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Showing results for tags 'Staff engagement'.
Found 168 results
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Content ArticleWhen a patient is deteriorating but no one is listening, Martha’s rule will guarantee a second opinion. Martha’s mother, Merope Mills, calls for doctors and nurses to embrace its implementation.
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Content ArticleThis infographic by artist Sonia Sparkles highlights ways to prevent patient falls in hospital. A wide range of graphics relating to patient safety, healthcare and quality improvement is available on the Sonia Sparkles website.
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Content ArticlePatients are increasingly describing their healthcare experiences publicly online. This has been facilitated by digital technology, a growing focus on transparency in healthcare and the emergence of a feedback culture in many sectors. The aim of this study was to identify a typology of responses that healthcare staff provide on Care Opinion, a not-for-profit online platform on which patients are able to provide narrative feedback about health and social care in the UK. The authors used framework analysis to qualitatively analyse a sample of 486 stories regarding hospital care and their 475 responses. Five response types were identified: non-responses, generic responses, appreciative responses, offline responses and transparent, conversational responses. The key factors that varied between these response types included the extent to which responses were specific and personal to the patient story, how much responders' embraced the transparent nature of public online discussion and whether or not responders suggested that the feedback had led to learning or impacted subsequent care delivery. Staff provide varying responses to feedback from patients online, with the response types provided being likely to have strong organisational influences. The findings offer valuable insight and have both practical and theoretical implications for those looking to enable meaningful conversations between patients and staff to help inform improvement. The authors suggest that future research should focus on the relationship between response type, organisational culture and the ways in which feedback is used in practice.
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News Article
Burnout in doctors doubles chances of patient safety problems, study finds
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Doctors suffering from burnout are far more likely to be involved in incidents where patients’ safety is compromised, a global study has found. Burned-out medics are also much more likely to consider quitting, regret choosing medicine as their career, be dissatisfied with their job and receive low satisfaction ratings from patients. The findings, published in the BMJ, have raised fresh concern over the welfare and pressures on doctors in the NHS, given the extensive evidence that many are experiencing stress and exhaustion due to overwork. A joint team of British and Greek researchers analysed 170 previous observational studies of the links between burnout among doctors, their career engagement and quality of patient care. Those papers were based on the views and experience of 239,246 doctors in countries including the US, UK and others in Africa, Asia and elsewhere globally. They found that burned-out medics were twice as likely as their peers to have been involved in patient safety incidents, to show low levels of professionalism and to have been rated poorly by patients for the quality of the care they have provided. Doctors aged 20 to 30 and those working in A&E or intensive care were most likely to have burnout. It was defined as comprising emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation – a “negative, callous” detachment from their job – and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 September 2022 -
News Article
Just four out of 1,100 lone worker alarms being used by trust workforce
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A trust which rented 1,100 lone worker alarms has found just four were in use after a year. Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust rented the system for five years, with the contract starting in early 2021. But a year later only 51 of the units were assigned to a user, and just four were being used. Most of the users had not completed their training and 19 had not even logged into the system to set up a profile, according to an annual health and safety report covering 2021-22. The health and safety report said: “Unfortunately the system has yet to demonstrate value for money as the uptake within services across the trust is very poor, despite the extensive work by the health and safety team to encourage uptake.” This had included demonstrating the system at multiple meetings and trying to raise awareness. A spokesperson from Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust said: “The lone worker system is one of the ways we ensure the safety of our staff who work alone. It has taken time to embed the new system due to the changes in working practices during the pandemic. However, in recent months we have seen the number of staff actively using the system increasing." “There is more we are doing to ensure wider take-up and implementation, through a programme of engagement and training.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 August 2022 -
News Article
Fewer NHS staff feel able to raise clinical safety concerns, data show
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The number of NHS staff who feel able to raise concerns about clinical safety has fallen for the second year in a row, an analysis of NHS staff survey data has shown. A report by the NHS’s National Guardian’s Office, which represents local “freedom to speak up guardians” who help NHS workers to raise concerns, said that staff were increasingly disillusioned and that they believed that speaking up was “futile,” which had “worrying implications for patient safety.” Dr Jayne Chidgey-Clark, National Guardian for the NHS said: “It is not acceptable that two in five workers responding to the NHS staff survey do not feel able to speak up about anything which gets in the way of them doing their job. “These survey responses show us that there is a growing feeling that speaking up in the NHS is futile – that nothing changes as a result. When workers speak up about concerns, including the impact of under staffing and a crumbling infrastructure, their leaders themselves may struggle to be heard when trying to address these concerns. “I would add my voice to that of others that this urgently needs to be addressed". Read full story Source: BMJ. 9 June 2023 -
News Article
Regulator clears trust to bring back junior doctors
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Up to 10 junior doctor posts will be reinstated at a small district general hospital after regulators agreed it had improved its learning environment. In 2021, Health Education England removed 10 doctors from Weston Hospital over concerns they were being left without adequate supervision on understaffed wards. The unusual move prompted University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Foundation Trust to launch a “quality improvement approach” to improve its learner and clinical supervision environment. The regulator said the trust had made significant improvements that included: Better staff engagement with the trust leadership at all levels. Better clinical supervision, particularly around shift handovers and senior oversight of clinical decisions. Better learner experience in new training settings in rheumatology and intensive care medicine. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 May 2023 -
Content ArticleLearn how one trust has applied staff engagement techniques as part of its continuous improvement programme.
