FRS FMedSci, the NEPC research, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), set out to identify the measures needed in the UK’s built environment and transport systems to reduce transmission of infectious diseases. Ensuring that buildings and transport systems are designed, operated, managed and regulated for infection control is critical to minimise transmission, states the report.
-
Content ArticleRecent years have seen a surge in interest in the study of resilience in medical professionals. Concern has been expressed about the psychological wellbeing of doctors in general and of surgeons specifically, with increasing individual doctors’ resilience being suggested as a possible solution.1 However, there are potential risks as well as benefits to this focus on individual resilience. This article from Bolderston et al. explores both sides of the resilience coin, and considers potentially helpful ways of addressing psychological wellbeing and resilience in surgeons, including the development of an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy-based intervention.
-
Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for a stronger and more inclusive health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR) architecture. At the 150th meeting of the Executive Board in January, the Director-General committed to develop proposals, in consultation with Member States, on strengthening the architecture for HEPR, and present these to the Seventy-fifth Health Assembly. Following the Concept note published on 24 March 24, this draft white paper outlines the Director-General’s proposals for strengthening HEPR, ahead of the World Health Assembly.
-
Content ArticlePatient safety is typically assessed by the frequency of adverse events or incidents, which means we seek to determine safety by its absence rather than its presence. The Safety-II perspective aspires to overcome this paradox by bringing into focus situations where safety is actually present, that is, in everyday work that usually goes well. Central to Safety-II is the notion that, in complex systems such as healthcare, safety is a consequence of collective efforts to adapt to dynamic conditions and uncertainty, rather than the natural state of a system where nothing untoward happens. This type of thinking has been met with significant interest and enthusiasm in healthcare, because it feeds increased appreciation for the fact that healthcare workers continuously ensure that most patients receive safe and high-quality care in challenging circumstances. However, despite its appeal and potential, significant challenges remain for the fruitful interpretation and application of the Safety-II perspective in healthcare, which could give rise to misinterpretations, misuse and a missed opportunity for the potential enrichment of quality and safety practices in healthcare.
-
Content ArticleThis thesis explores different aspects of risk and safety in healthcare, adding to previous research by studying patient safety in first-contact care, primary care and the emergency department. The author investigated preventable harm and serious safety incidents in primary health care and emergency departments, and found that diagnostic error was the most common type or error. The thesis makes recommendations for safety improvements at all levels of a healthcare system.
-
EventuntilThis half-day conference will be hosted in Parliament by Chris Green MP on 12 May 2022 at 2pm and chaired by Dame Barbara Hakin, Former Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England and Chair of the Health Tech Alliance. The NHS has been critically impacted by the pandemic as well as dealing with workforce challenges resulting from the exit of the European Union and is now preparing for significant structural changes expected this year following the Health and Care Bill. Throughout it all, however, it has been clear that HealthTech has played a key role in supporting the NHS tackle these challenges – being branded the ‘key lesson learned’ by the Health and Social Care Committee, following their inquiry into Coronavirus in October 2021. Featuring two panel sessions and keynote speeches, this conference will explore the steps that will need to be taken in the years to come to ensure that this momentum is maintained, cementing innovation within the NHS in the long-term to make the healthcare system more resilient for its staff and patients. Networking drinks will take place after the conference at 5pm. Register
-
Content ArticleFor about two decades, the U.S. healthcare system was making strides in improving patient safety, as demonstrated by the reduction of healthcare-associated infections and other complications of care. Though there was still room for improvement, the trends were certainly in the right direction. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, however, many indicators make it clear that healthcare safety has declined. The public health emergency has put enormous stress on the health care system and disrupted many normal activities in hospitals and other facilities. Unfortunately, these stressors have caused safety problems for both patients and staff. The fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our healthcare system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure. The authors of this article in the New England Journal of Medicine believe the pandemic and the breakdown it has caused present an opportunity and an obligation to reevaluate healthcare safety with an eye toward building a more resilient health care delivery system, capable not only of achieving safer routine care but also of maintaining high safety levels in times of crisis.
