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Found 844 results
  1. News Article
    An acute trust currently rated ‘outstanding’ has been served with a warning notice by the Care Quality Commission, after senior doctors’ safety concerns prompted an inspection. Inspectors visited University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust days after HSJ reported on a letter from consultants highlighting “an extremely unsafe situation” and calling for elective work to be moved away from one of the trust’s main hospitals. The inspection looked at surgical areas at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, and maternity services at four sites – the RSCH, St Richard’s in Chichester, Worthing Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath. In a letter to all staff, seen by HSJ, chief executive Dame Marianne Griffiths said the trust was “striving to improve” but that “the last four months are like nothing I have ever seen before. Like others we are facing unprecedented daily challenges”. She said: “High patient numbers combined with continuing to work through the pandemic with the stringent infection prevention and control processes that entails make for a challenging work environment.” Chief nurse Maggie Davies said: “The safety of our patients is always our number one priority. Our services remain under unprecedented pressure and our staff are working hard to provide the highest standards of care to all our patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 November 2021
  2. News Article
    Mandatory Covid vaccinations will be imposed on NHS staff, despite fears it could cause a workforce exodus, The Independent understands. Sources have confirmed the government is expected to make an announcement tomorrow on plans to make jabs a condition of employment for the 1.3 million NHS staff in England. Ministers are likely to delay the new requirement until next spring, after health bosses raised concerns over the impact it would have on NHS staffing levels during this winter. Earlier this week. NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts in England, warned the imposition of vaccinations could drive staff out of the NHS. Around 100,000 workers are yet to have a Covid vaccination. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, warned the government needed to acknowledge the risk to patient safety if thousands of unvaccinated NHS staff opted to leave their jobs rather than have the vaccine. Read full story Source: The Independent, 3 November 2021
  3. News Article
    Mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for all health service staff should be delayed until spring to enable the health service to get through the busy winter period, an NHS leader has urged. Ministers have been considering whether or not to introduce mandatory jabs for all NHS staff in England. Health and social care secretary Sajid Javid said last week he is ‘leaning towards’ making the jabs compulsory as there are about 100,000 NHS workers not fully vaccinated. NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said that if the government was to press ahead, it should delay until April to ensure the NHS can get through the ‘difficult winter’. Plans for mandatory jabs for staff who work or volunteer in care homes in England were announced in June, with an 11 November deadline for staff to have had both doses of vaccine, unless medically exempt. However, Loss of vaccine-hesitant staff may compromise patient safety. Mr Hopson cited cases in Cornwall where NHS staff have been drafted in to help the social care sector. "If we lose large numbers of unvaccinated staff, particularly over the winter period, then that also constitutes a risk to patient safety and quality of care," he told BBC Breakfast. "We know that we’ve got a very, very difficult winter coming up and we know the NHS is going to be absolutely at full stretch. ‘So it makes sense to set the deadline once that winter period has passed. We know that January, February and often early March is very busy, so that’s why we’re saying that an April 2022 deadline is a sensible time.’ Read full story Source: Nursing Standard, 1 November 2021
  4. News Article
    A Liverpool NHS trust has been rated as "requires improvement" by the health service watchdog due to concerns over care and safety. The moves comes following inspections at Aintree University Hospital and Royal Liverpool University Hospital. Inspectors said Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust required improvement in safety while it was classed as inadequate for leadership. The trust said "immediate action" had been taken to address the concerns. Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals at the Care Quality Commission, said the inspections in June and July highlighted concerns that the trust's leadership team "had a lack of oversight of what was happening on the frontline". Mr Baker said "lengthy delays" and "poor monitoring" were putting patients at serious risk of harm, and the trust was rated as requires improvement overall. He added: "We were particularly concerned about how long people were waiting to be admitted onto medical wards and by the absence of effective processes to prioritise patients for treatment based on their conditions. "There weren't always the right number of staff with the right skills and training to treat people effectively or keep them safe in the trust's emergency departments and on medical wards." Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 October 2021
  5. News Article
    The Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control editorial team chose the top 10 patient safety issues for healthcare leaders to prioritise in 2021, presented below in no particular order, based on news, study findings and trends reported in the past year. COVID-19 Healthcare staffing shortages Missed and delayed diagnoses Drug and medicine supply shortages Low vaccination coverage and disease resurgance Clinical burnout Health equity Healthcare-associated infections Surgical mistakes Standardising safety efforts. Read full story Source: Becker's Healthcare, 30 December 2020
  6. News Article
    "There can be no debate: this is now much, much worse than the first wave", says a NHS consultant. "Truly, I never imagined it would be this bad. Once again Covid has spread out along the hospital, the disease greedily taking over ward after ward. Surgical, paediatric, obstetric, orthopaedic; this virus does not discriminate between specialities. Outbreaks bloom even in our “clean” areas and the disease is even more ferociously infectious. Although our local tests do not differentiate strains, I presume this is the new variant. The patients are younger this time around too, and there are so many of them. They are sick. We are full." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 January 2020
  7. News Article
    England’s chief nurse has said that NHS and care staff are working incredibly hard to cope with record numbers of COVID-19 patients, amid concern that frontline staff are close to burnout. Ruth May pleaded with the public to follow the coronavirus advice to help relieve the pressure on hospital staff, after two days of record hospital admissions. Adrian Boyle, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Breakfast that health employees were “tired, frustrated and fed up”. He said: “What is it going to be like over the next couple of months? I don’t know, I am worried. We are very much at battle stations. “There will be short-term surges of morale but people are tired, frustrated and fed up, as everybody is, whether they work in hospital or not. The people who go into emergency medicine expect it to be tough from time to time. “There is a real worry about burnout.” Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 January 2021
  8. News Article
    Staff shortages and a lack of equipment are affecting the day-to-day decisions about patient care by doctors and nurses, a new YouGov survey has revealed. The representative survey of NHS clinicians revealed more than half, 54%, admitted that factors such as a lack of staff played a role in their decisions about patients beyond what was in their best interests. Almost a third of staff, 31%, said staffing levels were the top factor affecting decisions about patients. A fifth said the availability of services such as key tests were a significant factor; 16% cited a lack of equipment; and 12% cited beds. 10% of clinicians said a fear of being sued was part of their decision-making. YouGov carried out the research for JMW Solicitors and weighted the responses to be representative of the NHS workforce population. It also revealed more than two-fifths of clinicians, 42%, believe a “blame culture” in the NHS plays a top role in preventing staff admitting to mistakes in care. In maternity services specifically, 68% of nurses and midwives said at least one factor other than what was in patients’ best interest played a role in their decisions. Read full story Source: The Independent, 20 December 2020
  9. News Article
    A major London trust’s critical care staff have urged leaders to review elective work targets amid serious concerns over workload, safe staffing and burnout, HSJ has learned. In a letter to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust’s board, staff represented by trade union Unite said they had “repeatedly” raised concerns about the provider’s approach to elective work, as well as winter pressures and second wave planning, and the implications this has had for “the health, safety and wellbeing of both staff and patients”. The letter — which was also addressed to the trust’s health and safety committee and has been seen by HSJ — said: “Our primary concern is that the trust’s endeavours, and understandable need to square these circles, may be unrealistic given the current pressures on staffing and the high rates of sickness and burnout the trust is continuing to experience. “This is especially in critical care, where we are concerned this may compromise patient safety and is already damaging staff wellbeing and morale.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 December 2020
  10. News Article
    More needs to be done to tackle safe staffing levels in Northern Ireland's health service, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). A year on from the nurses' strike, the union has warned that problems caused by poor workforce planning and chronic underfunding have not been addressed. Instead they have been exacerbated by the CoOVID-19 pandemic, said the RCN. The Department of Health said dealing with staff shortfalls was a "key priority" for the health minister. Pat Cullen, the Northern Ireland director of the RCN, said "very little has actually changed" since about 15,000 healthcare workers took to the picket line in December last year for a series of protests over pay and safe staffing levels. "We need to remind the government that many of these issues have sadly not gone away," she added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 December 2020
  11. News Article
    There are not enough nurses to safely care for patients in the UK, according to the body that represents the profession, and many of those who are working are suffering from anxiety and burnout after a gruelling nine months treating Covid patients. A year after the prime minister pledged during the 2019 election campaign to add 50,000 nurses to the NHS, the Royal College of Nursing has accused Boris Johnson of being “disingenuous” for claiming the government is meeting this 2025 target. Johnson claimed last week that the government had “14,800 of the 50,000 nurses already” during prime minister’s questions in the Commons. Yet the latest NHS figures show there were 36,655 vacancies for nursing staff in England in September, with the worst shortages affecting mental health care and acute hospitals. Staff in some intensive care units (ICUs) have quit since the pandemic, with those whom the Observer spoke to choosing to work instead in supermarkets or as dog-walkers. Dame Donna Kinnair, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary, said: “The simple, inescapable truth is that we do not have enough nursing staff in the UK to safely care for patients in hospitals, clinics, their own homes or anywhere else.” She said that even before the pandemic, “heavy demand” was rising faster than the “modest increases” in staff numbers. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2020
