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Showing results for tags 'Safe staffing'.
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Community PostPhysician associates are healthcare professionals who work as part of a multidisciplinary team with supervision from a named senior doctor, providing care to patients in primary, secondary and community care environments. First introduced in 2003, PAs have become increasingly talked about in healthcare and in the media, with many discussions focused on the safety of the current approach. We want to hear from patients and carers. Have you, or someone you care for, got an experience of being seen by a PA that you would like to share? Do you feel more information about the PA role would be useful for patients? Do you have any other comments, concerns or perspectives you would like to add? Please comment below (you'll need to sign up first, for free) or contact the team at content@pslhub.org
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Content Article
Panorama investigates a private hospital chain being used to help clear the NHS waiting list. With more than six million people in England alone waiting for an operation on the NHS, Monika Plaha investigates the safety record of one of the UK's biggest private healthcare providers. -
Content ArticleThis is an official NHS letter sent to:all general practicesall primary care network clinical directorsintegrated care board CEOsNHS England regional directors.The letter highlights guidance and actions to support the practices that employ physician associates on the implementation of roles as part of the delivery of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
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Content ArticleIn this Guardian article, Theopi Skarlatos explains how she was making a documentary about the UK’s midwife crisis when she lost her baby. By then she had heard time and again about understaffing, depression, burnout …
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News ArticleNHS England’s workforce ambitions are based on ‘significant’ substitution of fully qualified GPs with trainees and specialist and associate specialist (SAS) doctors, the public spending watchdog has revealed. In a new assessment of the NHS long-term workforce plan, the National Audit Office (NAO) found that NHS England’s modelling of the future workforce had ‘significant weaknesses’ and that some of its ‘assumptions’ may have been ‘optimistic’. Last year, the national commissioner committed to doubling medical school places to 15,000 and increasing GP training places to 6,000 by 2031. This was based on modelling which predicted that, without these changes, the NHS could face a staffing shortfall of 360,000 and a GP shortfall of 15,000 by 2036. The NAO’s report has examined the robustness of NHS England’s predictions, and made a number of recommendations which could influence the refreshed projections NHSE has committed to publishing every two years. The long-term workforce plan (LTWP) projected only a 4% increase in fully-qualified GPs between 2021 and 2036, compared to a 49% growth in consultants. "The total supply of doctors in primary care is projected to increase substantially over the modelled period but the total number of fully qualified GPs is not," the report said. It found that NHSE’s projected supply growth in general practice "consists mainly of trainee GPs", who accounted for 93%, as well as "making increased use of specialist and associate specialist (SAS) doctors in primary care". Read full story Source: Pulse, 22 March 2024
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News Article
Mental health trust failed to heed safety warnings, campaigners say
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A mental health trust linked to thousands of unexpected patient deaths repeatedly failed to act on coroners' safety warnings, campaigners say. BBC News has been given exclusive access to new evidence from coroners' reports gathered by a campaign group. It wants a criminal investigation into why so many patients died at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust - and has sent police the evidence. Campaigners, including patients and bereaved families, claim it is failing to make vital safety improvements despite promising to do so. Last summer, a report found more than 8,000 mental-health patients had died unexpectedly in Norfolk and Suffolk between 2019 and 2022. This is defined as the death of a patient who has not been identified as critically ill or whose death is not expected by the clinical team. The new evidence, based on 38 coroners' prevention of future death (PFD) reports since 2013, suggests there were repeated warnings more patients could die unless safety issues were addressed, including: dangerously poor record-keeping and communication family concerns being ignored unsafe levels of staffing at the trust. And campaigners say the trust's failure to improve safety has led to more deaths. Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 March 2024 -
Content Article
This month marks two years of the hub's Patient Safety Spotlight interview series. Patient Safety Learning's Content and Engagement Manager Lotty Tizzard reflects on the value of sharing personal insights and identifies the key patient safety themes that interviewees have highlighted over the past two years. -
Content ArticleIn this interview, Professor Martin Marshall, former GP and Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, shares his concerns for the future of general practice in the UK. He outlines the danger that more of the workforce will turn to private practice due to current pressures facing NHS GPs.