-
Content Article
Queensland Health: Fatigue risk management systems
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Good practice
This guideline has been developed to support all Australia's Queensland Health workplaces to identify and manage fatigue risks. It draws on lessons learnt from over a decade of implementing fatigue risk management systems (FRMSs) in Queensland Hospital and Health Services (HHSs) and from proven approaches to safety risk management. -
Content ArticleEarly-years, primary and secondary education services have been severely affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, school healthcare services have also been affected in terms of accessibility and the flow of services. In this blog, Dr Ahmed Khalafalla looks at the effects of this disruption to education-based health services.
-
Community PostI was just listening to a podcast interview between Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Matthew McConaughey (In the series 'Feel better, live more'). Matthew M. mentioned that he came from a highly resilient family. If someone fell over, his mother would tell them to get right back up straight away and carry on. He added that he thought that while this resilience was generally a good thing, there should be (what he called) a 'loophole' in it so that there was time to learn why they have fallen over to begin with. Was there a crack in the pavement that needed to be avoided? That way, it wouldn't happen again in the future. This made me think about whether there really was a conflict between resilience in organisations and the need to learn from failure. What do you think??
-
Content ArticleThe resilience of health systems and cooperation between Member States have become particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the occasion of the French Presidency of the European Union (FPEU) 2022, the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the General Directorate for HealthCare Services of the French Ministry of Health have worked together to produce this special issue of Eurohealth to better understand how health systems have responded to the health crisis and to draw lessons for improving resilience of health systems. (Available in both English and French.)
-
Content ArticleBlood transfusion is considered one of the safer aspects of healthcare, however potentially avoidable patient-safety incidents led to 14 deaths in the UK in 2017. Improvement initiatives often focus on staff compliance with standard operating procedures. This fails to understand adaptations made in a complex, dynamic environment, so the aim of this study from Watt et al. is to examine the extent and nature of adaptations at all stages of the vein to vein transfusion process.
-
Content ArticleIn this chapter, from the book 'Resilient Health Care, Volume 2: The Resilience of Everyday Clinical Work', Sujan et al. explore tensions and dynamic trade-offs through an example from our research on the safety of handover across care boundaries in emergency care. The authors describe the case study and then discuss the key theoretical concepts and their relationship to Resilience Engineering. It concludes the chapter with implications for research and for practice.
-
Content ArticleThis qualitative study in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy examined how staff working in UK community pharmacy during the first waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 responded and adapted to new pressures on their services to maintain patient safety. From responses gathered from 23 community pharmacy staff in England and Scotland, the authors identified five themes: Covid-19, an impending threat to system Patient safety stressors during the first waves of Covid-19 Altering the system, responding to system stressors Monitoring and adjusting Learning for the future. They found that pharmacy staff responded and adapted to the evolving situation, monitoring the success of measures and protocols adopted in response to the pressures of the pandemic.
-
Content ArticleImproving patient safety culture (PSC) is a significant priority for OECD countries as they work to improve healthcare quality and safety—a goal that has increased in importance as countries have faced new safety concerns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from this OECD benchmarking work in PSC show that there is significant room for improvement.
-
Content ArticleA new study developed by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Commission draws out lessons for strengthening resilience to future health threats. The Health systems resilience during COVID-19: Lessons for building back better study gathers the evidence on how countries have managed (or not managed) to re-engineer how they work, the ways in which they utilise their resources and the methods they use to face and counter the pressures exerted by both COVID and non-COVID challenges.
