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Showing results for tags 'Workforce management'.
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Content ArticleThis paper asked healthcare workers who are considered to be theatre safety experts—theatre managers, matrons and clinical educators—to take part in the second round of a Delphi study. These individuals work at the coalface in operating theatres and deliver the surgical safety checklist daily. It addresses information raised as part of a Delphi study of NHS hospital operating theatres in England. The aim of the second Delphi study round was to establish the views of theatre users on the theatre checklist and local safety standards for invasive procedures. Likert scale responses and a combination of closed and open-ended questions solicited specific information about current practice and researched literature that generated ideas and allowed participants freedom in their responses of how the World Health Organisation’s (WHO's) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) is currently being used in the peri-operative setting as part of a strategy to reduce surgical ‘never events’. The paper is part of a literature review undertaken by the author towards a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Read the findings of round one of the Delphi study
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News Article
Hospitals in England pay £5,200 for one agency doctor's shift
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Hospitals in England have paid out as much as £5,200 for a shift by a doctor through an agency, according to figures obtained by Labour through Freedom of Information requests. That is the latest in an intensifying debate over workforce shortages in the NHS in England. Labour blamed the high agency fees on Conservatives, arguing they had failed to train enough doctors and nurses. A Conservative spokesperson said "record numbers" had been recruited. The most expensive reported shift was £5,234 - paid by a trust in northern England. This covers the agency fee and other employer costs as well as the money going to the doctor. The NHS Confederation said the "staffing crisis" was so "desperate" that NHS trusts were being forced to pay large fees to make sure rotas were "staffed safely". Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "Trusts are having to breach the caps on how much they pay for agency doctors because of the extremely high levels of demand they are facing for their services. "The staffing crisis is so desperate that they either pay these fees or find that their rotas cannot be staffed safely, leading to reduced services for patients. This is particularly true in parts of the country where the NHS can struggle to recruit new staff." Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 December 2022 -
Content ArticleThis report from the International Council of Nurses is intended to give an overview of the continuing challenges faced by nurses, highlight the potential medium- to long-term impacts on the nursing workforce, and inform policy responses that need to be taken to retain and strengthen the nursing workforce.
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Content ArticleThis article looks at the potential to use the continuous flow model to tackle unprecedented levels of overcrowding in emergency departments. The continuous flow model, also known as full capacity protocols, was first introduced in North America in the late 1990s. It mandates that a set number of patients are moved at set times from the emergency department to inpatient wards, regardless of whether a bed is available. This might mean putting an extra patient in a bay or two patients in a side room or boarding them in hospital corridors. In turn, this encourages wards to discharge existing patients, allows ambulances to offload new patients in the space created in the emergency department, and relieves pressure on the whole system. This article looks at the fact that evidence to support the continuous flow model is scarce, although positive, and that there are a number of important factors to consider before implementing the model, to ensure that it does not result in increased patient harm.
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Content ArticleOn 9 November 2022, The Professional Standards Authority hosted the Safer care for all conference to discuss questions and issues highlighted in the report Safer care for all – solutions from professional regulation and beyond. This webpage contains video summaries of the conference sessions. The conference provided an opportunity to hear experts’ views as well as consider and contest the themes raised in the report, including the PSA's main recommendation, the creation of a health and social care safety commissioner in all four UK countries. Speakers and delegates came from both professional and system regulators as well as patient organisations, the ombudsman, the NHS, health and care sector organisations and major healthcare inquiries.