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Content ArticleThe adrenal glands are found in the fatty tissue at the back of the abdomen above each kidney, and produce steroid and adrenaline hormones. Surgery on tumours of the adrenal gland is uncommon compared with surgery for other tumours such as those of the breast, bowel, kidney and lung. Research has shown that the more adrenal operations a surgeon undertakes per year, the better the overall outcomes for patients undergoing that type of surgery. In this study, the outcomes from adrenal operations recorded over 18 years in the national adrenal surgical registry were analysed. The results confirmed previous findings showing that postoperative complications and length of hospital stay were reduced for patients operated by surgeons who did more adrenal operations per year. Operations done by keyhole surgery had better outcomes. Operations done either in older patients, or for the rare adrenal cancer tumours had worse outcomes, as did operations in which both adrenal glands were removed. The authors recommended that all surgeons performing adrenal surgery should monitor the outcomes of their operations, ideally in a national registry, and discuss these with patients before surgery; and undertake a minimum of six adrenal operations per year, but a minimum of 12 per year if doing surgery for adrenal cancer or surgery to remove both adrenal glands.
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Content ArticleThe press has all been full of headlines about staffing levels in the NHS, but this is probably a problem across healthcare around the country. What this does is provide the perfect patient safety quandary, how do we keep all the areas safe. This often results in the redeployment of nursing staff to different areas, but does this provide the required levels of safety. It appears that having several areas in an “amber” staffing level is preferable than one red area. It is simple logic, but does this create an unrealistic expectation on staff that means the safety is better but only at a barely satisfactory level? Do we think that any of these decisions influences the efficiency of a ward? Is the ward safe and effective? In this blog, Chris Elston explores these issues and uses a Safety Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) to show some of the lesser appreciated risks to redeploying staff and consider some ways to reduce the risks.
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Content Article
APIC staffing calculator
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Safe staffing levels
This staffing calculator has been developed by the US Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). The tool is in beta version and uses input from individual healthcare facilities to provide recommendations to assist with infection prevention staffing decisions. There are three separate calculators: Acute care hospital calculator Long-term care calculator Ambulatory clinic calculator As the tool is currently in development, the data collected from participating organisations will be used to update the calculators and provide the most accurate staffing recommendations. -
Content ArticleIn the USA, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) work-hour restrictions (WHRs) are intended to improve patient safety by reducing resident doctor fatigue. However, compliance with ACGME WHRs is not universal. This study aimed to identify factors that influence resident doctors' decisions to take a post-call day (PCD) off in line with ACGME WHRs. The authors concluded that as most important influencer of residents’ decisions to take a PCD off was related to feedback from their supervisors, compliance with WHRs can be improved by focusing on the residency program’s safety culture.
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Content ArticleThe USA National Nurses United is proposing for minimum, mandated, nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to protect patients’ right to nursing care. Every patient deserves a single standard of high-quality care. The ratios, coupled with nurses’ powerful voice of advocacy secured in collective bargaining, protect patients from complications that arise from missed care such as medical errors, health care disparities, infections, and so much more.
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News Article
Midwife quit over 'unsafe care' and staffing
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A former midwife has told the BBC she quit because she could not live with herself if she provided poor care. Hannah Williams says staff shortages meant she kept patients safe, but sometimes only "by the skin of her teeth". BBC Verify analysis shows that the number of full-time equivalent midwife posts in England has gone up by 7% in the last decade. In comparison, the overall NHS workforce has increased by 34%. The country has a shortage of about 2,500 midwives, and maternity units are struggling with safety concerns. BBC research has also found that some trusts have more than one in five midwife jobs unfilled. The Royal College of Midwives says staffing is the "most important issue" and the gap needs to close. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 January 2024 -
Content ArticleThe Royal College of Nursing (RCN) held its first ever safe staffing summit, bringing together global nursing workforce experts with senior nurses across the UK to agree a vision for the future and how to fight for it. When there are too few nursing staff, they can be stretched dangerously thin. With tens of thousands of vacant nurse posts across the UK right now, this happens too often. The summit heard compelling evidence about the impact of safe nurse-to-patient ratios, set in law in other countries, where there are limits on the number of patients one nurse can safely care for. Nicola Ranger, RCN's Chief Nurse, reflects on the outcome of the RCN’s first ever safe staffing summit.
