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Showing results for tags 'Staff factors'.
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Content ArticleLittle is known as to whether the effects of physician sex on patients’ clinical outcomes vary by patient sex. This study examined whether the association between physician sex and hospital outcomes varied between female and male patients hospitalised with medical conditions. The findings indicate that patients have lower mortality and readmission rates when treated by female physicians, and the benefit of receiving treatments from female physicians is larger for female patients than for male patients.
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News ArticleLeaders of an integrated care system in the Midlands have warned they cannot make the scale of staffing cuts required to balance the books without putting patients at risk. Indicative analysis produced by Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board also found its provider trusts would have to cut 10 per cent of their workforce to break even. This would equate to 2,300 posts across University Hospitals North Midlands, Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust and North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare, while the ICB would have to cancel a “very high proportion” of third-sector contracts. The document says this “would bring our teams below safe staffing levels” and have a “profound effect on our ability to deliver safe services”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 23 April 2024
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News Article
NHSE intervenes over ‘fear and bullying’ in surgery department
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Nearly a dozen junior doctors have been relocated from a London hospital’s general surgery department by NHS England, after concerns about a culture of fear, poor support, and reports of bullying. NHSE has withdrawn 11 surgical foundation year trainees from Barnet Hospital, in north London, after a review uncovered concerns regarding staff behaviour and safety. The General Medical Council has opened a case into the hospital’s department, which is run by the Royal Free London Foundation Trust, and the trainees have been placed elsewhere in the trust. Colin Melville, the GMC’s medical director and director of education and standards, told HSJ: “Doctors in training in the department reported a culture of fear, worry, and feeling unsupported and unable to raise concerns in the appropriate manner. “There are also concerns over their supervision, bullying, and undermining behaviours in the department, as well as doctors’ physical and mental wellbeing. “Because of the [trust’s] failure to meet the high standards we require, we stand firmly with NHSE workforce, training, and education London’s decision to relocate the 11 trainees, [to] where they can work and learn in a supportive environment. “This action is necessary not only to ensure their safety, but to protect the public as well.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 April 2024 -
Content ArticleThe Nuffield Trust's Health and International Relations Monitor project, supported by the Health Foundation, tracks issues that are important for the delivery of health and care in the UK. It aims to understand how our changing relationship with Europe is changing the picture for the NHS and health more generally, and what the prospects are for the future. This latest report shows that global medicine shortages are being felt particularly acutely in the UK, and the country's reliance on migration as a source of health and social care staff is intensifying.
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Content ArticleThe use of temporary doctors, known as locums, has been common practice for managing staffing shortages and maintaining service delivery internationally. However, there has been little empirical research on the implications of locum working for quality and safety. This study aimed to investigate the implications of locum working for quality and safety. The participants of the study described the implications of locum working for quality and safety across five themes: (1) ‘familiarity’ with an organisation and its patients and staff was essential to delivering safe care; (2) ‘balance and stability’ of services reliant on locums were seen as at risk of destabilisation and lacking leadership for quality improvement; (3) ‘discrimination and exclusion’ experienced by locums had negative implications for morale, retention and patient outcomes; (4) ‘defensive practice’ by locums as a result of perceptions of increased vulnerability and decreased support; (5) clinical governance arrangements, which often did not adequately cover locum doctors. The study concluded that locum working and how locums were integrated into organisations posed some significant challenges and opportunities for patient safety and quality of care. Organisations should take stock of how they work with the locum workforce to improve not only quality and safety but also locum experience and retention.
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Content ArticleTommy Gillman died on 8 December 2022 from sepsis and multi organ failure secondary to Salmonella Brandenburg meningitis. There were missed opportunities to provide him with earlier antibiotics, fluid resuscitation and intensive monitoring from 12.35pm on the 7 December 2022 at Kings Mill Hospital. Once the severity of his illness had been recognised at approximately 17:00 hours on that day, he was provided with prompt treatment for septic shock and meningitis. Sadly however he did not respond to this treatment and died the following day following transfer to Leicester Royal Infirmary. Whilst there were serious missed opportunities to provide earlier treatment of sepsis and meningitis.
