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Showing results for tags 'Staff safety'.
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Content ArticleTalking General Practice speaks to Dr Helen Garr, medical director of NHS Practitioner Health, the NHS service that looks after doctors and dentists - and also other NHS staff - who are experiencing mental ill health. In this conversation, Helen talk about the impact that pressures on the NHS are having on doctors’ wellbeing and how this is affecting GPs in particular. Helen also explains what doctors and other NHS staff can do if they are suffering from burnout, how to prevent burnout, what people can do if they are worried about a colleague and how NHS Practitioner Health supports doctors who seek help from the service. She also outlines how she thinks the NHS could change to help ensure better mental health for doctors and other staff.
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News Article
Record number of nurses quitting the NHS
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Record numbers of nurses are quitting the NHS in England, figures show. More than 40,000 have walked away from the NHS in the past year - one in nine of the workforce, an analysis by the Nuffield Trust think tank for the BBC revealed. It said many of these were often highly skilled and knowledgeable nurses with years more of work left to give. And the high number of leavers is nearly cancelling out the rise in new joiners that has been seen. There were just 4,000 more joiners than leavers in the year to the end of June. But a Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said progress was being made and the government was already halfway to meeting its target to increase the numbers of nurses working in the NHS in England during this Parliament by 50,000. He said a workforce strategy would be published soon, setting out how the NHS will continue to recruit and retain nurses in the coming years. Read full story Source: BBC News, 30 September 2022 -
News Article
Racism against nurses: nurse speaks out following hours of abuse
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A nurse has told how she almost quit her job this month after a patient shouted out racist slurs for hours on a recent night shift. Beverly Simpson, who works as a nurse in a care home in Derry, Northern Ireland, said she was left angry and broken after a patient repeatedly used derogatory racist language and told her ‘to go back to her own country’. Ms Simpson reported the incident on 4 September to managers, who are now investigating. In the meantime, she has called on all employers and peers to do more to protect staff from racism that she says she encounters every week. "I have been a nurse for almost 30 years, but that night made me feel like I wanted to quit,’ she told Nursing Standard. ‘I was just worn down with it all. I’m human, I am hurt, but I still have to go back and treat this patient, be professional and hold my head up high." "It’s all very well a black nurse standing up and saying it is wrong, but we need allies. There needs to be training and protocols on what to do in these situations. Instead, there is a blanket of silence." Read full story Source: Nursing Standard, 28 September 2022 -
Content ArticleBariatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the causes, prevention and treatment of obesity and its associated diseases. This pathway written by East Kent Hospitals University Foundation NHS Trust (EKHUFT) provides guidance for multidisciplinary teams to allow them to provide appropriate care for each bariatric patient according to their unique shape, size and body dynamics.
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EventuntilJoin Kayleigh Barnett, Senior Improvement Advisor at Aqua who will share her experience in using Appreciative Inquiry methods to create additional value for learners in a quality improvement (QI) programme aimed at aspiring senior leaders. Appreciative Inquiry is increasingly used as the basis for building a structured learning process and this session will present a case study, and provide practical ideas for you to consider. Ensuring that Appreciative Inquiry processes are included in any part of an organisation can also contribute to psychological safety. Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Kayleigh has worked at Aqua for six years and is the Delivery Lead for Appreciative Inquiry. She is an accredited Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner from the International Academy of Appreciative Inquiry. Her other areas of work are quality improvement and human factors. The case study she will present has also been featured in the September edition of the Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner journal. Register
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News Article
Doctors in Ebola zone strike over safety fears
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Trainee medics battling Ebola in Uganda's virus epicentre accuse the government of putting their lives at risk. "Most times you come into contact with a patient and you use your bare hands," one worker told the BBC anonymously. All trainees at Mubende's regional hospital say they are on strike and are demanding to be moved somewhere safer. But Ugandan health ministry spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona told the BBC there was "no strike at the hospital". Yet all 34 of the hospital's interns - including doctors, pharmacists and nurses - have announced their decision to strike in a joint statement. They say they are being put at undue risk because they lack appropriate safety kit, risk allowances and health insurance. Six interns at the hospital have already been exposed to the virus, and are awaiting their test results in isolation. Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 September 2022 -
Content ArticleIn this article in the Patient Safety Journal, Mayher Profita, a third-year surgical resident in Pennsylvania, describers her residency and the burnout she experienced. "The burnout was making us care less about our patients and the care they received and more about whether we made the right career choice."
