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Showing results for tags 'Qualitative'.
Found 78 results
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Content ArticleThe impact of incident investigations in improving patient safety may be linked to the quality of risk controls recommended in investigation reports. This study in the Journal of Patient Safety aimed to identify the range and apparent strength of risk controls generated from investigations into serious incidents, map them against contributory factors identified in investigation reports, and characterise the nature of the risk controls proposed. The authors did a content analysis of 126 action plans of serious incident investigation reports from a multisite and multi-speciality UK hospital over a three-year period to identify the risk controls proposed. They found that: a substantial proportion (15%) of factors identified in investigation reports as contributing to serious incidents were not addressed by identifiable risk controls. most of the proposed risk controls in action plans were assessed as weak, typically focusing on individualised interventions, even when the problems were organisational or systemic in character. They identified six broad approaches to risk controls: improving individual or team performance defining, standardising or reinforcing expected practice improving the working environment improving communication process improvements disciplinary actions. The authors concluded that advancing the quality of risk controls after serious incident investigations requires involvement of human factors specialists in their design, a theory-of-change approach, evaluation, and curation and sharing of learning. This should be supported by a common framework.
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Content ArticleThe aim of the study was to describe the experiences related to sleep and night time rest of patients hospitalised in the intensive care unit (ICU). The study used a qualitative project based on phenomenology as a research method. A semi-structured interview was used as the method to achieve the goal. The patients’ answers were recorded and transcribed. The data were coded and cross-processed. Five themes were identified from the interview as factors disturbing sleep: fear, noise, light, medical staff, and at home best. Chronic anxiety appears to contribute to sleep disturbances in the ICUs, psychological support, and individualised approach to the hospitalised patient seem necessary. By raising the awareness of the essence of sleep among medical staff, environmental factors can be reduced as disturbing sleep. Based on the participants’ comments, it is possible that repeated actions could also increase the patients’ sense of security.
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Content ArticleUsing open-text responses from the Bereaved Family Survey (BFS), this study in the American Journal of Surgery sought to explore Veteran family experiences on end-of-life care after surgery. Families that left open text comments often expressed a belief in their loved one's unnecessary pain, expressing distrust in the treatment decisions of the care team. The results also showed that limited communication about the severity of disease or risks of surgery caused conflicting and unresolved narratives about the cause or timing of death. Families also described feelings of disempowerment when they were not involved in decision-making and when their wishes were not respected.
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Content ArticleResearch conducted by a team at the University of Birmingham delves into the intricate dynamics of empathy towards patients and colleagues, revealing insights that challenge conventional wisdom. Empathy is widely recognised as a cornerstone of medical care. Increased physician empathy has been linked to better patient outcomes and satisfaction, yet there has been little exploration of its presence in surgical training. The study involved interviews with 10 surgical trainees at various stages of their careers to uncover a nuanced understanding of empathy within the profession. Contrary to the widely documented decline in empathy among medical students and professionals, participants described their experiences as a balance between empathy and the demands of surgical practice. Participants acknowledged the importance of empathy in patient care but highlighted the challenges of maintaining it amid the pressures of a surgical environment. They described a delicate balance between understanding patients’ needs and the efficiency required to manage high patient volumes and demanding workloads. The study revealed how empathy evolves throughout a surgeon’s career. Whilst some trainees experienced desensitisation to emotional stimuli, many described increased empathy as they gained more experience and exposure to patient care.
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Content ArticleThere is currently a lack of research addressing the impact of patient suicide on GPs. This qualitative study in BMJ Open aimed to examine the personal and professional impact of patient suicide, as well as the availability of support and why GPs did or did not use it. The authors found that GPs are impacted both personally and professionally when they lose a patient to suicide, but may not access formal help due to commonly held idealised notions of a ‘good’ GP who is regarded as being unshakable. Fear of professional repercussions also plays a major role in deterring help-seeking. A systemic culture shift which allows GPs to seek support when their physical or mental health requires it is needed, and this may help prevent stress, burnout and early retirement.
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Content ArticleNontechnical skills (NTS) are the behaviours and thought processes used by surgeons to make decisions, maintain awareness of the operating environment, communicate with and lead team members with the view to producing reliably safe outcomes. This qualitative research explored how surgeons deploy NTS to facilitate safe and effective outcomes from surgical interventions. The authors conclude that successfully understanding and engaging NTS is potentially more proactively useful to surgeons than feedback from more invasive techniques used by some approaches to safe operator assurance.
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Content Article
A complex adaptive systems approach to patient safety
Kumar posted an article in Improving patient safety
Hospitals are complex adaptive systems. They are industrial environments where it isn't always possible to expect predictable responses to inputs. Patient safety management practices need to adapt to align with the environment in which events occur. It is time to reimagine safety event reporting and management solutions that guide, not prescribe, investigations and improvement actions.- Posted
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Content ArticleDespite their widespread use, the evidence base for the effectiveness of quality improvement collaboratives remains mixed. Lack of clarity about ‘what good looks like’ in collaboratives remains a persistent problem. This qualitative study in BMJ Open aimed to identify the distinctive features of a state-wide collaboratives programme that has demonstrated sustained improvements in quality of care in a range of clinical specialties over a long period. The authors identified five features that characterised success in the collaboratives programme: learning from positive deviance high-quality coordination high-quality measurement and comparative performance feedback careful use of motivational levers mobilising professional leadership and building community.
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Content ArticleThe EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care trial was designed to assist primary care practices in the US in implementing evidence-based practices in cardiovascular care and building capacity for quality improvement. This qualitative study in BMC Primary Care aimed to gain a comprehensive understanding of perspectives from research participants and team members on the value of implementation strategies and factors that influenced the EvidenceNOW initiative in Virginia. Read a simplified research summary: Strategies for implementing large-scale quality improvement in primary care
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Content ArticleEfforts to increase physician engagement in quality and safety are most often approached from an organisational or administrative perspective. Given hospital-based physicians’ strong professional identification, physician-led strategies may offer a novel strategic approach to enhancing physician engagement. It remains unclear what role medical leadership can play in leading programmes to enhance physician engagement. In this study, Rotteau et al. explore physicians’ experience of participating in a Medical Safety Huddle initiative and how participation influences engagement with organisational quality and safety efforts. They found that The Medical Safety Huddle initiative supports physician engagement in quality and safety through intrinsic motivation. However, the huddles’ implementation must align with the organisation’s multipronged patient safety agenda to support multidisciplinary collaborative quality and safety efforts and leaders must ensure mechanisms to consistently address reported safety concerns for sustained physician engagement.
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Content ArticleThis study in the journal Dove Press aimed to explore the experience of patient safety culture among South Korean advanced practice nurses in hospital-based home healthcare. 20 nurses involved in home healthcare were recruited from twelve hospitals located in three different cities throughout South Korea. The authors concluded that there were significant aspects of patient safety culture in hospital-based home healthcare, allowing for good continuity of care for patients. These aspects include communicating with caregivers, building community partnerships, understanding unexpected home environments and enhancing the safety of nurses.
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Content Article
A ‘Just Culture’ aims to improve patient safety by looking at the organisational and individual factors that contribute to incidents. It encourages people to speak up about their errors and mistakes so that action can be taken to prevent those errors from being repeated. