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Showing results for tags 'Stress'.
Found 162 results
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Content ArticleThis report from the Samaritans finds that there is no consistently effective support available to people who self-harm. The research identified four key support needs for people who self-harm, which are seen as essential to providing effective care: distraction from immediate self-harm urges emotional relief in times of stress developing alternative coping strategies addressing the underlying reasons for self-harm.
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Content ArticleStress, depression and anxiety account for a significant portion of work related ill-health cases. With many of those still employed now working remotely as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, this trend seems set to continue, with an always-on-culture that has now entered our homes.In this paper, published with Autonomy and 4 Day Week, Nic Murray looks at the clear overlap between over work and mental ill-health, how this disproportionately affects women and the potential options for reducing our working time and preventing work practices that harm mental health, including a 4 day week.
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Content ArticleDue to the concerns around ambulance waiting times, the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales undertook a local review of the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST). The review explored how the risks to patients’ health, safety and wellbeing are managed whilst they are waiting for an ambulance. It assessed how patients are being managed by WAST’s three Clinical Contact Centres across Wales, from when a request for an ambulance is received to the point the ambulance arrives at the scene.
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Content ArticleA lower recruitment and high turnover rate of registered nurses have resulted in a global shortage of nurses. In the UK, prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, nurses’ intention to leave rates were between 30 and 50% suggesting a high level of job dissatisfaction. In this study, published in BMC Nursing, Senek et al. analysed data from a cross-sectional mixed-methods survey developed by the Royal College of Nursing and administered to the nursing workforce across all four UK nations, to explore the levels of dissatisfaction and demoralisation – one of the predictors of nurses’ intention to leave.
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Content Article
Keep your light shining bright – three tips from Sally Howard
Sally Howard posted an article in Blogs
One of the many Covid challenges is that there hasn’t been an opportunity for frontline staff to pause for breath and pay even a small amount of attention to looking after themselves. And when times are really tricky we only have so much energy. So this is just about you and three things that may help you keep going and keep your brilliant light shining. -
Content ArticleIn this powerful article, GP Katie Musgrave, says that the profession is overwhelmed and under resourced. She argues that they are unable to provide the service that patients deserve and that action is needed to prevent patents from suffering harm. Her suggestions include:A COVID-pressures support fund, where part time GPs can be offered extra protected sessions in their own surgeriesThe extension of the ARRS to cover nurse practitioners or GPsA suspension of all but the most crucial bureaucracy: we certainly don’t need to be thinking about QOF this winter.
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Content ArticleHealthcare professionals are experiencing unprecedented levels of occupational stress and burnout. Higher stress and burnout in health professionals is linked with the delivery of poorer quality, less safe patient care across healthcare settings. In order to understand how we can better support healthcare professionals in the workplace, this study from Johnson et al. evaluated a tailored resilience coaching intervention comprising a workshop and one-to-one coaching session addressing the intrinsic challenges of healthcare work in health professionals and students. The authors found preliminary evidence that the intervention was well received and effective, but further research using a randomised controlled design will be necessary to confirm this.
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Content ArticleHealthcare organisations are committed to the safety of the patients receiving care, treatment, and services. Healthcare organisations are also committed to the safety of those who serve those patients – healthcare workers, whether they be nurses, physicians, medical technicians, pharmacists, lab workers, housekeeping staff. This new book from The Joint Commission pulls together a collection of checklists to keep those healthcare workers safe from chemical and physical hazards, infectious agents, workplace violence, ergonomic problems, work-related stress, and more. The checklists are built upon authoritative guidelines from OSHA, NIOSH, CDC, and others and are intended to simplify healthcare worker safety. Most of the checklists are intended for use by health care workers themselves, depending upon their clinical or other responsibilities. Some of the checklists are intended for management to ensure that policies, procedures, and resources are in place to ensure health care worker safety in all areas of the organization. All of the checklists are straightforward and easy to use and understand and cover the key areas of risk for healthcare workers. Each section of checklists is introduced by compelling statistics that show how dangerous working in the health care environment can be, without proper precautions. The checklists provide the procedures or must-do activities to ensure that health care workers are as safe as can be. Sample pages
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Content Article
Eric Kutscher: First, do no harm—but did I?
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Blogs
The cost of providing care during a pandemic is seeing firsthand the evolution of medical knowledge, and wishing current data could have guided past decisions, says Eric Kutscher in this BMJ Opinion article. -
Content ArticleWe all have to deal with pressure. Sometimes it's minor like "do I go left or right at the roundabout?". Sometimes it's the difference between life and death. But how can we manage and work with that pressure, rather than against it? Dr Stephen Hearns is a critical care doctor and search and rescue specialist in Scotland, who has spent his career understanding what pressure is and how he can try to handle it in stressful times. His new book 'Peak performance under pressure' goes into detail about the tools and techniques we can all use to manage stress when the going gets tough. In this podcast, produced by eeast (East of England Ambulance Service) General Broadcast, Stephen talks about why pressure is sometimes good for us, how to recognise stress in other and what to do when you're maxed out.
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Content ArticleHave you ever been faced with an upcoming shift at work and felt an impending sense of doom? It comes as no surprise that doctors — real, human people — have a certain degree of anticipation, even anxiety, when it comes to taking shifts. Katie Townes, a physician and founder of Physician Lounge Online, shares her path to on-call acceptance.