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Content ArticleRepeated culture of safety surveys of the nursing staff at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s main campus demonstrated lagging scores in the domain of nonpunitive responses to error. The hospital had tried for many years to address the problem using a variety of strategies, including small group training sessions on just culture for staff and leaders, but had met with limited success. Finally, in 2015, it committed to trying something genuinely different—even perhaps disruptive—that might actually shift the stagnant metrics. Their novel, multifaceted programme, implemented over a two-year period, yielded a 13% increase in staff rating scores that the hospital has been able to sustain over the subsequent two-year period. The design and rollout of our program was neither simple nor smooth, but valuable lessons were learned about realistic, operational implementation of principles of psychological safety in a large and complex clinical organisation. In this paper, Neiswender et al. describe the programme and the lessons learned in the journey from idea inception to post-implementation.
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Content ArticleLaura Pickup and Suzy Broadbent present on the impact staff fatigue has on patient safety.
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Content ArticleFrom April 2023 the new Health Services Safety Investigations Body will require doctors to be candid about errors that have led to patient harm. But can medics trust that material given in this “safe space” won’t be used against them?
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Content ArticleNot knowing how to unfold or even sit in a wheelchair the right way can cause a catastrophic injury to patients, visitors, volunteers, and staff of a healthcare facility. Wheelchairs are one of the most common assistive devices used in healthcare facilities, from admission to discharge. They are often found at the entrance of a facility for use by both patients and visitors with mobility issues. Hospital volunteers, transport staff, and clinical staff use wheelchairs to take patients to different care areas to have tests performed. Many facilities require that patients be transported in a wheelchair upon discharge. However, not knowing the proper method of unfolding a wheelchair or where to place your hands when sitting down in the seat can cause injuries, specifically to fingers, ranging from lacerations to amputations.
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Content Article
In this blog for the hub, Julia Wood explains why Joy in Work is so important, how you can implement it into your team ensuring you and your colleagues are happier at work, and why a happier team will improve patient care. -
Content ArticleMore work is needed on understanding and addressing a lack of sleep in rail workers, a new study has argued. Researchers looked at the difference between when staff were on day shifts and when they were working at night. They discovered a “feast and famine” scenario where 41% reported getting six hours of sleep or less when working days, compared to 63% when working nights. The findings, published in the Applied Ergonomics journal, suggested that many staff weren’t getting enough sleep and having less than six hours was linked to feeling very sleepy during the day. More than one in ten shift workers also reported they had been awake for between 18 and 24 hours by the time they finished work at least once during the past week. This led to fears that their tiredness could have an impact on road safety if they were driving home from work. The report said: “Sleep restriction and sleep deprivation, even in the short term, are known to affect cognitive performance. For a safety critical industry, this data should raise a significant concern.”
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Content ArticleHealthcare settings are high-risk environments for fatigue and staff burnout. The Need For Recovery (NFR) scale quantifies inter-shift recovery, which contributes to cumulative fatigue and may precede occupational burnout. Advanced clinical practitioners (ACPs) are an established feature of the emergency medicine workforce in the UK, however, little is known about factors affecting their inter-shift recovery, fatigue or how NFR correlates with formal burnout inventories.