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News Article
Wales ‘displaying a dangerous and growing reliance’ on agency nurses
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS in Wales could move to a model in which most or all nursing care is outsourced to private companies, if its increasing reliance on agency staff continues, a union report has claimed. According to the Royal College of Nursing, the Welsh health service risks moving to a situation where it no longer directly employs staff to provide patient care. NHS Wales spent between £133m and £140m on agency nursing during 2021-22, based on different freedom of information (FOI) requests and official figures, the RCN’s report suggested. RCN Wales said, “If this trend continues, Wales will move to a situation where NHS Wales no longer directly employs staff to provide patient care and instead moves to a model in which most or all nursing care is outsourced to private companies.” Read more Source: Nursing Times, 4 December 2022 -
News Article
Doctors raise safety fears at Birmingham hospitals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Whistleblowers at one of England's worst performing hospital trusts have said a climate of fear among staff is putting patients at risk. Former and current clinicians at University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Trust allege they were punished by management for raising safety concerns, a BBC Newsnight investigation found. One insider said the trust was "a bit like the mafia". The trust said it took "patient safety very seriously". It said it had a "high reporting culture of incidents" to ensure accountability and learning. Staff concerns included a dangerous shortage of nurses and a lack of communication leading to some haematology patients dying without receiving treatment. The deaths of 20 patients in the haematology department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is run by the trust, led to a review in 2017 by consultant Emmanouil Nikolousis. Mr Nikolousis, who left the trust in 2020, told the BBC he was shocked by the failings he found and believes patients' lives could have been saved. A report by Mr Nikolousis criticised a lack of "ownership" of patients and a lack of communication among senior clinicians. In some cases this led to patients dying without having received treatment, he said. "Certainly there should have been different actions done," he said. "They could be saved. Certainly, when you don't have an action done, then you don't really know the outcome." Mr Nikolousis said he felt he had no option but to quit after his findings were ignored and his position was made "untenable". He left the NHS after 18 years. "They were trying, as they did with other colleagues, to completely sort of ruin your career," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022 -
News Article
Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals. The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians. Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust. In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The dropoff has left four major types of medical specialities that have longstanding doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment – failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an ageing population. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2022 -
Content ArticleHow have the numbers of doctors in the NHS who come from the EU and the European Free Trade Association changed since the Brexit referendum in 2016? And do certain specialties face particular problems? Martha McCarey and Mark Dayan take a closer look at what’s happened since the vote.
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Content ArticleA survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund has found that a majority of primary care doctors in the US and other high-income countries say they are burned out and stressed, and many feel the pandemic has negatively impacted the quality of care they provide. This article presents the survey results in the form of graphs with a commentary, and you can also download data from the survey.
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Content ArticleThe workforce crisis engulfing the health and care system is well documented. In the NHS, increases in staff numbers are not keeping pace with demand for staff and services; in 2021/22, for the first time, the number of people working in adult social care in England fell, and there are now 165,000 vacancies. In this long read, Sally Warren, Director of Policy at The King's Fund, looks at a report by Bill Morgan, commissioned by The King's Fund and Engage Britain, to consider why politicians have failed to act, where only they can, to deliver the workforce that the health and care system needs. The article covers the following areas: Transparency in workforce planning assumptions Training and international recruitment Retention: it’s not just about pay More than a numbers game, getting the culture and leadership right Productivity and skill mix Action at all levels Service improvement ambitions matched to the available workforce
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Content ArticleThe King’s Fund and Engage Britain commissioned Bill Morgan, a former Conservative special adviser, to explore what can get in the way of ministers taking meaningful, long-term action to address NHS workforce shortages. In this report, he focuses on the role of politicians in workforce planning and delivery. The report sets out the scale of the workforce crisis and the impact that it has. It also considers the political reasons around why it has been so hard to fix and considers three factors that could contribute to tackling the current shortages: Transparency in workforce forecasts The establishment of an independent workforce-planning organisation Accepting the NHS’s historical reliance on recruitment from outside the UK as explicit future policy and planning accordingly
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News ArticleThe NHS faces the threat of coordinated industrial action lasting several months, with results to be announced within days of strike ballots of ambulance crews and about 300,000 health workers. Junior doctors, paramedics, midwives, porters, cleaners, pharmacy technicians and physiotherapists are being balloted across the NHS. The government now faces the threat of waves of strikes across the public sector, from nurses and firefighters to civil servants and teachers. A ballot of 15,000 ambulance workers in England and Wales closes on Tuesday. The result of the GMB ballot could be announced as early as this week, with the prospect of the first national ambulance strike since the dispute of 1989-90, when police and army vehicles were brought in to transport patients. The RCN said on Saturday that the health secretary Steve Barclay had written to the union asking for officials to “come back to the table” before the planned strikes. RCN chief executive Pat Cullen said any talks needed to focus on the pay deal and that the position of her members was “negotiations or nothing”. Rachel Harrison, GMB public services national secretary, said: “Health service workers have suffered more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts, been on the frontline of a global pandemic and are now in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. “This is as much about patient safety as it is about pay. A third of GMB ambulance workers think delays they’ve been involved with have led to the death of a patient.” Read full story Source: The Observer, 27 November 2022
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Content ArticleThis study in the journal Health and Social Care Delivery Research aimed to assess the scale, scope and impact of changing the type and number of different healthcare practitioners in general practice in England. The authors undertook an analysis of employment trends, looked at motivations behind employment decisions, examined staff and patient experiences, and assessed how skill mix changes are associated with outcome measures and costs. They found that: employing clinicians who are not GPs did not reduce GPs’ workload or improve their job satisfaction. patients appreciated the longer appointments they had with other clinicians. patients wanted better information about what other practitioners can do, and how to use new booking systems.
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Content ArticleHealthcare sector strikes are a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming notable only in the last half of the twentieth century. In this article, Spanish medical ethics expert Gonzalo Herranz, from the Bioethics Department at the University of Navarra, examines the ethical issues and legal implications associated with healthcare worker strikes, as well as looking at the moral duty to try and prevent strikes.
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Content ArticleThis systematic review in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management aimed to examine and analyse the existing literature that examines the impact of strike action on patient morbidity—all patient outcomes apart from death. 15 studies were included in the review. and articles included a variety of outcomes from hypertension control to rates of chlamydia. Strikes ranged from 13 to 118 days, with a mean strike length of 56 days. The authors found that the majority of studies reported that strike action had a neutral or mixed impact on patient morbidity. One study reported positive outcomes and three studies reported negative outcomes, however in both cases, the impact that the strike had was marginal.
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News Article
Plea to blur line between doctors and nurses amid NHS staff crisis
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS staffing crisis will be solved only if doctors and nurses get more flexible about their job descriptions and break down barriers between roles, according to Rishi Sunak’s health adviser. Bill Morgan argues that training times for doctors and nurses may have to be reduced, and suggests developing “sub-consultants” and entirely new medical professions, He wants ministers to create an Office for Budget Responsibility-style body to predict future workforce needs. The Treasury has held down the numbers of doctors and nurses Britain trains to prevent “supply-induced demand”, which encourages people to seek appointments that are not needed, Morgan argues. Chronic shortages of qualified staff are the biggest problem facing the health service, which has more than 130,000 vacancies. Morgan acknowledges that this means “some of the government’s key manifesto commitments will not be met”, citing the promise of 6,000 extra GPs. Sunak said this week that the government was “thinking creatively about what new roles and capabilities we need in the healthcare workforce of the future”. He urged the NHS to shed “conventional wisdom”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 24 November 2022 -
Content ArticleThis article for Vogue explores the experience of a midwife working in an overstretched maternity unit in England. Melissa Newman, who has been a midwife for nearly six years, highlights the impact of staff shortages on midwives—she describes how she does not have time to eat, avoids drinking because she will not have time to go to the toilet, and sometimes works fifteen hours without any break. She calls on the Government for more funding to fix the crisis facing NHS maternity services, and the NHS more widely.
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Content ArticleThis letter from Dr Robert Farley, President of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) to Karen Reid, the Chief Executive Officer of NHS Education for Scotland (NES) highlights that lack of funding for Clinical Scientist training places is putting patient safety in Scotland at risk. Dr Farley says, "We understand NHS Education for Scotland are proposing funding that equates to less than a single training post in medical physics and clinical engineering in 2023. ‘This is despite the Scottish Government's Chief Healthcare Science Officer’s public acknowledgement of the importance of training. "Scotland currently has a 10 per cent Clinical Scientist vacancy rate across the medical physics specialisms. This equates to seven vacancies in radiotherapy, three in nuclear medicine, four in diagnostic radiology and radiation protection. These posts are critical to supporting diagnostics and cancer treatments."
