, , , & Incivility experiences of racially minoritised hospital staff, consequences for them and implications for patient care: An international scoping review. Sociology of Health & Illness. 2024 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13760
Vogt KS, Johnson J, Coleman R, Simms-Ellis R, Harrison R, Shearman N, et al. Can the reboot coaching programme support critical care nurses in coping with stressful clinical events? A mixed-methods evaluation assessing resilience, Burnout, depression and turnover intentions. BMC Health Services Research. 2024 Mar 15;24(1). doi:10.1186/s12913-023-10468-w
Dr Laura Sheard
Associate Professor, University of York
Honorary Principal Research Fellow, Bradford Institute for Health Research
The quality and safety of healthcare in prisons in the UK has had relatively little attention paid to it, in contrast with the abundance of research on these topics in the hospital environment. Prison based medicine is often viewed as a Cinderella area of healthcare provision; largely hidden away from public scrutiny whilst being an underfunded, undervalued and an unattractive sector for healthcare professionals to work in with a high number of complex patients living in overcrowded conditions. Only a few studies have examined everyday primary care provision in prisons (for example, asthma, diabetes or high blood pressure). Yet, the prison setting represents a unique opportunity to intervene and improve the healthcare trajectories of some of the most marginalised people in society.
In this presentation, Laura spoke about the importance of prison healthcare, how it can be improved and she is passionate about this topic. Laura drew on her own experience of the four years she worked in HMP Leeds alongside findings from several mixed methods studies she led in particular “Qual-P” which focused on understanding and improving the quality of and access to everyday primary care in prisons in the North of England.
A large part of the presentation discussed the major factors which influence the quality of primary care. These are: chronic understaffing; high variability of quality between sites, little to no quality measurement; excessive Did Not Attend rate; community-prison interface incompatibility including IT systems and opioid prescribing; facilitative relationships between healthcare staff and patients.
Professor Charles Vincent
Professor Charles Vincent is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford.
The most prominent and effective patient safety interventions have been targeted at the reliability of basic processes and largely followed a quality improvement model. There are however many other ways of improving safety. Effective intervention requires a portfolio of strategies which can be customised to different healthcare contexts. There are five main families of strategies are the best practice quality improvement approach; broader system interventions; risk control; improving the capacity to adapt, monitor and respond and finally mitigation. The five families can be broadly split into strategies which improve overall quality and safety and those which are primarily aimed at managing risk. These longer-term strategies need to be complemented by short term safety strategies to manage pressures and rapid change, which can be achieved by flexing resources, prioritisation and adaptive teamwork and leadership. The effective management of risk requires a broad portfolio of both short and long-term strategies which can be customised to different problems and different contexts.
Dr Justin Aunger, Research Fellow, Midlands Patient Safety Research Collaboration
Unprofessional behaviour (UB) between staff encompasses various behaviours, including incivility, microaggressions, harassment, and bullying. It is pervasive in acute health care settings and disproportionately impacts minoritised staff. UB has detrimental effects on staff wellbeing, patient safety, and organisational resources. While interventions have been implemented to mitigate UB, there remains limited understanding of how and why they may work and for whom. Similarly, while contributors to these behaviours have been investigated, understanding of how they interact and how they can be targeted by interventions can be improved. To address these knowledge gaps, we performed a realist review, drawing on 148 literature sources and 42 reports of interventions, to better understand how these contributors lead to UB and worsening of its impacts. We also investigated when and how these complex, context-dependent interventions to reduce UB work. This presentation will explore our findings and present implementation guidance to help others address UB in the healthcare workplace in the future.
Dr. Justin Aunger is a researcher with a background in behavioural science applied at individual, team, and organisational levels. He is interested in addressing complex challenges in healthcare organisations and has recently worked on multiple projects drawing on realist methodology. This includes understanding how inter-organisational collaborations work, and how unprofessional behaviours between staff can be addressed. He has experience developing and delivering multiple kinds of research, including behaviour change interventions in a healthcare context, realist reviews and evaluations, and qualitative studies.
Wilson C, Janes G, Lawton, R, & Benn J. Feedback for Emergency Ambulance Staff: A National Review of Current Practice Informed by Realist Evaluation Methodology. In Healthcare 2023: Vol. 11, No. 16, p. 2229. MDPI.
Lea W, Lawton R, Vincent C, O’Hara J. Exploring the “Black Box” of Recommendation Generation in Local Health Care Incident Investigations: A Scoping Review. J Patient Saf. 2023 Dec 1;19(8):553-563. doi: 10.1097/PTS.0000000000001164. Epub 2023 Sep 15. PMID: 37712844; PMCID: PMC10662609.