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News ArticleA coroner has said she does not understand why frontline workers were not required to wear a mask during lockdown after hearing a paramedic had died with Covid. A two-day inquest into the death of Peter Hart, who died on his 52nd birthday, concluded on Tuesday (September 13) with assistant coroner Dr Karen Henderson ruling the father-of-three died of natural causes caused by Covid. She said on the balance of probabilities he caught the disease while working at East Surrey Hospital, where he died on May 12, 2020. During the onset of the pandemic only healthcare workers tending to those suspected of having Covid-19 were required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE). In accordance with national guidelines, Mr Hart, who was treating patients not suspected of having the virus, did not need to. “Retrospectively it is difficult to comprehend why the national guidance said PPE did not need to be used for all patients and healthcare workers at the earliest opportunity,” Dr Henderson said. “Although there appears a lost opportunity to ensure maximum protection I make no finding of fact whether this contributed to Mr Hart’s death. “Patients not suspected to have Covid were not expected to wear face masks. This is in effect a perfect storm and given evidence of Mrs Hart I am satisfied Mr Hart contracted Covid during his work at East Surrey Hospital,” she added. Read full story Source: Surrey Live, 13 September 2022
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Content ArticleA systematic review and meta-analysis from Hodkinson et al. examines the association of physician burnout with the career engagement and the quality of patient care globally. 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. This meta-analysis provides compelling evidence that physician burnout is associated with poor function and sustainability of healthcare organisations primarily by contributing to the career disengagement and turnover of physicians and secondarily by reducing the quality of patient care. Healthcare organisations should invest more time and effort in implementing evidence-based strategies to mitigate physician burnout across specialties, and particularly in emergency medicine and for physicians in training or residency. Read accompanying BMJ editorial here.
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Content ArticleThese resource lists compiled by US insurance company MedPro Group, highlight a number of expert and evidence-based sources that can be used to increase awareness of safety issues, identify areas of risk and determine mitigation strategies. They cover a wide range of healthcare safety topics: Advanced practice providers Anaesthesia and surgery Artificial Intelligence Bed safety and entrapment in senior care Behavioural health Behavioural health in senior care Burnout in healthcare Culture of safety Cybersecurity Disclosure of unanticipated outcomes Disruptive behaviour Elder abuse Electronic Health Records Emergency medical Treatment and Labour Act Emergency preparedness and response Emergency preparedness and response in senior care organisations Ergonomics and safe patient handling Falls and fall risk in older adults Handoffs and care transitions Health equity and social determinants of health Health literacy and cultural competence Healthcare-associated infections Healthcare compliance HIPAA Human trafficking and trauma-informed care Infection prevention and control in ambulatory care settings Infection prevention and control in dentistry Infection prevention and control in senior care organisations Informed consent LGBT+-inclusive care Maternal morbidity and mortality Medical marijuana Medication safety during care transitions Obstetrics and gynaecology Opioid prescribing and pain management Patient engagement Pressure injuries in older adults Sepsis Social media in healthcare Staff shortages and workforce issues Suicide screening in primary care Telehealth/telemedicine Violence prevention in home healthcare Violence prevention in the Emergency Department Wrong-site procedures
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Content ArticleEuropean Union Directive 2010/32/EU legally enforces a set of strategies aimed at preventing sharps injuries and determining the risk of bloodborne infections and psychological distress in healthcare workers. This article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health looks at the results of a national survey conducted in Italy in 2017 and repeated in 2021 to evaluate the progress of the Directive's implementation. The authors assessed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on implementation.
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Content ArticleThis presentation provides an insight into a real life crowdfunded NHS whistleblowing case. This comes from the perspective of both a frontline NHS clinician and crowdfunder. The tactics used against Dr Day, his response to them and the effect that such a public protracted fight has had on NHS culture and ‘confidence in the system’. Potential changes are then discussed Chris is a Locum Emergency Medicine doctor working at the moment in East London. Chris is also a Claimant in a high profile whistleblowing case that has been ongoing for nearly 9 years. The case re-established statutory whistleblowing protection (in the Court of Appeal) for junior doctors in England. The case has had further media attention last month when Chris’ NHS opponents admitted to destroying evidence whilst a 16 day court hearing was in progress.
