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Showing results for tags 'Teamwork'.
Found 187 results
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Content ArticleIn this blog for the Nursing Times, Fiona Hibberts, head of the Nightingale Academy and consultant nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, discusses the importance of huddles in improving patient safety and care, and in providing emotional support for staff. The author describes a huddle as "a gathering of key individuals, at a given time, to briefly discuss safety aspects of care of a group of patients in real time, escalate concerns and make plans," and highlights their importance for staff morale during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Content ArticleA Patient Safety Huddle is a brief multidisciplinary daily meeting held to discuss threats to patient safety and actions to mitigate risk. This evaluation of The Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare (HUSH) project in BMC Health Services Research aims to assess the impact on teamwork and safety culture of the project, which implemented PSHs in 92 wards at five hospitals, across three NHS Trusts. This paper also seeks to add to the evidence-base around huddles as a mechanism for improving safety.
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Content ArticleThis video presents some highlights of the HSJ Patient Safety Awards on 20 September 2021 at Manchester Central, and includes short interviews with some of the judges and award winners. The HSJ Patient Safety Awards were set up to recognise and celebrate projects that improve patient safety and quality of care. This year, the judges commented that nominees across 23 categories were all of a very high quality and presented innovative projects that made real improvements to patient safety in the NHS. "The quality of this year was quite phenomenal - we were really impressed at how inventive people had been in coming up with solutions to COVID as part of safety strategies," said Lesley Durham, President of the International Society of Rapid Response Systems and member of the awards judging panel. The awards showcase excellent projects and ways of working that have potential to be replicated in other areas. A team from Devon Partnership Trust/Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust won the award for Mental Health Initiative of the Year for their project 'Connecting physical and mental health services in Gastroenterology'. A representative from the team said, "What we want to do now is take this, shout about it and make it happen elsewhere." Many award winners commented on the importance of teamwork across services and trusts and recognised that collaboration was a key part of the success of their projects. View the full list of award winners
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Content ArticleThis project, led by Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, focused on acute mental health care and dementia care pathways across the Eastern region’s five mental health trusts. It aimed to improve patient safety in mental health care by addressing teamwork and communication issues that can affect the safety and effectiveness of care, and patient experience. Clinical teams were trained in system safety assessment (SSA) and human factors (HF).
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Content ArticleIn this reflection, published in the BMJ's Post Graduate Medical Journal, Dr John Launer talks about an exercise to help people to become better supervisors, to use peer supervision as a safe space for people to develop better interactional skills generally – and particularly to cultivate their curiosity.
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Content ArticleThis short article describes how maternity and neonatal teams across Herefordshire and Worcestershire Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) have been using video conferencing technology to drive safety improvements for mothers and babies, thanks to the launch of their new daily digital safety huddles.
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Content ArticleVariation in healthcare processes is widespread in mental health care and can lead to inefficient processes and unnecessarily long inpatient stays. This study in The British Journal of Healthcare Management aimed to identify sources of variation and introduce a huddle intervention to increase system efficiency on a psychiatric inpatient ward in London. The study found that huddles are a useful way to improve staff communication and increase ward efficiency without taking up a significant amount of clinicians' time.
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Content ArticleThis study in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care aimed to develop and test a handover performance tool (HPT) able to help clinicians to systematically assess the quality and safety of shift handovers. The study was conducted in the paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology wards of a UK district hospital. 30 human factor experts participated in the development phase and 62 doctors from various disciplines were asked to validate the tool. The authors found that, according to the HPT, communication determined the majority of handover quality, with teamwork and situation awareness also important factors in the overall quality rating. They found that the HPT demonstrated good validity and reliability and can be easily used by raters with different backgrounds and in several clinical settings.
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Content Article
Evaluation of huddles: a multisite study (1 July 2017)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Techniques
This article in The Health Care Manager examines the value of 'huddles' - regular, interdisciplinary group meetings - in improving communication among disciplines, resolving problems and sharing information. The authors found that the primary function of huddles was the exchange of information that posed or had the potential to pose safety risks to patients. Staff reported that huddles were useful in improving awareness of safety concerns and also improved communication between disciplines. -
Content ArticleThe Point of Care Foundation have developed Team Time in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Team Time is a 45-minute reflective practice that is run and facilitated online and provides an opportunity for people taking part to share experiences of their work in health and social care. As with Schwartz Rounds the focus is on participants’ emotional and social response to their work. However, unlike Schwartz Rounds, the audience is limited in size and is intended to be drawn from an area/department of a health/social care site rather than from across the organisation. The audience will comprise colleagues who have ‘common cause with others in a specialty/pathway’ and consider each other colleagues in the work of that area. Please note that Team Time training is available only to trained Schwartz Rounds facilitators.