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News ArticleA regulator overseeing 340,000 professionals breached a psychologist’s human rights by letting their fitness-to-practise case go on for a decade, amid widespread very long delays, it has emerged. A judgment from the Health and Care Professions Tribunal said the “lamentable” situation for the registrant was down to the “disgraceful… manner in which the Healthcare Professions Council dealt with their case”. The HCPC oversees professional standards for several groups including radiographers, paramedics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and operating department practitioners. If a complaint is made about a registrant, it can investigate and refer them to the tribunal, which can strike them off. The Society of Radiographers said the current speed of cases was “simply unacceptable” and its director of industrial strategy Dean Rogers added: “Our members spend too long working — and living — under the intense scrutiny of their regulator, often under the control of an interim order restricting or even preventing their practise while investigations drag on.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 April 2024
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News Article
Doctor exodus: tens of thousands planning to move abroad, NHS warned
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Tens of thousands of doctors are hoping to quit the NHS and move abroad this year in search of better pay, the medical regulator has warned. Half of the doctors planning to leave said they wanted to move to Australia, which has been the most popular destination for emigrating UK doctors for the past five years. The General Medical Council surveyed 3,154 doctors about their attitudes towards leaving the UK, including 1,000 who had recently left to practise abroad. Some 13% of those working in the NHS said they were “very likely” to move in the next 12 months, while another 17% said they were “fairly likely” to move. The GMC said this would amount to 96,000 doctors quitting over the next year if applied to the total number of doctors on the medical register, although it acknowledged that the actual rate of departures was likely to be much lower. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 12 April 2024 -
News ArticleThe boss of the NHS has made a dramatic intervention in The Independent highlighting the shocking amount of sexual abuse against staff in the health service, arguing that a #MeToo moment is needed to safeguard staff. Amanda Pritchard hit out at the “unacceptable” levels of abuse faced by doctors and nurses, demanding that health trusts be judged on their progress in tackling sexual harassment. She has called for sexual harassment against NHS staff to be “stamped out” after it emerged that one in eight workers – 58,000 – had reported experiencing unwanted sexual behaviour last year. Writing exclusively for The Independent, Ms Pritchard said the abuse now levelled at doctors and nurses is unacceptable – with some staff being raped at work, groped, and shown pornography. “The #MeToo movement has powerfully called out this unacceptable behaviour and fuelled important discussions right across society, and the NHS must not be exempt,” Ms Pritchard wrote. Around 58,000 NHS workers reported being subjected to unwanted sexual behaviour last year (PA) “But we can’t just call out unacceptable behaviour and move on: we need to stamp it out across all parts of the NHS.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 April 2024
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EventIn this webinar, Chris Burman-Fourie, principal NHS consultant, and Nick Reader, principal consultant at GoodShape, will explore the correlation between employee health and organisational financial savings. The presenters will share actionable insights, best practices, and real world examples that demonstrate how investing in employee health can yield significant financial returns. Key topics to be covered include: Understanding the tangible impact of employee health on productivity, organisational performance, and healthcare costs. Exploring innovative approaches to fostering a culture of wellbeing and resilience among NHS staff. Leveraging data analytics to measure the impact of employee health programs on financial outcomes and savings. Using employee health data to tailor wellbeing programmes and benefits to give measurable results. Understanding workforce absence and health data to drive down bank and agency usage across NHS Trusts. Register
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Content Article
In this report, Patient Safety Learning analyses the results of questions in the NHS Staff Survey 2023 specifically relating to reporting, speaking up and acting on patient safety concerns. It raises questions as to why there has been so little progress despite policy intention in this area. It concludes by setting out the need to improve the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of work seeking to create a safety culture across the NHS. This article contains a summary of the report, which can be read in full here or from downloading the attachment below.- Posted
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News Article
GMC will no longer launch FTP proceedings for ‘minor’ concerns
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The General Medical Council (GMC) has relaxed its fitness to practise (FTP) processes for doctors so that ‘minor’ concerns such as ‘pushing a colleague’ are not taken to tribunal. In an update to its guidance, the regulator has given FTP decision makers and case examiners ‘more discretion’ to throw out complaints if they represent a lower risk to public protection. Concerns which are ‘minor in nature and did not impact patient care’ will fall under this guidance. This is part of the GMC’s efforts to carry out ‘more efficient and proportionate investigations’ and to ‘minimise’ stress for doctors during the FTP process. Two examples of concerns which will no longer need to be investigated, if there are ‘no aggravating factors’, are: A doctor giving false details to a market research company, in order qualify for free products. A doctor pushing a colleague out the way following a heated argument. The regulator has said: "Decision makers will now be able to weigh the full circumstances of a concern earlier in the fitness to practise process to assess the overall risk to public protection including to public confidence in the profession– meaning some concerns may not need to be investigated or referred to a tribunal." However, the guidance, which covers concerns relating to violence and dishonesty, emphasises that allegations which raise a risk to public protection will continue to be investigated. Read full story Source: Pulse, 4 April 2024 -
