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Showing results for tags 'Patient factors'.
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Faded rainbows
Claire Cox posted an article in Blogs
When driving to work at the beginning of the pandemic, I felt a sense of worry and apprehension of what I would be faced with. As a critical care outreach nurse I never know what I may be faced with, but this has never bothered me. However, during the pandemic it did bother me. I worried how I could do my job; would I get sick and how would I navigate my way through the new ways of working? Seeing the brightly coloured rainbows in people’s windows gave me some hope. I knew that the public were thinking of us; they knew the risks we were putting ourselves at and our families. For a time, I felt special. It sounds pathetic, I know. For a time, I felt valued. Valued by the public, valued by the trust I work for and valued by politicians. As NHS staff we had priority shopping, we had discounts from big stores, we had free parking, we had donations of food every day while we were at work, we were donated hand creams and toiletries. School children drew us pictures to put on the walls of our staff room saying ”thank you”. What made me feel valued more than anything was staff wellbeing being at the forefront. Extra staff were redeployed to work on the ITU, we were made sure we had all our breaks and we were made to feel that each and every one of us counted. Relatives of patients wrote and expressed their gratitude, even if they were unable to visit their dying family – they were truly grateful to us. The ITU where I work received so many beautifully written letters and cards. We pinned every one onto the wall so we were reminded that we were shining bright despite the darkness. Then there was the Thursday clap. Personally, I thought this was an odd thing to do, but it seemed to bring people together and have a shared purpose – even if it was for a fleeting 5 minutes a week. When I think back at those months, it seems like a lifetime ago. Eve Mitchell’s recent blog on the hub highlighted that care homes are receiving complaint letters and some are even receiving threats of litigation. “Not enough PPE”, “lack of care given to my family member”, “my family member was neglected during the pandemic” – frustration and anger are palpable. Frustration and anger because families were unable to visit their relatives in their last days, frustration and anger that these precious moments have been denied from them. If it were my mum or dad would I feel the same? Of course I would. I would be the loudest voice there. Is it the fault of the care home? Should they be vilified for the protection of their residents? And now it’s the turn of the hospitals. We now have over a million people waiting on lists for operations, procedures, appointments. Some have already waited months before the pandemic started. Some have already died as a result of not having surgery at the right time. Patients have received surgery and treatment late and this has led to complications and a longer hospital stay – which then increases their mortality. At some point the gratitude from the public will turn to anger and frustration, as it has with the care homes. Would I be angry if my mum was waiting for an operation and died as a result of a prolonged wait? Yes I would. It is a natural response to blame the very people who should have helped – the NHS staff. I now drive to work and see faded rainbows in windows, I will be paying for parking again in the next few weeks, the donations of food have dried up, staff are back at ‘normal’ levels and I am back to having no breaks some days, not to mention that nurses were not included in the recent pay rise. I feel that we have served our purpose. ‘Thanks very much – now get back to normal, sort the waiting lists out and work harder to make sure it happens’. I don’t envy our senior leaders in acute Trusts. They are stuck in the middle of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England who are trying to fathom out a strategy to get the waiting lists down, and support frontline staff who are exhausted and a frustrated public that may erupt at any moment. Frontline workers have been through it the last few months. Navigating our way through complaints and litigation and an angry public who feel that they are not receiving the care that they expect in the coming months fills me with dread. We are not equipped. Faded rainbows – is this a representation of the fading support we are receiving in the NHS? -
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Human Factors for Patient Safety Course
Patient Safety Learning posted a calendar event in Community Calendar
Patient Safety is an essential part of health and social care that aims to reduce avoidable errors and prevent unintended harm. Human Factors looks at the things that can affect the way people work safely and effectively, such as the optimisation of systems and processes, the design of equipment and devices used and the surrounding environment and culture, all of which are key to providing safer, high quality care. New for September 2020, this part-time, three year, distance learning course, from the Centre of Excellence Stafford, focuses specifically on Human Factors within the Health and Social Care sectors with the aim of helping health and social care professionals to improve performance in this area. The PgCert provides you with the skills to apply Human Factors to reduce the risk of incidents occurring, as well as to respond appropriately to health, safety or wellbeing incidents. Through the study of Human Factors, you will be able to demonstrate benefit to everyone involved, including patients, service users, staff, contractors, carers, families and friends. Further information -
Content ArticleOver the last couple of weeks I have been engaging in one of my favourite pastimes – chatting. I realise this seems a little frivolous, but after the more formal ‘meetings’ of previous weeks, chatting seemed appropriate. There is a serious reason behind this, the impact of ‘emotional labour’. Emotional labour is defined as “having to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others”.