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Found 990 results
  1. News Article
    In small room in the Royal Derby Hospital, there's a table bearing a laminated sign. "You are not alone," it says. It continues: "Kindness will get you through. Embrace the challenge. Look after each other. You are stronger than you think." This is the "wobble room", set aside not for patients but for front-line staff to get them away - briefly - from the intense pressure and strain experienced in the first wave of COVID-19. "We made a wobble room because that's what we needed," Kelly-Ann Gurney, an intensive-care nurse, told the BBC. "It's a room where staff could just go and sit and cry if they needed to and get it all out and then come back and 'put their face on' and get back into it again." Now the second wave is hitting the hospital, and the need for the room is just as great. Concerns are growing about the physical and mental health of front-line NHS staff. There has been no lull since the April peak of the virus as normal treatments and operations, postponed during the crisis, have returned to hospitals. Caroline Swan, a senior sister and manager of the intensive care unit at the Royal Derby, says she is ready to face what is ahead but feels very tired. "I am also very concerned. My staff are very tired and stressed out. We have a lot of sickness either due to burnout or they are unwell," she says. "A lot of staff have to self-isolate at home - and that puts a lot of strain on staffing here." Dr Magnus Harrison, medical director of the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Trust, says managing rotas is getting harder due to staff sickness and the need for some to self-isolate if family members are infected. "It is worth acknowledging what staff did in the first wave. They behaved tremendously and worked incredibly hard, and we're expecting them to do it again in winter - and Covid numbers could be higher than in the first wave. People are tired out." Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 November 2020
  2. News Article
    Over a third (35%) of healthcare professionals say they have suffered verbal or physical abuse from patients, or patients’ relatives during COVID-19, according to a survey by Medical Protection. The Medical Protection survey of 1250 doctors in the UK, also showed that a further 7% have experienced verbal or physical abuse from a member of the public outside of a medical setting, with some saying they have been sworn at for using the NHS queue at the supermarket. This follows reports that GP’s are facing abuse and complaints from patient’s who believe they aren’t offering enough face-to-face appointments, despite face-to-face appointments increasing in recent months. Medical Protection said the abuse presents yet another source of anxiety for doctors at the worst possible time. In the same survey, 2 in 5 doctors say their mental wellbeing is worse compared to the start of the pandemic. “I have been sworn at for using the NHS queue at the supermarket.” “I have had more unpleasantness from patients in the last 6 months than in all my previous 50 years in healthcare.I am almost at the point of stopping all clinical practice.” “There is too much verbal abuse to mention but the most upsetting is patients believing that we haven`t been open – we are all on our knees.” Read full story Source: Medical Protection, 31 October 2020
  3. 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
  4. News Article
    What does whistleblowing in a pandemic look like? Do employers take concerns more seriously – as we would all hope? Does the victimisation of whistleblowers still happen? Does a pandemic compel more people to speak up? We wanted to know, so Protect analysed the data from all the Covid-19 related calls to theirr Advice Line. They found: * 41% of whistleblowers had Covid-19 concerns ignored by employers * 20% of whistleblowers were dismissed * Managers more likely to be dismissed (32% ) than non-managers (21%) They found that too many whistleblowers feel ignored and isolated once they raise their concerns and that these failing are a systematic problem. Protect, which runs an Advice Line for whistleblowers, and supports more than 3,000 whistleblowers each year, has been inundated with Covid-19 whistleblowing concerns, many of an extremely serious nature. Its report, The Best Warning System: Whistleblowing During Covid-19 examines over 600 Covid-19 calls to its Advice Line between March and September. The majority of cases were over furlough fraud and risk to public safety, such as a lack of social distancing and PPE in the workplace.