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EventuntilThroughout the COVID-19 pandemic health and care staff have been working in different ways and designing new ways to meet the needs of patients and service users, all while under a huge amount of pressure. This event from the King's Fund will take a look at some examples of those changes and how people working in health and care have been working remotely, flexibly and in an agile way to meet the demands created by the pandemic and to develop new and improved ways of working for the future. Sign up now to hear about: the role of visible, collaborative and inclusive leadership to support staff and allow innovation how to keep staff health and wellbeing a priority while also delivering change how teams across health and care were able to be upskilled and remain flexible for these new ways of working. Register
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Content Article
Safety culture discussion cards (Eurocontrol)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Good practice
Safety culture has been shown to be a key predictor of safety performance in several industries. It is the difference between a safe organisation and an accident waiting to happen. Thinking and talking about our safety culture is essential for us to understand what we do well, and where we need to improve. These cards from Eurocontrol are designed to help us to do this. -
Content ArticleEvidence on heterogeneity in outcomes of surgical quality interventions in low-income and middle-income countries is limited. Alidina et al. explored the factors driving performance in the Safe Surgery 2020 intervention in Tanzania’s Lake Zone to distil implementation lessons for low-resource settings. They found that performance experiences of higher and lower performers differed on the following themes: (1) preintervention context, (2) engagement with Safe Surgery 2020 interventions, (3) teamwork and communication orientation, (4) collective learning orientation, (5) role of leadership, and (6) perceived impact of Safe Surgery 2020 and beyond. Higher performers had a culture of teamwork which helped them capitalise on Safe Surgery 2020 to improve surgical ecosystems holistically on safety practices, teamwork and communication. Lower performers prioritised overhauling safety practices and began considering organisational cultural changes much later. Thus, while also improving, lower performers prioritised different goals and trailed higher performers on the change continuum. The authors conclude that future interventions should be tailored to facility context and invest in strengthening teamwork, communication and collective learning and facilitate leadership engagement to build a receptive climate for successful implementation of safe surgery interventions.
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Event
Human factors in your work and your team
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
This virtual masterclass, facilitated by Mr Perbinder Grewal, will guide you in how to use Human Factors in your workplace. All medical and non-medical staff should attend. Leadership in the NHS is the responsibility of all staff. Understanding human factors will allow healthcare to enhance performance, culture and organisation. It can be used to assess why things go wrong and how to implement change to prevent it from happening again or mitigate the risks. Further information and registration or email: kerry@hc-uk.org.uk hub members can receive a 10% discount. Email: info@pslhub.org -
Content ArticleThis book aims to teach the key principles of patient safety to a diverse audience: physicians, nurses, pharmacists, other healthcare providers, quality and safety professionals, risk managers, hospital administrators, and others. It is suitable for all levels of readers: from the senior physician trying to learn this new way of approaching his or her work, to the medical or nursing student, to the risk manager or hospital board member seeking to get more involved in institutional safety efforts. Understanding Patient Safety is divided into three main sections. In Section I, it describes the epidemiology of error, distinguishes safety from quality, discusses the key mental models that inform our modern understanding of the safety field, and summarises the policy environment for patient safety. In Section II, it reviews different error types, taking advantage of real cases to describe various kinds of mistakes and safety hazards, introduces new terminology, and discusses what we know about how errors happen and how they can be prevented. Although many prevention strategies will be touched on in Section II, more general issues regarding various strategies (from both individual institutional and broader policy perspectives) will be reviewed in Section III. After a concluding chapter, the Appendix includes a wide array of resources, from helpful Web sites to a patient safety glossary.
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Content ArticleThis article, published in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, discusses the role of teamwork in the professional education of physicians. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that organisations establish interdisciplinary team training programs that incorporate proven methods for team management. Teamwork can be assessed during physician medical education, board certification, licensure and continuing practice. Team members must possess specific knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs), such as the ability to exchange information, which enable individual team members to coordinate.
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Content Article
NHS: Extraordinary You
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Workforce and resources
The 55,000 strong healthcare science workforce of the NHS and its related bodies, the Health Protection Agency and NHS Blood and Transplant, represent the largest group of scientists in a single employment sector in the UK. Their vast scientific knowledge and skill base stretches across some 45 scientific specialisms encompassing biology, genetics, physiology, physics and bioengineering. This knowledge lies at the foundation of the profession’s crucial and often unique role in: providing complex and specialist diagnostic services, analysis and clinical interpretation offering direct therapeutic service provision and support introducing technological and scientific advances into healthcare, and undertaking research, development and innovation providing performance and quality assurance, risk management and clinical safety design and management teaching, training and providing a specialist consultancy and clinical advice service to other clinicians with respect to all of the key functions above. The healthcare science workforce plays a critical part in delivering healthcare. More than 80% of all diagnoses are reached with a contribution from healthcare scientists. This document highlights some of these roles. -
Content ArticleThis case study looks at how implementing a daily emergency call safety huddle at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has increased efficiency in team working and improved patient safety. A safety huddle is a short multidisciplinary briefing, held at a predictable time and place, and focused on the patients most at risk. By implementing the ten-minute daily safety huddle, the medical emergency and cardiac arrest teams improved patient outcomes and staff experience, and were able to make better use of resources.