-
EventuntilHR leaders, mental health professionals and technology experts will be discussing how the NHS can support staff through peak demand at a forthcoming HSJ webinar. Charlotte Andrews, head of wellbeing and development at Kingston Hospital Foundation Trust; Neil Greenberg, professor of defence mental health at King’s College London and lead for trauma at the Royal College of Psychiatrists; Karon Hart, assistant director of human resources (operations and wellbeing) at Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust; and Coppelia Rose, global SAP healthcare and life sciences leader at DXC Technology will together discuss how workforce resilience and wellbeing can be supported during times of extreme stress. This free HSJ webinar, which is being supported by SAP, will be chaired by HSJ contributor Claire Read. Register
-
Content ArticleResearch shows that peer support is an effective way to help healthcare staff recover when something goes wrong in patient care. The Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety has developed a toolkit that aims to help healthcare organisations create or expand peer support opportunities for staff. Each section of the online toolkit focuses on key elements of a successful peer support program - from gaining leadership buy-in to creating policies and collecting data.
-
Content Article
In this blog, Farrah Pradhan, Project Manager for Clinical Quality, Education and Projects at RCOG, describes her work with maternity professionals, namely obstetricians, and through undertaking an MSc in Patient safety. Farrah’s focus was on their 'work as done' to see if the concepts of Safety-II (capability mindfulness and resilience engineering) helped them to work more safely. -
Content ArticleResilient Healthcare is an emerging theoretical field that has developed with influence from engineering, safety science, psychology, ergonomics, human factors, and aeronautics. Resilient Healthcare research has centred on understanding and improving the quality and safety of healthcare delivery. Theory is increasingly well-developed, but so far has only been applied in limited ways with select settings and activities. In order to improve the quality and safety of healthcare, it is essential to first understand the sources of complexity in clinical work. This ethnographic study from Sanford et al. of five hospital teams in a large, teaching hospital in central London aims to contribute to this growing evidence base by presenting data on specific challenges faced by healthcare workers and the adaptations they use to overcome them in everyday clinical work. This paper will present a new framework for recognising misalignments between demand and capacity and corresponding mechanisms for adaptation, which can be used to understand work-as-done in complex settings and to manage risk.
-
Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the country’s health systems and diminished its capability to provide safe and effective healthcare. This article from Sharda Narwal and Susmit Jain attempts to review patients safety issues during COVID-19 pandemic in India, and derive lessons from national and international experiences to inform policy actions for building a ‘resilient health system’
-
Content ArticleUrgent action is needed in the NHS to meet a ballooning backlog of procedures put on hold during the pandemic and build a more resilient health care system. This report from Reform, produced jointly with Edge Health, shows the scale of the challenges the NHS faces: 6 million fewer patients were referred to treatment in 2020 than in 2019 • 10 million patients could be on a waitlist by April By April, 52-week waits for care are projected to have risen 12,008% since March 2020 (by December they had already risen by 7139%) Cancellations of diagnostic testing and delayed treatment may lead to 1,660 extra deaths from lung cancer alone.
-
Content ArticleThe scale of the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been extraordinary, but what comes next? The King's Fund spoke with people involved in response efforts for disasters from around the world, from the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand to the Grenfell Tower fire in London, to understand what the health and care system can learn from the experience of recovery from other disasters as it responds to the pandemic.
-
Content ArticleNursing and midwifery are unarguably stressful endeavours requiring high levels of psychological capital and coping strategies. The impact of the work environment on patient safety outcomes suggests that high nurse/midwife stress may be associated with more adverse patient events. The purpose of this study, published in Nursing and Health Sciences, was to explore the psychological capital of clinical nurses and midwives and identify explanatory factors (including psychological capital, well‐being and health related behaviours) contributing to attitudes to patient safety.The findings suggest that nurse and midwife wellbeing is an important consideration when striving to improve patient safety.
-
Content ArticleHealthcare professionals are experiencing unprecedented levels of occupational stress and burnout. Higher stress and burnout in health professionals is linked with the delivery of poorer quality, less safe patient care across healthcare settings. In order to understand how we can better support healthcare professionals in the workplace, this study from Johnson et al. evaluated a tailored resilience coaching intervention comprising a workshop and one-to-one coaching session addressing the intrinsic challenges of healthcare work in health professionals and students. The authors found preliminary evidence that the intervention was well received and effective, but further research using a randomised controlled design will be necessary to confirm this.