  12. News Article
    England’s test and trace service is being sub-contracted to a myriad of private companies employing inexperienced contact tracers under pressure to meet targets, a Guardian investigation has found. Under a complex system, firms are being paid to carry out work under the government’s £22bn test and trace programme. Serco, the outsourcing firm, is being paid up to £400m for its work on test and trace, but it has subcontracted a bulk of contact tracing to 21 other companies. Contact tracers working for these companies told the Guardian they had received little training, with one saying they were doing sensitive work while sitting beside colleagues making sales calls for gambling websites. One contact-tracer, earning £8.72 an hour, said he was having to interview extremely vulnerable people in a “target driven” office that encouraged staff to make 20 calls a day, despite NHS guidance saying each call should take 45 to 60 minutes. Another call centre worker, who had no experience in healthcare or emotional support, said she suffered a nervous breakdown during an online tutorial about phoning the loved ones of coronavirus victims in order to trace their final movements. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 December 2020
  13. News Article
    Hospital trusts have been put on notice that the challenging storage requirements of the first covid vaccines are likely to mean the vaccination of their staff will have to form the vanguard of the planned roll-out next month due. HSJ reported last week that healthcare staff would share priority with “care home residents and staff” in the vaccine roll-out. However, a letter sent to trust chief executives by NHS England seeks to clarify the situation by stressing that “different vaccines are likely to be better suited to different settings because the vaccines are likely to have different storage, reconstitution and administration requirements”. “Given what we currently know about the first expected vaccine, the imperative is that NHS trusts are ready to start vaccinating from the beginning of December.” Trusts are one of several components of the vaccination programme that includes primary care-run sites, mass vaccination centres, and “roving” visits to those who need them. Local systems and regional teams will decide “the most appropriate combination of models required to deliver the vaccine to their local populations based on local needs” the letter says. However, during the early stages of the roll-out this is likely to be dictated by the vaccine types that become available. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 25 November 2020
  14. News Article
    Staff at a specialist care unit did not attempt to resuscitate a woman with epilepsy, learning difficulties and sleep apnoea when she was found unconscious, an inquest heard. Joanna Bailey, 36, died at Cawston Park in Norfolk on 28 April 2018. Jurors heard she was found by a worker whose CPR training had expired, and the private hospital near Aylsham - which care for adults with complex needs - had been short-staffed that night. Support worker Dan Turco told the coroner's court he went to check on Ms Bailey just after 03:00 BST and found she was not breathing and had blood around her mouth. The inquest heard he went to get help from colleagues, including the nurse in charge, but no-one administered CPR until paramedics arrived. It was heard Mr Turco's CPR training had lapsed in the weeks before Ms Bailey died, unbeknown to him. Mr Turco said he had since received training and has had his first aid qualifications updated. Cawston Park, run by the Jeesal Group, a provider of complex care services within the UK, is currently rated as "requires improvement" by the Care Quality Commission. Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 November 2020
  15. News Article
    An Essex maternity department has been served with further warnings by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and again rated “inadequate”. Serious concerns were raised about the services at Basildon University Hospital in the summer, after several babies were found to have been starved of oxygen and put at risk of permanent brain damage. Despite the CQC issuing warning notices to Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust in June 2020, a subsequent visit on 18 September found multiple problems had persisted. The CQC’s findings at Basildon included: the service was short-staffed and concerns were not escalated appropriately multidisciplinary team working was “dysfunctional”, which sometimes led to safety incidents doctors, midwives and other professionals did not support each other to provide good care. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 19 November 2020
  16. News Article
    More than three-quarters of midwives think staffing levels in their NHS trust or board are unsafe, according to a survey by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM). The RCM said services were at breaking point, with 42% of midwives reporting that shifts were understaffed and a third saying there were “very significant gaps” in most shifts. Midwives were under enormous pressure and had been “pushed to the edge” by the failure of successive governments to invest in maternity services, said Gill Walton, the chief executive of the RCM. “Maternity staff are exhausted, they’re demoralised and some of them are looking for the door. For the safety of every pregnant woman and every baby, this cannot be allowed to continue,” she said. “Midwives and maternity support workers come into the profession to provide safe, high-quality care. The legacy of underfunding and underinvestment is robbing them of that – and worse still, it’s putting those women and families at risk.” RCM press release Read full story Source: The Guardian, 16 November 2020