[1] Or, in layman’s terms, pretending you are OK. For my colleagues and clients across health and social care, and particularly for frontline nursing and care staff, there has been an even greater need to deliver compassionate patient care whilst managing their own emotions during the pandemic, and somehow with the easing of lockdown some of the façade has started to fail. Through conversation, it has become clear that there is a new impact of COVID-19 on the mental health and wellbeing of healthcare staff: absorbing the anger of the public, patients, and their carers. In a previous post I mentioned that there was fear from some colleagues about potential litigation once the pandemic was over. Looking for someone to blame for what was and was not done. This is not an unusual reaction, but showering staff with vitriol does seem a little unprecedented. For example, in the care homes I work with every home has received letters or complaints about the care of their residents from family members: "you did not care for my mother"; "you let my father die alone"; "my mother died of loneliness as you wouldn’t let me see her"; "it is down to your lack of care that my brother died"; whether the home had COVID infections or not. The upset this has caused is palpable, with exhausted staff bearing the brunt for doing their job in the most difficult of circumstances. A similar story is heard from GP practice nurses and reception staff – patients refusing to wear masks, accusing the nurses and doctors of wilfully letting them suffer and refusing to see them when they were in need, demanding to see a professional immediately, refusing to leave the premises. A massive change for the surgeries who earlier were being given gifts of cake and chocolate and sent messages of gratitude. Hospital staff seem to have faired better, although as outpatient appointments come back online there is an expectation that the pent-up fear and frustration will be released in this setting too. Maybe it is not only health and care staff who suffer from compassion fatigue – it has happened to the general public at the same time as the clapping stopped and the next normal dawned. However, it is not clear how we should deal with this. Ensuring the welfare of staff across all settings of care should remain at the forefront of workforce planning and is enshrined in the new NHS People Plan; but it doesn’t tell us how to navigate and dissipate the anger of the public, and whilst this remains unaddressed it is our frontline staff that will bear the brunt, sending them ever closer to burnout, and puts the future of our health and care workforce at risk. And anything that impacts on staff safety, impacts on patient safety. References: Hochschild AR. The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling. Oakland: University of California Press: 2012. World Health Organization. Mental Health and Psychosocial Considerations During the COVID-19 Outbreak. Geneva: WHO; 2020.. Patient Safety Learning have set up a community page on the hub to capture insights from staff on their safety. World Patient Safety Day on Thursday 17 September this year focuses on staff safety. If you have been affected by the issues raised in this blog and want your voice to be heard (whether attributable or anonymously), please share here. Patient Safety Learning will use such insights to highlight the staff safety issues and call for action.
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Content ArticleThe results found there were 129 unique mentions of barriers to patient safety; these barriers were categorised into five major themes. ‘Limited resources’ was the most prominent theme, followed by barriers related to health systems issues, the medical culture, provider training and patient education/awareness. Although inadequate resources are likely a substantial challenge to the improvement of patient safety in India, other patient safety barriers such as health systems changes, training, and education, could be addressed with fewer resources. While initial approaches to improving patient safety in India and other low- and middle-income countries have focused on implementing processes that represent best practices, this study suggests that multifaceted interventions to also address more structural problems (such as resource constraints, systems issues, and medical culture) may be important.
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HQCA: Patient Experience Awards 2019
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Implementation of improvements
The following four initiatives were selected to receive the HQCA’s 2019 Patient Experience Awards: NowICU Project, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Misericordia Community Hospital Rapid Access, Patient Focused Biopsy Clinic; Head and Neck Surgery, Pathology; University of Alberta Hospital Edmonton Prostate Interdisciplinary Cancer Clinic (EPICC), Northern Alberta Urology Centre Transitional Pain Service, South Health Campus Take a look at their presentations and find out more about these great initiatives. -
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ThinkSAFE: 'Whose Leg is it Anyway'
Claire Cox posted an article in Keeping patients safe
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ThinkSAFE Logbook and guide to safer care
Claire Cox posted an article in Keeping patients safe
The ThinkSAFE Logbook has four sections: Information about you. How you can help enhance your safety in hospital. Information and notes about your care. Other useful information for patients and families. The Logbook also includes a number of useful tools, tips and prompts to help you and the healthcare staff caring for you to share information. This will help you to be involved and informed about your care and treatment. The pages are ordered so that when they are printed double-sided they create an A5 booklet. Once printed, the pages can be folded and then either stapled down the fold to create a soft cover booklet, or hole-punched to fit inside an A5 ring-binder folder. -
Content ArticleThe Benchmarking Network is the in-house benchmarking service of the NHS. The Network is hosted by East London NHS Foundation Trust.
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Content ArticleThe film follows the Oxford Health and Biomedical Research Centre's publication of the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Strategy, which sets out their vision to embed involvement into their research themes.
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Content ArticleKey findings: Though PPI is increasingly common in healthcare research, there is limited agreement about how, when, and why it should best be done. Patients and the public get involved in research for a variety of reasons but often because they want to help others and contribute to a better healthcare system. To enable involvement, PPI needs to be funded adequately, opportunities need to be clearly communicated, and support needs to be available for researchers and PPI contributors. More PPI on its own doesn’t necessarily mean better research, and doing PPI just for the sake of it can discourage researchers and disenfranchise people who get involved. PPI should be relevant and meaningful for the research and the people involved. PPI has the potential to improve research and empower contributors, but evidence about how that actually happens, to what extent, and to what effect, is limited. To monitor and evaluate PPI, researchers will need to agree on what study designs are appropriate, be clear about what PPI activities are meant to achieve, and focus evaluations on the process of PPI and/or its contributions to research.
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ThinkSAFE: Information checklists – Admission & discharge
Claire Cox posted an article in Keeping patients safe