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Content ArticleThis narrative review in the journal Anaesthesia reviews the background to overlapping surgery, an approach in which a single senior surgeon operates across two parallel operating theatres. Anaesthesia is induced and surgery commenced by junior surgeons in the second operating theatre while the lead surgeon completes the operation in the first. The authors assessed whether there is any theoretical basis to expect increased productivity in terms of number of operations completed. A review of observational studies found that while there is a perception of increased surgical output for one surgeon, there is no evidence of increased productivity compared with two surgeons working in parallel. There is potential for overlapping surgery to have some positive impact in situations where turnover times between cases are long, operations are short and where ‘critical portions’ of surgery constitute about half of the total operation time. However, any advantages must be balanced against safety, ethical and training concerns.
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Event
IHI Forum
Sam posted an event in Community Calendar
untilThe IHI Forum is a four-day conference that has been the home of quality improvement in health care for more than 30 years. Dedicated improvement professionals from across the globe will be convening to tackle health care's most pressing challenges: improvement capability, patient and workforce safety, equity, climate change, artificial intelligence, and more. Register -
Content ArticleIn this opinion piece for the BMJ, Partha Kar looks at the current debate surrounding the role of medical associate professionals (MAPs) in the NHS. He highlights the concerns raised by many that MAPs are “doctors on the cheap” and outlines the reasons for friction between junior doctors and MAPs, which include the issues of pay, training and regulation. He also outlines issues facing locally employed doctors (LEDs), international medical graduates (IMGs) and specialist, associate specialists (SASs) including lack of access to training, supervision and career progression. He makes five suggestions to improve the situation and calls for a pause to consider how these different roles can interact and work together, for the good of both staff and the health service.
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Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Jenny talks about the challenge of keeping up with and prioritising new guidance and the need to streamline recommendations to ensure they are implemented efficiently. She also discusses the importance of getting the basics, like staffing levels, right and how sea swimming has influenced how she sees patient safety. -
Content ArticleThis report by the Nuffield Trust looks at workforce training issues in England, arguing that the domestic training pipeline for clinical careers has been unfit for purpose for many years. It presents research that highlights leaks across the training pathway, from students dropping out of university, to graduates pursuing careers outside the profession they trained in and outside public services. Alongside high numbers of doctors, nurses and other clinicians leaving the NHS early in their careers, this is contributing to publicly funded health and social care services being understaffed and under strain. It is also failing to deliver value for money for the huge taxpayer investment in education and training.
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Content ArticleThe Community Hospitals Association (CHA) has designed a suite of resource packs as a way of sharing some of the learning in an accessible way. This resource pack focuses on the topic of safer staffing in community hospitals. This resource pack has been compiled because of requests from members of the CHA and the Special Interest Group in Q
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Content ArticleThe nurse-to-patient ratio represents the number of patients a registered nurse cares for during a shift. Most hospitals have guidelines to ensure safe staffing ratios, but staffing shortages have led to heavier nursing workloads. This article outlines which US states have laws and regulations in place for safe staffing ratios.
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Content Article
A strategy for the care workforce (TUC, August 2023)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Social care
The Trade Unions Congress (TUC) is proposing a new care workforce strategy for England, developed with trade unions and informed by the voice and experiences of care workers. This strategy document sets out the critical building blocks to ensure care workers are valued and supported, as a key means of addressing the current staffing crisis and improving access to and quality of social and childcare services. -
News Article
NHS 'to employ half of public sector by 2026'
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS workforce plan will cost £50 billion and result in the health service employing half the public sector by the 2030s, analysis concludes today. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has in effect “stolen more than a decade’s worth of budgets” from his successors by setting out plans to hire almost a million extra NHS staff without a clear way to pay for them, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says. Hunt has been urged to use his autumn statement to start setting out whether tax rises, borrowing or cuts elsewhere will be used to fund the “massive spending commitment”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 30 August 2023 -
Content ArticleThis study in Intensive and Critical Care Nursing examined the association between safety attitudes, quality of care, missed care, nurse staffing levels and the rate of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) in adult intensive care units (ICUs). The authors concluded that positive safety culture and better nurse staffing levels can lower the rates of HAIs in ICUs. Improvements to nurse staffing will reduce nursing workloads, which may reduce missed care, increase job satisfaction, and, ultimately, reduce HAIs.
