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Showing results for tags 'Safe staffing'.
Found 234 results
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Content Article
Birthrights are receiving an increasing number of enquiries regarding restrictions of maternity services due to the staffing crisis, including closure of midwifery-led units and homebirth services. In order to get a full picture, including a regional overview, Birthrights would like to know if your local maternity service has been restricted in any way. To help gather evidence, Birthrights are calling for anyone who knows what the current situation is at their local Trust, including whether staffing is leading to: Their homebirth service being restricted. Their Midwife-Led Unit being closed. To take part follow the link below. -
Content ArticleThe House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee has published a report highlighting the current health and social care workforce crisis in England. The 'Workforce: recruitment, training and retention' report, which calls for a robust workforce strategy, states that within the NHS in England there’s a shortage of over 50,000 nurses and midwives, while in April this year hospital waiting lists reached an all-time high of almost 6.5 million.
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Content ArticleThis article published by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) aims to explain how health services in the UK protect patient safety during industrial action by nurses. It describes the principle of derogations, an exemption from taking part in strike action given to particular RCN members or services. Any RCN industrial action must follow the life-preserving care model. This exempts: emergency intervention for the preservation of life or the prevention of permanent disability. care required for therapeutic services without which life would be jeopardised or permanent disability would occur. urgent diagnostic procedures and assessment required to obtain information on potentially life-threatening conditions or conditions that could potentially lead to permanent disability. The article goes on to explain the process by which derogations are granted, and talks about balancing the need to maximise the impact of the strike while keeping patients safe.
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Content ArticleIn this blog for The House, Jeremy Hunt MP outlines how tackling long-term challenges in the health system will improve staff morale. While celebrating some short-term measures announced by the new Health Secretary Thérèse Coffey, he argues that longer term reforms are needed to "break the cycle of long waits, burned-out staff and declining standards." The key priority he outlines is workforce reform, including workforce projections and investment in training new healthcare workers for the future. He suggests that this will also encourage NHS staff to remain in their roles by restoring trust and confidence.
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Content ArticleThe Francis Inquiries in 2010 and 2013 highlighted nurse staffing as a patient safety factor contributing to the care failings identified at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust. The reports and government response led to the development of national ‘safe staffing’ policy. This two-year study by the University of Southampton and Bangor University examined the impact of safe staffing policies nationally and explored variation in local responses. The authors concluded that: Policies provided leverage and raised the profile of nursing workforce issues at board level, contributing to a willingness to invest in increasing nursing numbers. However, a lack of assessment of the likely scale of investment (and human resources) required nationally to achieve ‘safe staffing’ led to financial considerations becoming a barrier to achieving the policy vision. External pressures, such as lack of workforce supply and reduced access to temporary staffing, have constrained Trusts’ abilities to fully implement policies aimed at ensuring safe staffing on acute wards.
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Content ArticleNursing is the single largest profession in the NHS, but it suffers from substantial staffing shortages. This analysis from Billy Palmer and Lucina Rolewicz for the Nuffield Trust reflects on the rate at which the health service is losing nurses, and considers the reasons why.
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Content ArticleMost of the contact that people have with the NHS is with general practice: there are an estimated 300 million appointments each year. These services provide the first step in diagnosing and treating most patients’ health conditions. Due to changes in the data, trends in general practice staff are limited to 2015 at the earliest. The data do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres and walk-in centres. From July 2019, primary care networks (PCNs) will offer services to patients and employ new specialist staff such as clinical pharmacists, social prescribing link workers, physiotherapists, physician associates and paramedics. NHS Digital has started to publish information on the PCN workforce, but the data does not presently cover all PCNs. Based on the PCN data that is available, the Nuffield Trust has estimated the number of certain primary care staff groups employed by PCNs across England,.
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Content ArticleThis study in BMJ Open examines the impacts of the four episodes of industrial action by English junior doctors in early 2016. The authors looked at the impact of the strikes on A&E visits, outpatient appointments and cancellations, admitted patients and all in-hospital mortality. The study concluded that industrial action by junior doctors during early 2016 had a significant impact on the healthcare provided by English hospitals. It also found that t here were regional variations in how these strikes affected providers, and that there was not a measurable increase in mortality on strike days.
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Content ArticleIdentifying improvements in maternity care to help reduce the risk of delays in crucial interventions during labour when a baby is suspected to be unwell is the focus of this latest Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report. The report was compiled after a review of 289 of our maternity investigations into intrapartum stillbirths, neonatal deaths and potential severe brain injuries. In 14.9% of the cases the delay was a contributory factor. The review identified issues such as inadequate staffing, poor infrastructure and high workload as contributory factors to the delays. Evidence from national reports confirms that such delays are a recognised patient safety risk.
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Content ArticleThis report, from Deloitte, examines how the healthcare workforce is responding to the inexorable rise in demand for healthcare and the challenge of meeting this demand with the right numbers of appropriately skilled staff. It provides actionable insights and evidence-based case solutions to these challenges.