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Content Article
When patients are left to blow the whistle on unsafe care
Steve Turner posted an article in Whistle blowing
This short blog highlights the situations where patients, carers, parents and relatives are failed by healthcare systems and by the leadership. They are left to stand alone against powerful institutions, because when staff speak up and 'blow the whistle' it often results in retaliation. Investigating and resolving the patient safety issue then becomes buried under an employment issue. -
Content ArticleSystem working (which includes health and care) is the only way the NHS can address the interlinked problems of struggling primary care, elective backlog, ambulance and emergency department overload, and delayed discharge. In this HSJ article, Len Richards explains how system working grows from the right culture, clinical leadership and systemwide joined up, real-time data.
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Content ArticleThe Healthcare Leadership Model (HLM) was developed to help leaders in the health service become better at their day-to-day role. The model is useful for everyone from board members to managers because it describes the things you can see leaders doing at work and demonstrates how you can develop as a leader. This webpage describes how the HLM works and provides a link to the free self-assessment tool.
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Content ArticleNHS trusts have often reported emergency department doctors having low levels of satisfaction and high rates of burnout, leading to a high turnover. In 2017, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) and Western Sussex Hospitals merged to form University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. The Trust found that the organisation of shifts at Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) and Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) and lack of flexibility were adding to the strain already felt by doctors working in the high pressure emergency department. To combat the pressure consultants and other doctors were under, the Trust implemented a system to help improve rota design and flexible working. The hope was that the system would help the trust retain and recruit staff, whilst saving locum costs and improving patient care.
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Content Article
NHS England - Making data count (18 January 2021)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Data and insight
These practical guides from NHS England are suitable for those working at all levels in the health service, from ward to board. They provide information on how to make better use of data. Guides include: Making data count - getting started Making data count - strengthening your decisions -
Content ArticlePsychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. This article by the Center for Creative Leadership explores why psychological safety is so important to foster in workplaces. It suggests eight steps toward creating more psychological safety at work and describes the four stages of psychological safety.
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Content ArticleThis research by the Nuffield Trust looked at how smaller hospitals have fared over the pandemic. Smaller hospitals are sometimes overlooked when system planning gets done, so this report focuses on the operational responses and management approaches taken by staff from 10 smaller hospitals over the course of the first and second waves of the pandemic. It aims to tell the stories of those working in small hospitals in order to understand what happened to acute and emergency care in these institutions during the pandemic. The authors interviewed staff in smaller hospitals around the country during 2021 to understand their key concerns. The report makes a set of recommendations for future crisis planning and response.