  17. News Article
    Planning around what the NHS can deliver this winter must be based on how many nursing staff are available and the workload they can safely take on, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned. Amid widespread nursing shortages, the union has called on the government to “be honest” about nurse vacancies and address what steps need to be taken to keep staff and patients safe. “It is essential that learning is applied to planning for this winter, including what service can be delivered safely with the workforce available” Last week NHS England moved to its highest level of emergency preparedness. But the RCN warned it still had grave concerns around how services would be safely staffed, claiming it was too late to find the nurses needed to meet the anticipated demands of the incoming winter. Despite an increase in the number of nurses registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council this year, the college said there were still around 40,000 nurse vacancies in the NHS in England alone. These shortages, which were felt across all areas of nursing, had been exacerbated because of staff self-isolating or being off sick because of COVID-19, the RCN noted. The impacts of workforce shortages meant there was “enormous responsibility” on the nurses working and “intolerable pressure” on senior nursing leaders, it said. Unless local staffing plans prioritised safe and high-quality care, the few nurses in post were at risk of “burn out” this winter, the college added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Nursing Times, 9 November 2020
  18. News Article
    Widespread nursing shortages across the NHS could lead to staff burnout and risk patient safety this winter, the Royal College of Nursing has warned. The nursing union said a combination of staff absence due to the pandemic, and around 40,000 registered nursing vacancies in England was putting too much strain on the remaining workforce. The government says more than 13,000 nurses have been recruited this year. It has committed to 50,000 more nurses by 2025. It also hopes England's four-week lockdown will ease pressure on the NHS. The RCN has expressed concern that staff shortages are affecting every area of nursing, from critical care and cancer services to community nursing, which provides care to people in their own homes. The union said it was worried the extra responsibility and pressure placed on senior nurses could lead to staff "burnout", as hospitals struggle to clear the backlog of cancelled operations from the first wave of coronavirus and cope with rising numbers of new Covid patients, as well as the annual pressures that winter typically brings. Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 November 2020
  19. News Article
    Wearable devices will monitor the mood of all 70 staff at a large GP practice, in a trial aimed at improving employee health and wellbeing. Staff at Amicus Health, a GP practice in Devon, will be provided with a wearable device which allows the user to log how their day is going by pressing one of two buttons. The information gathered can be viewed by employers on a dashboard, identifying whether there are particular times in the day when moods drop. Users will also be able to see their data on a personal app, allowing them to track mood triggers and patterns. On the dashboard, employees’ data is divided into teams and is not anonymised, so employers can track the mood of individuals. Asked by HSJ whether this could deter some from using it, company co-founder Jonathan Elvidge said previous trials suggested it does not. He told HSJ that during trials on construction sites, employers found it easier to take action if they were able to identify workers who were regularly reporting that they were feeling low. He said employees preferred being identified as it gave them a voice and made it easier to express how they were feeling. The device — called a Moodbeam One — will be trialled on all 70 clinical and non-clinical staff members at the practice, including 25 GPs. It will largely be down to the practice to decide how the data is used, according to Mr Elvidge. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 November 2020
  20. News Article
    Almost half of all staff absence linked to coronavirus in parts of northern England Tens of thousands of NHS staff are off sick or self-isolating because of coronavirus, according to data shared with The Independent as the second wave grows. In some parts of northern England, more than 40% – in some cases almost 50% – of all staff absences are linked to COVID-19, heaping pressure on already stretched hospitals trying to cope with a surge in virus patients. The problem has sparked more calls for wider testing of NHS staff from hospital leaders and nursing unions who warned safety was being put at risk because of short staffing on wards. Across England, more than 76,200 NHS staff were absent from work on Friday – equivalent to more than 6% of the total workforce. This included 25,293 nursing staff and 3,575 doctors. Read full article Source: The Independent, 1 November 2020
  21. News Article
    Mass cancellations of routine operations in England are inevitable this autumn and winter despite an NHS edict that hospitals must not again disrupt normal care, doctors’ leaders have said. Organisations representing frontline doctors, including the British Medical Association (BMA), also criticised NHS England for ordering hospitals to provide “near normal” levels of non-Covid care in the second wave of the pandemic, and demanded that fines for failing to meet targets be scrapped. "Things are very, very difficult at the moment, very challenging at the moment. It feels like a juggling act every day,” said one official in the South Yorkshire NHS. “The problem is both the growing numbers of patients coming into hospital with Covid and the numbers of staff we have off sick due to Covid, either because they are ill themselves or because someone in their household has symptoms, so they are isolating.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 October 2020