  5. News Article
    NHS staff and their families accounted for one in six patients in hospital with Covid, due in part to inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE), new research suggests. A study of hospitals from March to June revealed that healthcare workers in patient-facing roles were around three times more likely to be hospitalised with the virus than the general population. Writing in the BMJ, the study's authors called for an urgent focus on how COVID-19 spreads around hospitals to prevent a similar toll in future waves of the pandemic. They also call for hospitals to consider re-deploying staff with vulnerable family members away from high-risk zones. Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 29 October 2020
  6. News Article
    Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 have been highlighted in a new report by safety investigators. The report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) makes a series of observations to help the health service reduce the spread of coronavirus in healthcare settings. Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 included the central nurses’ stations and areas where computers and medical notes were shared, the HSIB found. The investigation was initiated after a Sage report in May which found that 20% of hospital patients were reporting symptoms of Covid-19 seven days following admission – suggesting that their infection may have been acquired in hospital. In response to the report, NHS England and NHS Improvement confirmed they would publish nosocomial – another term for hospital acquired infections – transmission rates from trusts, the HSIB said. Read full story Source: Express and Star, 28 October 2020
  7. News Article
    Minority ethnic people in UK were ‘overexposed, under protected, stigmatised and overlooked’, new review finds. Structural racism led to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, a review by Doreen Lawrence has concluded. The report, commissioned by Labour, contradicts the government’s adviser on ethnicity, Dr Raghib Ali, who last week dismissed claims that inequalities within government, health, employment and the education system help to explain why COVID-19 killed disproportionately more people from minority ethnic communities. Lady Lawrence’s review found BAME people are over-represented in public-facing industries where they cannot work from home, are more likely to live in overcrowded housing and have been put at risk by the government’s alleged failure to facilitate Covid-secure workplaces. She demanded that the government set out an urgent winter plan to tackle the disproportionate impact of Covid on BAME people and ensure comprehensive ethnicity data is collected across the NHS and social care. The report, entitled An Avoidable Crisis, also criticises politicians for demonising minorities, such as when Donald Trump used the phrase “the Chinese virus”. The report, which is based on submissions and conversations over Zoom featuring “heart-wrenching stories” as well as quantitative data, issued the following 20 recommendations: Set out an urgent plan for tackling the disproportionate impact of Covid on ethnic minorities Implement a national strategy to tackle health inequalities Suspend ‘no recourse to public funds’ during Covid Conduct a review of the impact of NRPF on public health and health inequalities Ensure Covid-19 cases from the workplace are properly recorded Strengthen Covid-19 risk assessments Improve access to PPE in all high-risk workplaces Give targeted support to people who are struggling to self-isolate Ensure protection and an end to discrimination for renters Raise the local housing allowance and address the root causes of homelessness Urgently conduct equality impact assessments on the government’s Covid support schemes Plan to prevent the stigmatisation of communities during Covid-19 Urgently legislate to tackle online harms Collect and publish better ethnicity data Implement a race equality strategy Ensure all policies and programmes help tackle structural inequality Introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting End the ‘hostile environment’ Reform the curriculum Take action to close the attainment gap Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 October 2020
  8. News Article
    "I still have nightmares most nights about being completely out of my depth." Gemma, a ward nurse in Northern Ireland, was redeployed to a critical care unit at the end of March when the first wave of coronavirus struck. "I had never looked after a critically ill intensive care patient in my life," she says. "I just thought, I'm coming in here and I'm going to die. I'm going to catch Covid and I'm going to be one of those patients in the beds." As the second wave of the pandemic takes deep root across parts of the UK, thousands of NHS workers are struggling to recover from what they have already been through. "We were all in PPE all the time," recalls Nathan, a senior intensive care nurse at a hospital in the Midlands. "All you can see is people's eyes, you can't see anything else." He describes trying to help junior members of staff survive long and difficult days. "And I'd see these eyes as big as saucers saying help me, do something. Make this right. Fix this." "The pressure was insane, and the anxiety just got me," he says. "I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't eat, I was sick before work, I was shaking before I got into my car in the morning." Nathan ended up having time off with severe anxiety, but he is now back at the hospital, waiting for the beds to fill up again. The BBC has spoken to a number of nurses and doctors across the UK who are deeply apprehensive about what lies ahead this winter. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 October 2020
  9. News Article
    A trust is investigating after two junior doctors developed covid following an offsite event attended by 22 juniors where social distancing rules were allegedly ignored. The cases, involving doctors from the Royal Surrey Foundation Trust in Guildford, have been declared an outbreak by Public Health England and police have investigated the incident. But HSJ understands that contact tracing has concluded no patients needed to be tested because staff had worn appropriate PPE at all times and those involved had swiftly self-isolated once they realised they might have covid or had been at risk of exposure to it. It is not known whether any of the doctors had returned to work after the event before realising they might have been exposed to covid. Dr Mark Evans, deputy medical director, said: “Protecting our patients is our priority and we are committed to ensuring that all of our staff follow government guidance. This incident took place outside of work and has been reported appropriately, and there was no disruption to our services for patients.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 22 October 2020
  10. News Article
    With so many operations put on hold when the pandemic started in March, surgeon Douglas Hartley and a team of medical veterans got to work pioneering new types of protective equipment. When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the UK, thousands of surgical procedures were put on hold. For surgeons like Douglas, who performs operations on deaf children to restore their hearing, this created a significant moral dilemma – he wanted to get back into surgery to provide this vital care, but didn’t want to inadvertently catch or pass on COVID-19 in the process. Douglas regularly carries out cochlear implant surgery, a process in which a surgeon embeds an electronic device which stimulates the hearing nerve in the ear. The scientific evidence is clear that this surgery needs to be performed at the earliest opportunity so that these children can benefit from being able to hear at a vital stage in their development. But performing the surgery as normal would have put both children and surgical teams in danger. They needed to come up with another way of doing things. The team in Nottingham had to combine creativity and science to develop a novel and safe way to restart cochlear implant surgery in a matter of just a few weeks. The team used a systematic evidence-based approach to evaluate a variety of PPE for its usability and effectiveness. During simulated cochlear implant surgery, they evaluated each type of PPE across several parameters, including its effect on a surgeon’s ability to communicate, their field of vision, and their comfort. Many of the PPE options were found to substantially restrict the surgeon’s vision during operating. That rendered them unsafe for performing this sort of surgery. Instead, they found that the combination of “spoggles” and a half-face respirator mask had consistently superior performance across all aspects of clinical usability compared with all other options. During their studies, Douglas and his team also worked with a surgical product manufacturer to develop a novel drape, basically a tent, that was designed to be suspended from a microscope covering the patient’s head and torso to provide a physical barrier between the site of drilling and the rest of the team. They found that the operating tent significantly contained the droplets and prevented them from spreading around the theatre environment. They are the first – and are currently only – group in the world to develop an operating tent design that is marked for medical use. After completing our studies, we now had appropriate PPE and a protective operating tent to permit the safe restarting of cochlear implant surgery during the pandemic. These recommendations were rapidly disseminated internationally via webinars and journal publications and quickly adopted as standard patient care by Nottingham University NHS Foundation Trust and, subsequently, embraced in other departments in the UK and across the world. Read full story Source: The Independent, 22 October 2020
  11. News Article
    Doctors and nurses in areas of northern England with some of the highest Covid infection rates have described being “physically and emotionally” exhausted, as the NHS braces itself for the second wave of the pandemic. Most of the north has been put into the tier 2 “high risk” category, with Merseyside in the highest – tier 3 – bracket. While politicians debate whether a nationwide circuit breaker would be a more effective instrument to curb spread of the virus, frontline staff – still scarred from the first wave – are under no illusions as to what lies in store. Carmel O’Boyle, a nurse in Liverpool, who is also chair of the Royal College of Nursing’s Greater Liverpool and Knowsley branch, said members of the public had used A&E and primary care sparingly during the first national lockdown but mixed messages and a lack of trust in the government had led to people throwing caution to the wind and attendances were rising accordingly. “The nurses across my branch are frightened and exhausted – physically and emotionally,” she said. “They’ve been dealing with this for months and now there are more people in hospitals than there were in March. Although we know a little bit more about how to treat people and the kind of path of the disease process, it’s still frightening. It’s just so demanding and so draining to be nursing people in this manner without any family involvement and with the complications that there are.” A consultant in Manchester, who did not want to be named, said her hospital coped with the first wave but “the difference this time is that we’re trying to continue all of the elective activity and that’s going to be challenging. “I do think that we will manage the Covid cases. I just now worry about whether we will be able to continue to keep the normal care for people who need their operations [and] need care for cancer." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2020
  12. News Article
    Gruelling 12-hour shifts, exhaustion and burnout are leading growing numbers of nurses to quit the NHS within three years of joining, new research reveals. Stress, lack of access to food and drink while at work, and the relentless demands of caring for patients are also key factors in the exodus, the King’s Fund thinktank found. The NHS must make it an urgent priority to tackle the worryingly poor working conditions nurses and midwives face in many hospitals or face worsening workforce shortages, it said. “Staff stress, absenteeism and turnover in the professions have reached alarmingly high levels,” the thinktank said after investigating the working conditions faced by NHS nurses and midwives. “This has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has laid bare and exacerbated longer-term issues including chronic excessive workload, inadequate working conditions, staff burnout and inequalities, particularly among minority ethnic groups.” Read full story Source: 23 September 2020
  13. News Article
    Yesterday marked the second World Patient Safety Day, and this year’s theme shined a light on health worker safety – those on the frontline of the pandemic have been selfless in their sacrifices to care for an ailing global population. What has become ever clearer is that a health system is nothing without those who work within it and that we must prioritise the safety and wellbeing of health workers, because without safe health workers we cannot have safe patients. Improving maternity safety has been a priority for some time – although rare, when things go wrong the consequences are unthinkable for families and the professionals caring for them. Maternity negligence makes up 50% of the total value of negligence claims across all NHS sectors, according to the latest NHS Resolution annual report and accounts. It states there were claims of around £2.4 billion in 2019/20, which is in the region of £6.5 million a day. This cost says nothing of the suffering families and professionals associated. However, without investing in the maternity frontline we cannot hope to make integral systemic changes to improve maternity safety and save mothers’ and babies’ lives, writes Sara Ledger, head of research and development at Baby Lifeline in the Independent. "We owe it to every mother and baby to rigorously and transparently scrutinise the safety of maternity services, which will be in no small way linked to the support staff receive." Read full story Source: The Independent, 17 September 2020
  14. News Article
    Thursday 17 September is WHO’s World Patient Safety Day. There’s no better moment in history to call for new legislation that finally ensures health worker and patient safety. Today, the Patient Safety Movement Foundation released a detailed white paper urging the creation of a National Patient Safety Board. In a statement, the Patient Safety Movement said COVID-19 has exposed the safety gaps in our healthcare system that already cause 200,000 deaths a year and that we must put health workers, and thus patients, first by finally establishing a National Patient Safety Board (NPSB). This would solve the problem in three key ways: Data-driven insight and standards: An NPSB would create and maintain a National Patient Safety Database to receive non-identifiable patient safety work product. The Board would facilitate the reporting, collection, and analysis of patient safety data and the development and dissemination of training guidelines and other recommendations to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety and quality of care. Transparency and accountability: The NPSB would also require an on-going analysis of the patient safety data in the Database and other available data to determine performance and systems standards, tools, and best practices (including peer review) for doctors and other health care providers necessary to prevent medical errors, improve patient safety, and increase accountability within the health care system. Align incentives: An NPSB would save lives and taxpayer dollars by aligning incentives, especially Medicare reimbursements, with proven patient safety protocols. "COVID-19 shouldn’t be the breaking point for our health workers, but it should be the breaking point for our tolerance of the lack of patient safety. Congress must act today on this bipartisan issue.” Read full story Source: The Patient Safety Movement, 8 September 2020
  15. News Article
    New standards for the safe working of nurses across hospital wards, care homes and in the community have been set out by the Royal College of Nursing, for the first time in its 100 year history. In a bid to underline the safety-critical nature of expert nurses in healthcare, the RCN hopes the minimum standards will be used to force improvements in safe staffing levels and the treatment of nurses across the country by NHS trusts and other employers. It comes as a new poll finds a majority of adults believe there are not enough nurses to provide safe care. There are 50,000 nursing vacancies across the NHS and research has repeatedly shown having degree-educated nurses leads to better patient safety. A major study across 500 hospitals in 12 European countries found for every extra patient a nurse was expected to look after, the chances of the patient dying increased 7%. Other studies have shown replacing degree-educated nurses with less educated staff led to an increase in mortality of 21%. Despite the research, the UK government and NHS England has consistently opposed tougher ratios of nurses to patients and has invested in new non-degree roles to fill gaps in staffing. Read full story Source: The Independent, 9 May 2021
  16. News Article
    Pressure is growing on the government to change its stance on coronavirus infection rules which it is feared may leave NHS staff and patients at risk from airborne transmission. Experts told The Independent the current guidance from Public Health England (PHE), which effectively says staff working on general wards can rely on just surgical masks for protection, was “outdated and potentially misleading” and put NHS staff at risk. At the start of the pandemic the emphasis on stopping infection was focused around droplets containing the virus both in the air over short distances and on surfaces. Increasingly scientists have begun to warn the virus can also spread through much smaller aerosols which can remain airborne for a lot longer and over further distances. On Friday, the World Health Organisation updated its information on how Covid spreads to acknowledge the risk of aerosols and last month papers released by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said health workers may need to use better protection for longer. Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 May 2021