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Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Angela and Caroline spoke to us about how they are helping healthcare organisations consider sustainability a core part of their work. They reflect on the responsibility of both patients and healthcare professionals to ensure patient safety for future generations. -
Content Article
Clean hands count for safe healthcare (CDC, 2020)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Infection control
Ensuring everyone has clean hands can protect patients from serious infections in healthcare facilities. However, studies show that on average, healthcare workers wash their hands less than half as many times as they should. This contributes to the spread of healthcare-associated infections, which affect 1 in 31 hospital patients in the US. This campaign by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) aims to improve healthcare provider adherence to hand hygiene recommendations, address myths and misperceptions about hand hygiene, and empower patients to play a role in their care by asking or reminding healthcare providers to clean their hands. -
Content ArticleThis paper from Natalie Offord and colleagues describes a service redesign in which has gained learning and experience in two areas. First, a description of measured improvement by the innovation of redesigning the traditional hospital-based assessment of frail older patients’ home support needs (assess to discharge) into their own home and meeting those needs in real time (discharge to assess). In combination with the formation of a collaborative health and social care community team to deliver this new process, there has been a reduction in the length of stay from completion of acute hospital care to getting home (from 5.5 days to 1.2 days for those patients that require support at home). Second, the methodology through which this has been achieved. The authors describe their translation of a Toyota methodology used for the design of complex cars to use for engaging staff and patients in the design of a healthcare process.
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Content ArticleRoyal Cornwall QI conference online book supporting the conference. The online brochure highlights all the quality improvement projects at Royal Cornwall Hospitals.
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Content ArticleIn this episode of the What the HealthTech? podcast, Radar Healthcare's Chief Product Officer Mark Fewster speaks to Helen Hughes, Chief Executive of Patient Safety Learning. to get the lowdown on NHS England's new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF). Helen talks about how PSIRF is going to drive an open and just culture, what can be expected after the transition and why the implementation process is key to PSIRF's success. Listen on Spotify Listen on YouTube
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Content ArticleKeeping patients safe during their care and treatment should be at the heart of any health system, including the NHS. Yet avoidable harm still occurs every day, around the world. There have been major efforts to prioritise patient safety in England, but the pandemic has shone a light on areas of care where progress has stalled, or safety has deteriorated. This report by Imperial College London's Institute of Global Health Innovation, commissioned by Patient Safety Watch, brings together publicly available data to present a national picture of patient safety in England.
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Content ArticleThe Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety. In this video, Megan Pontin, Patient Safety Incident Investigator at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, talks about her experience as an early adopter of PSIRF. She describes the process of engaging staff, patients and families in incident investigations, and how PSIRF enables people to share what happened from their perspective. She talks about the open way in which investigation reports are compiled and reviewed to ensure everyone involved is happy with the way events are presented.
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Content ArticleThe Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety. In this video, Lucy Winstanley, Head of Patient Safety and Quality at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, reflects on her trust's experience of being a PSIRF early adopter. Lucy talks about the benefits of PSIRF and how to make it work in practice. She highlights the need for effective collaboration between teams and the importance of engaging with patients, families and staff in new ways.
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Content Article
Leadership in the NHS (BMJ Leader, 20 December 2019)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Leadership
In healthcare, leadership has a big influence on quality of care and the performance of hospitals. How staff are treated significantly influences care provision and organisational performance, so understanding how leaders can help ensure staff are cared for, valued, supported and respected is important. Research suggests ‘inclusion’ is a critical part of the answer. In this article, Roger Kline looks at how creating a compassionate, inclusive culture improves patient safety—and by contrast, how a culture of fear and bullying has a negative effect. He examines why toxic leadership cultures develop and what can be done to transform leadership in NHS organisations. -
Content ArticleMedical errors, especially those resulting in patient harm, have a negative psychological impact on patients and healthcare workers. Healing may be promoted if both parties are able to work together and explore the effect and outcome of the event from each of their perspectives. There is little existing research in this area, even though this has the potential to improve patient safety and wellness for both healthcare workers and patients. Using a patient-oriented research approach, this study in BMJ Open Quality examined the potential for patients and healthcare workers to heal together after harm from a medical error. The study's findings suggest that, after a medical error causing harm, both patients and healthcare workers have feelings of empathy and respect towards each other that often goes unrecognised. Barriers to communication for patients were related to their perception that healthcare workers did not care about them, showed no remorse or did not admit to the error. For healthcare workers, communication barriers were related to feelings of blame or shame, and fear of professional and legal consequences. Patients reported needing open and transparent communications to help them heal, and healthcare workers required leadership and peer support, including training and space to talk about the event.
