I don’t know about anyone else, but I can feel quite overwhelmed at the moment, and I don’t think I’m alone! Working in health and care is a privilege, but comes with responsibility. I see many wonderful working in a stretched system, and think are we doing enough to support them?
Since my work at the Improvement Academy focusses on patient safety, I have a particular interest in how we support staff involved in patient safety incidents. I worked with colleagues at Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group to look at what staff want, what they get and whether it is effective or not. You can read our paper here: Avoiding ‘second victims’ in healthcare: what support do staff want for coping with patient safety incidents, what do they get and is it effective? A systematic review | BMJ Open
We know that there are some groups that are disproportionately affected by disciplinary proceedings (GMC targets elimination of disproportionate complaints and training inequalities – GMC, ), so are we doing enough to support everyone. Our colleague Alice has been doing a project ‘Exploring the impact that a patient safety incident investigation has on the mental health of International Medical Graduates’ as part of WY ICB’s Improving Population Fellowship programme. Alice will be sharing insights from her project at our next Just Culture Network learning event. If you would like to join our Just Culture Network, please contact Academy@yhia.nhs.uk