News Article
NHS told to cut spending on doctors and nurses to save £4.5bn
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Hospitals are preparing to cut spending on doctors and nurses by hundreds of millions of pounds after being ordered to plug a £4.5 billion hole in the NHS budget. Chief executives at hospitals, mental health trusts and community services in England have been ordered to review staffing levels and draw up plans to close some services and merge others. They are also looking at banning or restricting the use of some agency workers. NHS bosses have been alerted in recent days to the scale of the cuts needed after negotiating financial plans for next year. The health service in England has a budget of £165 billion for the 2024-25 financial year, which starts next week. The budget rose by 3.2% in real terms between 2018-19 and 2023-24. Spending has been put under additional pressure by the cost of covering strikes by junior doctors which NHS England has said has cost more than £1.5 billion and affected more than 430,000 patients’ appointments. Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said services had been stretched by the need to pick up the pieces from a shortage of social care and other community services. She said an ageing population and poor public health meant patients in hospital were sicker and staying longer, needing more care. She said: “Trust leaders are being pushed to the very limits of what is possible, and there will be a situation where they have to make difficult choices about keeping basic services going versus investing in quality and improvement for the future. We are in a situation where we will be patching something that’s already a bit patched-together.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: Times, 31 March 2024 -
Content ArticleWhen ECRI unveiled its list of the leading threats to patient safety for 2024, some items are likely to be expected, such as physician burnout, delays in care due to drug shortages or falls in the hospital. However, ECRI, a non-profit group focused on patient safety, placed one item atop all others: the challenges in helping new clinicians move from training to caring for patients. In an interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, Dr. Marcus Schabacker, president and CEO of ECRI, explained that workforce shortages are making it more difficult for newer doctors and nurses to make the transition and grow comfortably. “We think that that is a challenging situation, even the best of times,” Schabacker says. “But in this time, these clinicians who are coming to practice now had a very difficult time during the pandemic, which was only a couple years ago, to get the necessary hands-on training. And so we're concerned about that.”
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News Article
New documents reveal patient safety concerns over strike day cover
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An investigation published by The BMJ today reveals new details of requests to recall striking junior doctors from picket lines for patient safety reasons. Documents show that while most trusts in England did not make such requests, those that did were rejected by the BMA in most cases. Some of these trusts warned of potential harm to patients from cancelling operations at the last minute and short staffing, reports assistant news editor Gareth Iacobucci. However, the BMA said it takes concerns about patient safety “incredibly seriously” and provided The BMJ with summaries of why requests were turned down. The union’s chair of council Phil Banfield said, “Throughout industrial action we have engaged thoroughly and in good faith with the derogation process, considering each request carefully to ensure that granting a derogation is necessary and the last and only option.” He said that poor planning by some trusts had led to some routine care being inappropriately booked in on strike days. In other instances, he said trusts had failed to make sufficient effort to draft in the necessary cover for strike days. Read full story Source: BMJ, 28 March 2024 -
Content ArticleFollowing the conviction of Valdo Calocane in January 2024 for the killings of Ian Coates, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care commissioned the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to carry out a rapid review of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) under section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. As part of the review, CQC were asked to look at 3 specific areas: A rapid review of the available evidence related to the care of Valdo Calocane An assessment of patient safety and quality of care provided by NHFT An assessment of progress made at Rampton Hospital since the most recent CQC inspection activity In this report, CQC detail the findings of parts 2 and 3. They will publish a separate report on part 1 in relation to the care of VC in summer 2024.
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Content ArticleThe Joint Commission has released a simplified breakdown of eight patient safety goals for US hospitals in 2024.
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Content ArticleNHS Boards are required under the National Whistleblowing Standards (the Standards) to publish annual whistleblowing reports setting out performance in handling whistleblowing concerns.
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Content ArticleDiagnostic errors cause significant patient harm. The clinician’s ultimate goal is to achieve diagnostic excellence in order to serve patients safely. This can be accomplished by learning from both errors and successes in patient care. However, the extent to which clinicians grow and navigate diagnostic errors and successes in patient care is poorly understood. Clinically experienced hospitalists, who have cared for numerous acutely ill patients, should have great insights from their successes and mistakes to inform others striving for excellence in patient care.