  17. News Article
    Women are bearing the overwhelming brunt of the “gargantuan challenges” health and care services are grappling with during the Covid pandemic, health leaders have said. A new study by the NHS Confederation’s Health and Care Women Leaders Network found female health and care workers’s physical and mental health substantially deteriorated due to working during the coronavirus crisis. The survey, which polled more than 1,200 NHS staff in February and March this year after the virus peaked, found issues with mental and physical health had notably worsened since last summer. Researchers found more than 80% of women said the pandemic meant their job had greater detrimental repercussions on their emotional wellbeing. This is a significant rise from 72% of female workers who said the same during equivalent research carried out in June. The report, which polled nurses, doctors, administrative staff, allied health professionals and managers, warned there are “still many mountains to climb” as services strive to cope with the chaos unleashed by the Covid crisis, as well as dealing with the long-term consequences of the pandemic. The study said: ”This includes tackling the growing issue of long Covid, meeting increased demand for mental health services, continuing to deliver the largest vaccination programme the UK has ever seen, and addressing a backlog of treatment that could extend to nearly seven million people by the end of 2021." Read full story Source: The Independent, 5 May 2021
  18. News Article
    The Equality and Human Rights Commission has required an ambulance trust to sign a legally-binding agreement stating how it will protect its staff from sexual harassment. This is thought to be the first time the EHRC has taken such action against an English NHS organisation and follows repeated concerns about the culture at East of England Ambulance Service Trust. As a result, EHRC will now monitor the trust’s action plan for protecting staff from sexual harassment. The Care Quality Commission asked the EHRC to consider taking enforcement action against the trust last summer, after a CQC investigation found evidence of “bullying and predatory behaviour” and warned the trust’s leaders were not adequately promoting patients’ and staff’s wellbeing. The CQC also found at least 10 incidents in 2019-20 involving allegations of sexual assault, harassment or inappropriate behaviours, and 13 instances of staff, including those working for subcontractors, being referred to the police for sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour. The trust was subsequently placed in special measures for quality. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 April 2021
  19. News Article
    Healthcare workers have welcomed a change in scientific advice on how to protect them from coronavirus. A document by the government's scientific advisory group (Sage) says higher grade masks may be needed when caring for Covid patients. Current guidance says that thinner surgical masks are adequate, outside of intensive care units. The Department of Health said guidance "is kept under constant review" and protecting NHS staff was a priority. Some doctors described it as a "crack of light" after more than a year of campaigning for improvements. A long list of healthcare unions and professional bodies has been making increasingly desperate appeals for what are called FFP3 respirators. These are designed to filter out infectious aerosols that may be lingering in the air, particularly in close proximity to patients. Growing evidence of the risks of airborne transmission has led the government to emphasise the importance of ventilation - with the words "fresh air" now added to the public messaging. And now a technical document released by Sage concludes that healthcare workers may need higher standards of respiratory protective equipment. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 April 2021
  20. News Article
    A London-wide operation has launched known as Operation Cavell, to improve the safety of NHS staff. The initiative will see a senior officer review all reports of assaults and hate crime against NHS staff. Following a three-month pilot, the NHS, Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have been working in partnership to launch the scheme, which aims to protect NHS staff on the frontline. As well as senior police officer involvement, senior welfare and support staff within the NHS will be brought on board to help those who have been the victim of such crimes feel safer. Martin Machray, Joint Regional Chief Nurse for NHS England & Improvement in London, said: “The last year of the pandemic has shone a light on the selflessness and dedication of NHS staff. All our staff should be able to come into work without fear of violence, injury or abuse. We therefore welcome the rollout of this important initiative across mental health services in London and we hope it will help protect and support our wonderful colleagues.” Read full story Source: National Health Executive, 16 April 2021
  21. News Article
    With the latest UK government figures showing that there have been nearly 150,000 deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, it’s understandable why some people compare the pandemic with a war. Indeed, daily life in the NHS is now peppered with military language: the frontline, gold command calls, redeployment, buddy systems and 'moral injury' Moral injury can be defined as the distress that arises in response to actions or inactions that violate our moral code, our set of individual beliefs about what is right or wrong. In the medical literature, moral injury has historically been associated with the mental health needs of military personnel, arising from their traumatic experiences during active service. Moral injury is generally thought to arise in high-stakes situations so it’s no surprise that the term has gained traction in healthcare settings over the course of the pandemic, given that healthcare staff have been faced with extreme and sustained pressure at work. In many ways, working in the NHS over the past year has felt like being some sort of circus acrobat, contorting ourselves to balance various competing realities: the desire to provide high-quality care for all our patients in the context of limited resources, looking after our own health needs alongside those of our patients, trying to make peace with the responsibility we feel towards our loved ones while still upholding our duty of care to patients. If we fail to deliver, particularly in high-stakes situations where we think things should have been done differently, it can shake us to our core. Our moral code transcends the relatively superficial responsibilities of our professional role: it gets to the heart of who we are as human beings. If we feel like our core values have been attacked, it can leave us feeling devastated and disillusioned. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 April 2021