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Content ArticleWard rounds are the focal point for a hospital’s multidisciplinary teams to undertake assessments and care planning with their patients. Coordination of assessments, plans and communication is essential for effective and efficient care. However, the delivery of ward rounds is consistently constrained by the competing priorities of clinical staff. A number of factors contribute to this, including workforce gaps, inadequate planning, unwarranted variation in practice and an absence of training in the skills required to deliver complex multidisciplinary team care. This leads to frustration for staff and patients, and can lead to errors in care, longer stays in hospital and readmissions. A new report from UK healthcare professional leaders including the Royal College of Physicians, and developed along with patients, sets out best practice for modern ward rounds.
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Content ArticleDuring the festive period, Father Christmas has the busiest 24 hours of his year delivering Christmas presents across the world. While this seems an insurmountable task, for him it’s all in a night’s work, facilitated by applying human factors (HF) in many areas. However, as with healthcare, there is always room for reflection, learning and improvement for the benefit of consumers... Feature from Peter A Brennan and Rachel S Oeppen in the BMJ's Christmas 2020: Dr Strange.
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Content ArticleDelays in evaluation and escalation of needed care can compromise outcomes of the patient significantly and, in many cases, may lead to death. The assembly of a rapid response team would not only provide timely multidisciplinary evaluation of a potentially deteriorating patient, but it would also help reinforce the organization’s culture of collaboration and interprofessional support for safety. Patients often exhibit signs of deterioration before experiencing the adverse event. The rapid response team’s timeliness in evaluation, coupled with the recommendations from multiple, interprofessional individuals, instead of solely the bedside nurse, would significantly prevent a plethora of adverse events and save financial resources. Specifically, the implementation of rapid response teams has been associated with reductions in cardiac arrests, inpatient deaths, and number of days in the hospital. Many healthcare organisations have successfully implemented and sustained improvements with the advent of rapid response teams. These organizations have focused on projects that included establishing standardized calling criteria for both clinicians and patients and family members, and delineating roles and responsibilities for all upon rapid response team arrival. This Patient Safety Movement Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS) provides a blueprint that outlines the actionable steps organisations should take to successfully implement and sustain rapid response teams and summarises the available evidence-based practice protocols.
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Content Article
ARHQ: The CUSP Method
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Improving patient safety
The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) is a method that can help clinical teams make care safer by combining improved teamwork, clinical best practices, and the science of safety. The Core CUSP toolkit gives clinical teams the training resources and tools to apply the CUSP method and build their capacity to address safety issues. A number of toolkits are available to help clinical teams adopt the CUSP method to make care safer. Most teams will want to start with the Core CUSP Toolkit to learn key principles of the CUSP method. Once you’ve learned the basics, additional toolkits can help you target certain safety issues in specific settings of care. Created for clinicians by clinicians, the Core CUSP toolkit is modular and modifiable to meet individual unit needs. Each module includes teaching tools and resources to support change at the unit level, presented through facilitator notes that take you step by step through the module, presentation slides, tools, and videos. -
Event
Global introduction of OSHversity
Clive Flashman posted an event in Community Calendar
OSHAfrica (an Occupational health and safety site that spans the whole of Africa, based in Lagos) has now created OSHversity. This will provide training for people in workplace safety, regardless of their location and type of workplace. Joinn session using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkcu-upzojHdA2-ZT9MFJe1UDY9lzqJYr7 Register for the session by emailing info@oshversity.com You can find out more about the courses offered by going to www.oshversity.com -
Content ArticleIn this study, Avery et al. estimated the incidence of avoidable significant harm in primary care in England, and describe and classify the associated patient safety incidents and generate suggestions to mitigate risks of ameliorable factors contributing to the incidents. The study found there is likely to be a substantial burden of avoidable significant harm attributable to primary care in England with diagnostic error accounting for most harms. Based on the contributory factors we found, improvements could be made through more effective implementation of existing information technology, enhanced team coordination and communication, and greater personal and informational continuity of care.
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Content ArticleThis systematic review in The Journal of Advanced Nursing aimed to synthesise current knowledge about the impact of safety briefings on improving patient safety. The authors found that safety briefings achieved beneficial outcomes and can improve safety culture. Beneficial outcomes included: improved risk identification. reduced falls. enhanced relationships. increased incident reporting. ability to voice concerns. reduced length of stay.