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EventThis one day masterclass will focus on culture with healthcare organisations. It will look at effective ways to encourage healthcare organisations to unlock culture to improve both patient safety and staff safety. The Ockendon report (2022) reports a ‘Toxic culture’ of “undermining and bullying” left staff struggling to finish shifts and crying at work. Two thirds of staff said they had witnessed or experienced bullying. The report identified an “us and them” divide between doctors and midwives. Key learning objectives: Psychological safety Safety culture Toxic cultures Trust and safety Compassionate leadership. For further information and to book your place visit www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/conferences-masterclasses/unlocking-culture or email kerry@hc-uk.org.uk hub members receive 20% discount. Email info@pslhub.org for discount code.
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Content Article
Advancing Quality Alliance: Safety Culture Survey
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Culture
This programme from the Advancing Quality Alliance (Aqua) provides participants with the tools, skills and knowledge to oversee the successful implementation of a safety culture survey in organisations. Participants of this programme will develop a working knowledge of safety culture theory and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) safety culture survey alongside the support that Aqua provides to enable deployment and analysis of the survey. This programme links directly to Aqua’ safety offers, including Psychological Safety, Human Factors and Improvement Practitioner programmes. -
News Article
Nurse says she faced hours of racist abuse
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A nurse who was racially abused at work has urged Health Minister Robin Swann to take action on racism towards healthcare staff. Beverly Simpson, a nurse for more than 25 years, said she was subjected to hours of abuse while working last weekend. The incident at the weekend took place in a private healthcare setting, Ms Simpson told BBC Radio Foyle. She said she was called racist slurs by a patient for several hours. "I want to do nursing, I have always been a nurse," she said. "I never realised that I would be placed in such a vulnerable position and I actually question myself if I should walk away." Ms Simpson said she wanted to speak publicly to make sure "any other nurse from a black or minority ethic group did not feel alone". "There is abuse going on, it's something that is happening," she said. "I felt, for the first time in a long while, about quitting. I asked myself: 'What is the point?' "I understand that when people are sick their defences may be down, they're more vulnerable and they may say things they shouldn't, but there was a nastiness to it." In a statement, the Department of Health said racism was not something that any colleague in Health and Social Care (HSC) should have to endure. "We want to send a clear message, from the very top of our health and social care system, that such behaviour is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated," the department said. "We fully recognise and respect the hard work, commitment and dedication of HSC staff from within the BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] community." Read full story Source: BBC News, 6 September 2022 -
Content ArticleIn this blog, consultant on workforce culture Roger Kline looks at the case of Shyam Kumar, an orthopaedic consultant who was seconded as an inspector for the Care Quality Commission (CQC). After raising concerns about patient safety, harm, cover up and bullying of staff with the CQC, his secondment with them was terminated. An Employment Tribunal has found that Mr Kumar's concerns were well-founded and that he was then victimised for raising them by the CQC. The Tribunal accepted his claims that he was removed from his secondment as a CQC inspector as a result of making protected disclosures, accepted his evidence, and at a number of points did not believe the evidence provided by senior CQC staff. The blog raises the question of whether the CQC would fail on its own criteria for being a 'well led' organisation on the basis of this case. It also questions whether the CQC can credibly hold NHS organisations to account on whistleblowing after its response to having concerns raised by Mr Kumar, one of its own inspectors. The author asserts that "the CQC needs to urgently demonstrate it will apply accountability to its own decision making, and lack of support for those raising concerns, and hold its own senior leaders (up to the CEO) to account for decisions which are contrary to its own published standards."
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Bob Matheson, Head of Advice and Advocacy at the charity Protect, explains the case of Dr Chris Day and how it highlights the vital importance of reforms to UK whistleblowing law. Protect is campaigning for Reform of whistleblowing legislation in the UK. The author highlights loopholes in UK law that Dr Day has faced throughout his long legal battle with Health Education England (HEE). These gaps mean that whistleblowers lack certain important legal rights and protections, and this in turn may prevent individuals from raising concerns.
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Content ArticleThis literature review in The Operating Theatre Journal examines why the decision was made not to class surgical fires as a 'Never Event', even though research has identified them as a preventable hazard. The author also examines steps that could be taken to further reduce the risk of surgical fires in the NHS and other health systems. You will need to create a free online account to view this article.