  22. News Article
    A witness to an inquiry into deaths at England’s largest mental health trust has been intimidated by “cruel and calculated pressure”, with messages described by the man leading the investigation as “truly shocking”. In a statement at the start of hearings into the quality of care at Southern Health Foundation Trust, inquiry chairman Nigel Pascoe QC said one witness had received threatening telephone calls, messages and emails, which he said were “totally unacceptable, damaging and deeply disturbing”. Mr Pascoe said the inquiry had been told Beth Ford, whose job title at the trust is service user involvement facilitator, had been intimidated by members of the public. Ms Ford, who has autism, was admitted to hospital for her mental health earlier this month as a result of the abuse, but has now returned home. It’s the latest incident to hit the controversial inquiry, which has itself faced fierce criticism from the families of five patients who died between 2011 and 2015. The families have pulled out of the inquiry and accused the investigation and NHS England of bullying them and going back on promises to properly investigate the deaths of their relatives. Maureen Rickman, whose sister Jo Deering died in 2011, told The Independent she didn’t believe any of the main families were involved in intimidating witnesses. Read full story Source: The Independent, 29 March 2021
  23. News Article
    Many doctors from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds say key risk assessments have still not taken place, or have not been acted on. About 40% of UK doctors in the UK are from BAME backgrounds, yet 95% of the medics who have died from coronavirus were from minority backgrounds. The NHS said last June that its trusts should offer risk assessments to staff, but hundreds told a poll for BBC News that they were still awaiting assessments or action. Of 2,000 doctors who responded, 328 said their risks hadn't been assessed at all, while 519 said they had had a risk assessment but no action had been taken. Another 658 said some action had been taken, with just 383 reporting their risks had been considered in detail and action put into place to mitigate them. One of those who responded was Dr Temi Olonisakin, a junior doctor in London who has Type 1 diabetes. She had her risk assessment early on in the pandemic. "It was as comprehensive as a side A4 paper can be," she says. "I think for a lot of people it felt more like a tick-box exercise, and one that could be used to say: 'We've done what we need to do to make people feel safe' - but I'm not sure in reality that's how people felt." Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 March 2021
  24. News Article
    Accident and emergency staff at Bristol Royal Infirmary do not feel equipped to deal with the violence they face from the public, inspectors have found. Health watchdog The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated the department as "requires improvement" following an inspection in February. It said "urgent action" must be taken to protect staff and patients. University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust said it was working on improvements. Amanda Williams, CQC's head of hospital inspections, said: "We were... particularly concerned to find high levels of violence and aggression against staff from patients in the department and to learn that staff did not feel adequately trained to deal with this." "Staff need to be given the appropriate training and support to ensure they feel safe and to enable them to defuse tension and prevent violence from escalating." Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 March 2021
  25. News Article
    Nurse leaders are lobbying government to update "fundamentally flawed" guidance on personal protective equipment. The Royal College of Nursing says the existing recommendations are based on out-of-date evidence. One nurse told the BBC she had not been allowed to wear a higher-grade mask, despite having to go into the homes of patients with Covid. The nurse, who wishes to remain anonymous, wanted to use what's known as an FFP3 mask that filters out infectious aerosols. But she says her employers insisted on following national guidance, that most health staff should wear thinner surgical masks, instead. This comes at a time of mounting concern among many healthcare organisations that personal protective equipment (PPE) is inadequate. A new report for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) criticises the official guidelines for PPE as "fundamentally flawed" because they're based on out-of-date evidence. It says that the risk of infection by aerosols is not given enough emphasis and that key research papers highlighting the possibility of airborne transmission have not been considered. The RCN's report concludes that key research papers on aerosols appear to have been ignored and that the terms used to search for new papers were likely to be "biased against" those on airborne transmission. The lead author of the study, Prof Dinah Gould, says she is "very disappointed" at the review for not taking into account the latest science. "A year into the pandemic, the review needs replacing. It needs updating and we should be able to offer healthcare workers and patients better than what we're offering them now." Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 March 2021
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