  22. News Article
    A mental health unit where a patient was found dead has been placed into special measures over concerns about safety and cleanliness. Field House, in Alfreton, Derbyshire, was rated "inadequate" by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) following a visit in August. A patient died "following use of a ligature" shortly after its inspection, the CQC said. Elysium, which runs the unit for women, said it was "swiftly" making changes. The inspectors' verdict comes after the unit was ordered to make improvements, in January 2019. Dr Kevin Cleary, the CQC's mental health lead, said: "There were issues with observation of patients, a lack of cleanliness at the service and with staffing. "There were insufficient nursing staff and they did not have the skills and experience to keep patients safe from avoidable harm. Bank and agency staff were not always familiar with the observation policy." "It was also worrying that not all staff received a COVID-19 risk assessment, infection control standards were poor, and hand sanitiser was not available in the service's apartments." The CQC said a follow-up inspection on Monday had showed "areas of improvement" but it would continue to monitor the service. Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 October 2020
  23. News Article
    Increasing staff absence due to COVID-19 will have a ‘significant impact’ on the ability of the NHS to deliver critical care services and routine operations, leading intensive care doctors have said. The latest NHS England data has shown the number of COVID-19 related absences of staff, either through sickness or self-isolation, has risen from 11,952 on 1 September to 19,493 on 1 October. Staff absence has almost doubled in the North West in this time as well – from 2,664 to 5,142 during the same period. It peaked at 17,628 in the region on 11 April and means the October total accounts for nearly a third of that amount already (29%). Alison Pittard, dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, confirmed increasing numbers of NHS critical care staff were absent from work. “I suspect this is due to having to be at home with children asked to isolate and therefore the parent needing to isolate, as was the case in the first wave," she told HSJ. “This will have an impact on our ability to deliver critical care services. We know that staff numbers are inadequate at the best of times, with a significant vacancy rate especially for critical care nurses.” Royal College of Anaesthetists council member Helgi Johannsson said the rising absence rate was “likely to have a significant impact”, particularly on routine operations. Dr Johannsson, a consultant anaesthetist at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, said: “In my hospitals, I have been aware of several doctors and nurses having to isolate due to their children being asked to self-isolate. These healthcare staff were otherwise well and would have been at work." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 14 October 2020
  24. News Article
    NHS workers are at breaking point after months of upheaval and high pressure during the coronavirus outbreak with hospital leaders warning the health service is facing a “perfect storm” of workforce shortages and a second wave of COVID-19. In a survey of 140 NHS trust leaders almost all of them said they were worried about their staff suffering burnout ahead of winter. They also sounded the alarm over concerns there had not been enough investment into social care before this winter. NHS Providers, which carried out the survey ahead of its annual conference of hospital leaders, warned the first wave of COVID-19 had made a lasting impact on the health service which had yet to fully recover. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said there had been “no let-up in the pressure” during the pandemic, which followed a difficult winter for staff. “And while the response to the spring surge in COVID-19 cases showed the NHS at its best, the pressures took their toll on staff who gave so much,” he said. “The worry is that the sustained physical, psychological and emotional pressure on health staff is threatening to push them beyond their limits of endurance.” Almost all those who responded to the survey, 99 per cent, said they were either extremely or moderately concerned about the current level of burnout across the workforce. Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 October 2020
  25. News Article
    As she lay dying in a Joliette, Que., hospital bed, an Atikamekw woman clicked her phone on and broadcast a Facebook Live video appearing to show her being insulted and sworn at by hospital staff. Joyce Echaquan's death on Monday prompted an immediate outcry from her home community of Manawan, about 250 kilometres north of Montreal, and has spurred unusually quick and decisive action on the part of the provincial government. The mother of seven's death will be the subject of a coroner's inquiry and an administrative probe, the Quebec government said today. A nurse who was involved in her treatment has been dismissed. But that dismissal doesn't ease the pain of Echaquan's husband, Carol Dubé, whose voice trembled with emotion as he told Radio-Canada his wife went to the hospital with a stomach ache on Saturday and "two days later, she died." Echaquan's relatives told Radio-Canada she had a history of heart problems and felt she was being given too much morphine. In the video viewed by CBC News, the 37-year-old is heard screaming in distress and repeatedly calling for help. Eventually, her video picks up the voices of staff members. One hospital staff member tells her, "You're stupid as hell." Another is heard saying Echaquan made bad life choices and asking her what her children would say if they saw her in that state. Dubé said it's clear hospital staff were degrading his wife and he doesn't understand how something like this could happen in 2020. Read full story Source: CBC News, 29 September 2020
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