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Content Article
WHO EMRO: Mental health and psychosocial stress
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Mental health
During the COVID-19 pandemic, you might experience immense pressure and stressors. The World Health Organization has provided an infographic highlighting what stress is, how it might affect you and practical tips on what you can do. -
Content ArticleThe Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) has published a major new report on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK’s nursing and residential homes.
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Content ArticleDr Donna Prosser interviews Dr. Albert Wu on the emotional support that we can provide to healthcare workers during this concerning time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Content ArticleIn her latest blog, Sally Howard talks about psychological types and why understanding our preferences and how they differ to others, can be incredibly valuable. This knowledge can be used to strengthen teams, encouraging people to value diversity and work more effectively together. A particularly useful tool during these challenging times.
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Content ArticleHealthcare staff have had to adapt their way of working as a result of the pandemic, which has made pre-COVID guidance obsolete. Different Trusts are doing different things. Associate Director of Patient Safety Learning and Critical Care Outreach Nurse, Claire Cox, outlines the challenges and asks, what is the solution?
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Content ArticlePresenteeism is linked to negative outcomes for patients, nurses, and healthcare organisations; however, we lack understanding of the relationships between nurse fatigue, burnout, psychological well-being, team vitality, presenteeism, and patient safety in nursing. In this study from Rainbow et al., the two aims were: (a) to examine the fit of a literature-derived model of the relationships between presenteeism, psychological health and well-being, fatigue, burnout, team vitality, and patient safety; and (b) to examine the role of presenteeism as a mediator between patient safety and the other model variables. The findings indicate that focusing on job-stress presenteeism may be relevant for this population and may offer additional insight into factors contributing to decreased nurse performance and the resulting risks to patient safety.
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Content Article
Civility Saves Lives
PatientSafetyLearning Team posted an article in Good practice
Civility Saves Lives are a collective voice for the importance of respect, professional courtesy and valuing each other. They aim to raise awareness of the negative impact that rudeness (incivility) can have in healthcare, so that we can understand the impact of our behaviours. Their goal is to disseminate the science of the impact of incivility in healthcare. They also strive to research and collaborate on data about the impact of incivility. -
Content ArticleInformation overload can be defined as a difficulty a person can have in comprehending issue and making judgments that are caused by the presence of too much information. Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system surpasses its processing capability. Decision-makers have a limited cognitive processing ability. Consequently, when information overload happens, it is possible that a decline in decision quality will take place. Decision-makers, such as medical consultants, have fairly limited cognitive processing capacity. Consequently, when information overload occurs, it is likely that a reduction in decision quality will occur. The aim of this study, originally published by the Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, is to assess the impact of information overload on medical consultants’ life, its causes, and potential ways to deal with it.
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Content ArticleSamantha Batt-Rawden, Co-founder of the The Doctors' Association UK, discusses the struggles of a junior doctor and how changes in the NHS over the last 14 years has made it so much harder to do an already hard job. In this article published in the Metro, she says "that the combination of spiralling workloads and a decimation of morale and camaraderie has been toxic for the profession." Last year, 55% of UK doctors met the criteria for burnout and ‘emotional exhaustion’, with one in five resorting to the use of drugs or alcohol as a ‘coping strategy’. It’s hardly surprising that we are haemorrhaging doctors out of the profession, and it’s only getting worse. So, how do we fix this? Sally suggests that we need to treat staff like human beings if we are going to have any hope of stemming the exodus of clinicians. It’s as simple as restoring some on-call rooms so we can get our heads down, and stop crashing our cars on the way home. Or it’s as basic as ensuring that junior doctors have leave for our own weddings. Honestly, at this stage, just letting us have access to now-outlawed NHS coffee overnight would be a significant morale boost.
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Content ArticleDisruptive and unprofessional behaviours occur frequently in healthcare and adversely affect patient care and healthcare worker job satisfaction. These behaviours have rarely been evaluated at a work setting level, nor do we fully understand how disruptive behaviours are associated with important metrics such as teamwork and safety climate, work-life balance, burnout and depression.
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Content ArticleWe tend to think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable by “learning to say no,” more yoga, better breathing techniques, practicing resilience — the self-help list goes on. But evidence is mounting that applying personal, band-aid solutions to an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon may be harming, not helping, the battle. With “burnout” now officially recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO), the responsibility for managing it has shifted away from the individual and towards the organisation.
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Content Article
Re-leveling: how stories ground us (December 2019)
Claire Cox posted an article in Blogs and vlogs
This short blog by an anonymous writer discusses making mistakes. What does it feel like to make a mistake and more so, whats it like admitting it? -
Content ArticleEvery clinical laboratory devotes considerable resources to Quality Control (QC). Recently, the advent of concepts such as Analytical Goals, Biological Variation, Six Sigma and Risk Management have generated a renewed interest in the way to perform QC. The objective of this book is to propose a roadmap for the application of an integrated QC protocol that ensures the safety of patient results in the everyday lab routine.
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Content ArticleWhen someone you love is hospitalised, it can be scary-even terrifying-for the patient and for family and friends. A hospital may seem like a foreign land. Sounds, smells, and the culture are unfamiliar; even the medical terminology sounds like a different language. Understanding the hospital environment and knowing how to navigate its complicated pathways can make you a strong champion for your loved one. You are as critical to your loved one's recovery as the doctors and nurses. Your role is different, but vital. In some cases, you can make the difference between life and death. Hospital Warrior de-mystifies the process and provides the tools, understanding and insight you need to get the best care for your loved one.