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News Article
NHS ‘needs thousands more staff to meet cost of living crisis demands’
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS therapy services won’t be able to manage increased demand driven by the cost of a living crisis as they are already thousands of therapists short, The Independent has been told. NHS counselling services in England are not meeting therapy access targets due to a shortfall of 2,000 workers, according to sources. The findings come as a poll by the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and YouGov, shared with The Independent, found that almost one in two adults felt the cost of living crisis was affecting their mental health. According to the survey of more than 2,000 adults, 25 to 34 years old were most likely to say the cost of the living crisis was impacting their mental health. Adam Jones, policy and public affairs manager for the UKCP, said “I think what we’re concerned about is the fact that already, there is a record level of demand for mental health services. We also know there are record rates of prescription for antidepressant medication as well. We’re concerned the capacity currently is already falling short. “So with the rising demand going forward, we’re concerned that services are going to be stretched, waiting time is going to go up, average number of therapy sessions received is going to go down He warned that although the NHS is focussed on training new therapists, there was already an existing workforce of psychotherapists and counsellors who don’t work in the NHS. “We’d like to see more targeted recruitment of psychotherapists and counsellors who are already trained, and so that most would only require a short adaptive training to be able to work in an NHS context.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 23 November 2022 -
News Article
Menopausal women in NHS England workforce to be offered flexible working
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Menopausal women working in NHS England will be able to work flexibly should they need to under new guidance. Launching the first national NHS guidance on menopause, the NHS England chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, has called on other employers to follow suit to help “break the stigma”. She said many employees were “silently suffering” and were either too embarrassed to broach the subject or experience a “lack of support” when they did. No one should feel their only option is to “turn their back on their career” over menopausal symptoms, she added. “It’s our responsibility as leaders to ensure this doesn’t happen any longer.” The guidance aims to boost awareness as well as support the introduction of practical measures including flexible working patterns – including lighter duties, fans to make temperatures more comfortable, cooler uniforms and staff training. “Our guidance has been intentionally designed to be transferable to other workplaces too, so I hope organisations and women beyond the NHS can also benefit,” she said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 November 2022 -
News Article
Trust moves away from ‘disturbing’ agency doctor model
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A major acute trust says it plans to move away from its significant use of agency doctors from overseas, who have been reported to be working on terms and conditions far below their NHS-employed counterparts. East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust has a contract with the NES Healthcare agency to supply 47 “resident medical officers (RMO)” across its three main sites to cover trauma and orthopaedics, medical and surgical rotas. HSJ has been told of concerns that RMO's are reporting substantial overworking, and poor terms and conditions, although some of these claims are disputed by NES. East Kent chief medical officer Rebecca Martin has told HSJ: “The well-being of all our colleagues is one of our top priorities and we are working with the agency about how they cover the rota safely". “We are committed to providing a safe workplace environment, where RMOs feel comfortable communicating their feedback and we review working patterns to ensure adequate rest periods between shifts. We are actively working to use substantive staff to fill vacancies, and have already been able to offer some of those positions to current RMOs.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 22 November 2022 -
Content ArticleIn this press release, The Health Foundation responds to the Autumn Statement delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt on 17 November 2022. They highlight that although the planned additional funding for the NHS and social care is welcome, abandoning planned changes to introducing a cap in social care costs will leave older and disabled people without the care they need, with many facing catastrophic costs. They also highlight that although the Chancellor committed to publishing long-term workforce projections, he did not offer additional funding or any plan to actually expand the workforce.
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EventuntilThe Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our lives, including in how we work. While incredible efforts of health and care staff and voluntary and community workers were rightly valued and celebrated at the start of the pandemic, the scale of the workforce crisis in health and care continues to present a significant challenge for staff and leaders. Collaborative and inclusive leadership is key to successfully delivering good-quality care, as underlined by the recommendations from the Messenger Review. Bringing our humanity to the workplace can mean different things to different people, but a greater focus on developing relationships in teams and the practice of collaborative, inclusive and compassionate leadership will be critical in supporting people through recovery from the pandemic. But how can we encourage others to bring their full selves to work at a time of significant challenge?’ The King's Fund's tenth annual leadership and workforce summit provides an established forum for health and care leaders to come together to share their leadership and workforce challenges and to explore practical options to help address them. Register
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News Article
BMA chief warns Scotland's GPs are at 'tipping point'
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
GP surgeries across Scotland are at risk of collapsing because of staff shortages and increased demand, a senior doctor has warned. Dr Andrew Buist, chairman of the British Medical Association's (BMA) Scottish GP committee, told the BBC many practices were at "tipping point". More than a third of surveyed surgeries reported at least one GP vacancy – up from just over a quarter last year. About half of the GP surgeries in Scotland took part in the BMA survey. It showed 81% of practices said demand was exceeding capacity - with 42% saying demand substantially exceeded capacity. Dr Buist told BBC Scotland: "I worry that we're reaching a tipping point for some practices. "They lose one or maybe two doctors out of three, and the remaining doctors cannot continue so they return the contract and the practice may cease to exist. "That is a real concern in some parts of Scotland that that is happening and it's going to happen increasingly as the situation develops over this winter." Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 November 2022