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Content ArticleThe association between higher registered nurses (RN) staffing (educational level and number) and better patient and nurse outcomes is well-documented. This discussion paper from Van den Heede et al. aims to provide an overview of safe staffing policies in various high-income countries to identify reform trends in response to recurring nurse workforce challenges.
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Content ArticleResponding to abnormalities in patients’ vital signs is a fundamental aspect of nursing. However, failure to respond to patient deterioration is common and often leads to adverse patient outcomes. This study from Smith et al., in the journal Resuscitation, aimed to determine the association between registered nurse (RN) and nursing assistant (NA) staffing levels and the failure to respond promptly to patients’ abnormal physiology. The authors found that RN, but not NA, staffing levels influence the rates of failure to respond for patients with the most abnormal vital signs (NEWS values ≥ 7). These findings offer a possible explanation for the increasingly reported association between low RN staffing and an increased risk of patient death during a hospital admission.
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The challenge of culture change in the NHS
Claire Cox posted an article in Culture
Connection, inclusion and compassion are certain, unchanging, and provide a safe refuge to deal with what feels frightening and isolating for so many. The challenge set by the Francis Inquiry Report – to create a compassionate, inclusive organisational culture – is now amplified in the COVID-19 era, which the NHS entered with pre-existing record levels of staff stress and chronic excessive workloads. This workshop from the University of Manchester, explores the problems and opportunities associated with changing healthcare organisation cultures. -
Content ArticleReport from the Saudi Patient Safety Center on: 1. Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture National Recommendations Cycle 2: (2019), and 2. National Supplementary Recommendations related to COVID-19.
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Content ArticleThe Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. They make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and they encourage care services to improve.
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Why I ‘walk on by’
Anonymous posted an article in Florence in the Machine
I recently read the blog on the hub ‘Walk on by...’ by a junior doctor. What a fantastic doctor, if only we had more of these people in our healthcare service. I wanted to respond to this blog by writing about my own experiences in ‘walking on by’. It’s been a difficult write as it has questioned my integrity, my motivation and my career.- Posted
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Content ArticleHealth and social care faces a conflict between safe and appropriate staffing and the (government) directive to be cost efficient. In a time of clinical and support staff shortages, increasing demand for services and financial austerity, there is a need for a consistent approach to workforce analysis, benchmarking and planning across the health and social care to enable informed decision-making across finance, HR and nursing management to put the patient and their safety at the centre of all we do. 'Establishment Genie' is an online workforce planning, safe staffing and benchmarking tool. It has been co-developed and tested with more than 300 teams across acute, community, residential care, hospice and independent providers of care. This has been supported by input from NHSE, NHS Professionals, The Florence Nightingale Foundation, Safe Staffing Alliance, Royal College of Nursing, Health Education England, Queen’s Nursing Institute and academic nurse staffing experts.
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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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Content ArticleThis study by Charles Vincent and colleagues, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, looked at the nature and causes of reported patient safety incidents relating to care in the community for children dependent on long-term ventilation with the further aim of improving safety. Common problems in the delivery of care included issues with faulty equipment and the availability of equipment, and concerns around staff competency. There was a clearly stated harm to the child in 89 incidents (40%). Contributory factors included staff shortages, out of hours care, and issues with packaging and instructions for equipment. This study has identified a range of problems relating to long-term ventilation in the community, some of which raise serious safety concerns. The provision of services to support children on long-term ventilation and their families needs to improve. Priorities include training of staff, maintenance and availability of equipment, support for families and coordination of care.
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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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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 ArticleThis study, published in BMJ Quality and Safety seeks to determine the association between daily levels of registered nurse (RN) and nursing assistant staffing and hospital mortality.
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Content ArticleThis report describes the lack of clear roles, responsibilities and accountability for workforce planning and supply in England. In reality, this means that the health and care workforce is not growing in line with increasing population need for health and care services and there are large numbers of vacant posts throughout the system. This impacts upon patient safety and outcomes, and leads to a challenging working environment for staff. The RCN make the case for this to be resolved through legislation, alongside additional investment in the nursing workforce and a national health and care workforce strategy for England. The RCN is clear, it is no longer the time to be discussing whether legislation is needed, instead, we should also be focussed on how we go about securing these necessary changes in law.
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My experience in a coroner’s court – a nurse perspective
Anonymous posted an article in Florence in the Machine
This is the story of a nurse's experience when attending a coroner's court and how the Trust supported them through this difficult time.- Posted
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Content ArticleChaired by Robert Francis QC, this Inquiry was set up to examine the commissioning, supervisory and regulatory organisations in relation to their monitoring role at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between January 2005 and March 2009. The Inquiry looked at why the serious problems at the Trust were not identified and acted on sooner, to identify important lessons to be learnt for the future of patient care.
