Workforce Issues On Patient Safety

Workforce Issues On Patient Safety
Workforce Issues On Patient Safety
In this assignment, you will consider how workforce issues impact patient safety.
Please do in Apa format and cite sources.
Identify the methodology, design, and rationale of the following titles.
1. Exploring the rate of seasonal-pattern depression in an Inuit community
2. Democracy in America
3. The relationship between compassion fatigue and burnout among critical care nurses
4. Two drugs for Alzheimer’s show promise
5. Evaluating technology with student success
6. Factors that influence weight control among women
7. The meaning of living with brain injury and stroke 10 years after the injury
8. Exploring the beliefs of healing among Aborigines
Staff and patient safety are inextricably intertwined.
Patient safety is concerned with preventing avoidable harm and ensuring that all reasonable precautions are taken to provide safe care.
It’s simple to see how patient safety is linked to staff safety:
During the Covid-19 outbreak, those who had access to suitable PPE helped to keep both employees and patients safe from infection.
In health and social care, addressing the blame culture benefits employees by allowing them to feel psychologically comfortable while discussing incidences of unsafe treatment, near misses, and possibilities for improvement.
Patient safety issues are more likely to be recognized, reported, and remedied as a result of this.
Maintaining appropriate workforce levels helps to prevent burnout, which has a direct influence on employees’ well-being and health.
Staff that is overworked and exhausted suffers not only from a loss of motivation but also from a loss of performance.
Patient safety is jeopardized as a result of this.
Safer care is built on six pillars.
A Blueprint for Action, our report, lays out what is required to move forward toward a patient-safe future.
[2]
The paper, which is based on systemic analysis and research, lays out six pillars for safer care and suggests practical solutions to address them.
We can also look through the lens of these foundations when considering how we can improve staff safety in a way that complements patient safety:
Shared Learning – As we work to develop and achieve learning goals in patient safety, it would be beneficial to share lessons learned from unsafe patients and staff, as well as best practices in both of these areas.
The significance of overarching leadership in health and social care for patient safety is a crucial idea.
It is critical that leaders incorporate employee safety into safety programs.
Professionalizing patient safety — We propose that we need to establish organizational standards for patient safety performance, with all employees being appropriately qualified and experienced to provide safe care.
We must build health and social care systems that are safe for both patients and staff.
Patient Engagement — promoting and supporting patient involvement in patient safety is about working together to improve safety.
We also need to involve staff members more actively in improving safety for the benefit of patients and their families.
We propose modifications to how we monitor, report, and assess patient safety performance based on data and insight.
These enhancements are also required for the safety of the employees.
Just Culture – Fostering a culture in health and social care that is free of blame and fear, and fosters the reporting and resolution of problems will benefit both workers and patients.
While it is impossible to cover all aspects of staff safety in one blog, we will go over some of the more important ones in the following four sections and explain how making success in these areas is linked to increasing patient safety.
Physical security is paramount.
The threat posed by Covid-19 in health and social care settings has highlighted the need of health and social care workers’ physical protection.
This is significant both in terms of patient safety and lowering the danger of infection transmission, as well as the catastrophic repercussions for workers.
According to a recent research by Amnesty International, the epidemic has resulted in a large number of deaths among health and social care professionals around the world.
[3]
The availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) has been one of the areas of focus.
Staff in particular situations, such as ambulances, found it more difficult to obtain suitable PPE than colleagues in other settings, such as emergency departments, in the United Kingdom.
[4]
As a result, inequalities between sectors have been highlighted, with social care workers having more difficulties obtaining appropriate PPE than hospital workers.
[5]
During a pandemic, not having the proper PPE raises the risk to both the workers and the patients they are treating.
We’ve highlighted staff experiences of this on our patient safety learning platform, the hub, such as a midwife sharing her concerns about cross contamination and a Macmillan specialist nurse discussing the need for greater clarity surrounding PPE regulations.
[6]
Worry regarding the potential for hospital acquired infections were also highlighted throughout the pandemic, with personnel expressing their concerns about the impact this could have on them, their patients, and their families.
[7]
There have been concerns with personnel not having access to testing as a result of this.
This, once again, poses a threat to both staff and patient safety, putting those involved, as well as those they are caring for, at risk.
As we continue to live with Covid-19, ensuring that we take steps to protect the physical safety of health and social care workers will be a top focus to maintain patient and staff safety.
Staffing levels that are safe
“Ensuring NHS providers are staffed with the necessary number and mix of clinical professionals is crucial to delivering excellent care and keeping patients safe from preventable harm,” according to the NHS.
[8]
It’s all about having the appropriate number of people in the right place at the right time, with the correct talents.
[9]
For employees, maintaining safe staffing levels is linked not just to their capacity to execute their jobs to the best of their abilities, but also to their personal well-being.
Due to a lack of staffing, they may be unable to accomplish simple tasks such as stay hydrated, eat, or use the restroom, which can take a physical and emotional toll over time.
[10]
We’ve shared employee experiences about unsafe staffing on the hub.
[11]
The current climate has the potential to exacerbate these issues, with concerns that personnel, particularly those who have been working through the Covid-19 outbreak, would become even more burnt out.
[12]
Staff welfare must be factored into workforce planning as part of the post-covid recovery strategy, rather than being examined just “if there was a staffing issue, high sickness, or, more cynically, a poor survey result.”
[13]
A large amount of research shows that insufficient staffing numbers have a negative impact on patient outcomes.
[14]
Furthermore, important patient safety reports, like as the Francis report on the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, show clear correlations between patient safety occurrences and safe staffing levels.
[15]
It is self-evident that this is a critical issue for enhancing both worker and patient safety.
Psychological protection
“a sense of confidence that your voice is respected, and that it is safe to speak up at work with ideas, questions, worries, and even blunders”
[16]
Psychological safety is critical in creating the conditions necessary to successfully respond to occurrences of unsafe treatment.
[17]
In the absence of this, organizational cultures that seek to assign blame when things go wrong increase the likelihood of patient harm occurring again.
[18]
This is because such cultures encourage people to hide mistakes rather than report them, and they frequently single out individuals for blame when occurrences may have a systemic source, resulting in a failure to address the underlying problem.
[19]
There has been a lot of research done on the importance of psychological safety in the workplace and how it may help improve patient safety.
Despite this, establishing psychologically safe workplace cultures continues to be a significant difficulty.
We’ve shared the concerns of NHS employees on the hub, who say that a “Just Culture approach is talked about but rarely exhibited or accepted when issues are made.”
[20]
Concerns about bullying are linked to this, with reports of employees being scolded by senior colleagues for raising reasonable safety concerns.
[21]
[22]
These concerns are evident in the most recent NHS Staff Survey, which found that almost 160,000 out of 569,400 respondents did not feel safe reporting concerns about risky clinical practice.
[23]
We notice similar issues in the way users interact with the hub at Patient Safety Learning.
Staff members frequently express reluctance to share examples of good practice, as well as concerns about unsafe care.
These concerns persist even when records are anonymized to protect the identities of persons involved.
Staff members express apprehension about being “found out,” and they do not have permission to share best practices.
Staff not feeling secure to speak up and share what they’ve learned is a major roadblock to improving patient safety.
We suggest that, while the knowledge and expressed commitment to create the conditions for psychological safety in health and social care are accessible, putting it into practice remains a major difficulty.
Many organizations have a strong blame culture.
Patient Safety Learning believes that every health and social care organization should make a determined effort to define and publish goals for culture change, that these goals should be measured and monitored, and that best practices should be widely shared.
As part of a Just Culture, system and organizational leaders must recognize the need of psychological safety.
And then act on it.