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Event
Scrutiny, regulation, and improvement - CQG Series
Sam posted an event in Community Calendar
The overall objective of this masterclass is to build good governance commitment, capacity, and resilience in the face of severe resource constraints and complex staff, patient, political and regulatory expectations. The programme is interactive, developmental, based on best practice and focused on achievable improvement of practice, behaviours and outcomes. The course includes online access to the relevant CQG e-learning module for 12 months and a discount code to purchase additional modules. This masterclass is one of a series that will help enhance your understanding and application of governance in healthcare, this module recognises the mechanisms and drivers for improvement available to the board, including creating a culture for effective analysis and reporting of outcome measures and benchmarking internally. We clarify the role of the board in organisational scrutiny and challenge. We also look at the ways the board can add value and ensure exemplar organisational effectiveness by developing its own culture of improvement. Each masterclass has its own set of learning objectives, the final one of each is to be able to apply the learning to the participant’s own organisation using the provided CQG Maturity Matrix. The matrix can be used to set strategic objectives and consider progress over coming months. At the completion of this module, the participants will be able to: • Understand the mechanisms and drivers for improvement available to the board. • Clarify the role of board scrutiny and challenge. • Assist the board in adding value and ensuring organisational effectiveness by developing its own culture of improvement. • Apply the learning to the participant’s own organisation using the CQG Maturity Matrix. Register -
Content ArticleNHS strikes have become such a familiar feature of our lives over the past two years that there is a risk we can become inured to their impact. This King's Fund article looks at the different ways in which strikes can impact the NHS and the people it serves.
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News Article
Calls for public inquiry into 20,000 sexual abuse allegations on NHS wards
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The government is facing calls for a public inquiry into the scandal of sexual abuse in mental health hospitals, following an investigation by The Independent. Rape Crisis England and Wales has warned that the “alarming” scale of abuse within the UK’s psychiatric system requires “major intervention” from ministers. It comes after an expose by the Independent and Sky News revealed that almost 20,000 reports of sexual incidents – involving both patients and staff – had been made in more than half of NHS mental health trusts in the past five years. As well as a public inquiry, which would give survivors the chance to give evidence, Rape Crisis England and Wales wants the government to appoint a named minister with responsibility for addressing the problem. Chief executive Ciara Bergman said: “That anyone in the already vulnerable position of needing or being detained for in-patient care because of their mental health needs should experience sexual violence and abuse whilst in the care of the state, is deeply concerning. “We are concerned that without major intervention and leadership at the highest levels, this could lead to more incidents of sexual violence and abuse happening, and this behaviour being accepted as inevitable, when it is not, and is indeed absolutely preventable.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 March 2024 -
Content ArticleThe NHS regularly uses temporary staff to fill gaps in its workforce. This investigation explored the challenges of involving temporary clinical staff (bank only staff, agency staff and locum doctors working within trusts) in local trusts’ patient safety investigations. Trust-level investigations are important because they are a way to identify learning to improve healthcare systems, with the aim of reducing the potential for harm to patients. Identifying learning requires staff to be engaged in an investigation; if temporary staff are not involved, learning may be lost, posing a risk to patient safety. HSSIB identified this risk following analysis of serious incident reports provided by acute and mental health NHS trusts. To explore the issue further, the investigation carried out site visits and engaged with NHS trusts, providers of bank staff, agencies that supply staff to NHS trusts, substantive (permanent) NHS staff, bank and agency staff, and a range of national stakeholders.
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News ArticleStaff whistleblowers have raised concerns over patient safety at one of Northern Ireland's biggest health trusts. Information received by UTV under Freedom of Information shows that most of the worries from health workers at the Belfast Health Trust relate to the Royal Victoria Hospital. Belfast Health Trust said any concerns raised by staff are investigated. The Royal College of Nursing NI was due to hold a webinar with members on Tuesday evening to discuss concerns members have about safety of patients being treated on corridors. The RCN's Rita Devlin said that the number of concerns raised with health trusts through the whistleblowing policy is only the tip of the iceberg. The concerns included unsafe staffing levels, bed shortages, boarding of patients, ED overcrowding, alleged drug dealing on a hospital site, staff sleeping on night duty, lack of mental health beds and the quality of staff training. The Belfast Trust said all staff are encouraged to make management aware of issues giving them concern through the whistleblowing process. The Trust added: "Any concern we receive is subject to a fair and proportionate process of investigation. "Whistleblowing investigations are of a fact finding nature and all relevant learning is shared as appropriate and taken forward by the Trust." Read full story Source: ITVX. 12 March 2024
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News Article
Trust’s treatment of Muslims heavily criticised by board director
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A board director has publicly criticised his trust for its treatment of Muslim staff and patients. Mohammed Hussain posted on social media that some board members at Bradford Teaching Hospitals “are not heard and listened to”, and that there is a “dissonance” between its espoused values and the “lived experiences” of minority ethnic staff. Mr Hussain, a non-executive director since 2019, was responding to a post by CEO Mel Pickup, who had said the trust had a “variety of support offers for colleagues observing Ramadan”. He said there are “many examples” of Muslim families experiencing poor responses to complaints to the trust, while claiming that “outstanding” Muslim staff are having to “move out of the area to progress because they are not promoted internally”. The trust said its launching an investigation into the concerns raised by Mr Hussain. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 March 2024