Ford DM, Budworth L, Lawton R, Teale EA, O’Connor DB. In-hospital stress and patient outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE. 2023 Mar 9;18(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282789
Wilson CM, Janes G, Lawton R, Benn J. Types and effects of feedback for emergency ambulance staff: a systematic mixed studies review and meta-analysis 2023. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2022-015634.
Background
Patients who clinically deteriorate without recognition and/or response are at risk of unplanned admission to intensive care, cardiac arrest, and/or death (termed Serious Adverse Events (SAEs)). To mitigate SAEs, track-and-trigger tools are used internationally to prompt healthcare practitioners (typically nursing staff) to recognise physiological changes that signal deterioration, and to contact a practitioner with expertise in acute/critical illness. In the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) (track-and-trigger tool) was developed and disseminated widely to standardise practice. Despite evidence track-and-trigger tools (like NEWS) improve patient outcomes, their translation into clinical practice is inconsistent. This is partly attributed to nursing staff failing to change their behaviour.
Aim
The aim of the project was to develop a theory-based behaviour change intervention to enhance enablers and overcome barriers, to Registered Nurses (RNs) and Healthcare Assistants (HCAs) enacting expected behaviours in recognising and responding to signs of patient deterioration.
Methods
A mixed methods design was used with three phases: 1. Focused ethnography on two clinical floors in an acute hospital to compare directly observed behaviours (of RNs and HCAs) with those specified in policy. From directed content analysis of field notes, target behaviours were identified, specified, and shortlisted; 2. Brief (not audio-recorded but recorded in field notes) interviews were conducted soon after direct observation of relevant behaviour. Some brief interview participants were recruited for an audio-recorded, semi-structured, interview informed by a Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) topic guide. Interview data were analysed deductively (the 14 TDF domains were coding categories) and inductively to identify determinants (i.e. barriers and enablers) of target behaviours. TDF domains representing important determinants were identified using published criteria and linked to Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) from expert consensus literature; 3. BCTs were shortlisted by the research team and presented to clinical stakeholders alongside example applications (i.e. concrete strategies for operationalising BCTs). Using Nominal Group Technique, stakeholders ranked BCTs and their potential applications for acceptability and feasibility. Ranking data were used to inform the content of a preliminary intervention.
Results
During 300 hours of fieldwork, 499 items of data (i.e. an episode of observation or a set of vital signs from chart review) were recorded; 289 (58%) associated with expected (i.e. policy-specified) behaviour; 210 (42%) associated with unexpected behaviour (i.e. alternative behaviour or no behaviour). Ten behaviours were identified as potential behaviours for change; shortlisted to seven target behaviours. Brief interviews were conducted with 39 RNs and 50 HCAs, and semi-structured interviews with 16 RNs and 16 HCAs. Quotes from interviews were linked to nine (for brief interviews) and 14 (for semi-structured interviews) TDF domains. Nine TDF domains were identified as being of high importance: Knowledge, Social Professional Role and Identity, Beliefs about Consequences, Reinforcement, Intentions, Goals, Memory, Attention and Decision Processes, Environmental Context and Resources, Social Influences. These domains were linked to 50 BCTs; shortlisted to 14. Ranking data from two nominal groups held with 19 stakeholders were used to shortlist further, resulting in a preliminary intervention that includes an educational package and 12 BCTs that will be delivered through workshops and on acute wards, using 18 applications.
Conclusion
This research made a unique contribution to the international body of evidence, as it is the first study where a theoretical framework of behaviour change and a taxonomy of BCTs were used to model an intervention to improve responses to clinically deteriorating patients. The intervention is preliminary, as it is anticipated that it will be piloted in clinical practice and refined during a subsequent feasibility study.
Dr Smith is a clinical-academic nurse with a background in acute and critical care spanning two decades. Duncan holds a Senior Lecturer post in the School of Health and Psychological Sciences at City, University of London where he is a module leader for the MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice and a contributor to the PGCert in Critical Care. Alongside his academic role, Dr Smith is an honorary Consultant Nurse with the Patient Emergency Response and Resuscitation Team (PERRT) at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust where he continues to work clinically. Duncan’s clinical experience as a critical care outreach nurse in several organisations across London shaped his research activities pre-doctorally and informed his PhD. In April 2018 Dr Smith was awarded a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship to complete a programme of work titled: DEveloping a Complex Intervention for DEteriorating Patients using Theoretical Modelling (DECIDE study). The aim of his doctoral research was to develop a theory-based, complex, behaviour change intervention to optimise recognition of, and response to, patients with signs of clinical deterioration. Dr Smith has recently been awarded a NIHR Development and Skills (DSE) Enhancement grant to upskill ahead of applying for an advanced clinical academic fellowship. For his post-doctoral work, Dr Smith anticipates designing and delivering a feasibility study to pilot the intervention at multiple hospital sites and to test the feasibility of using a cluster RCT to evaluate its efficacy.
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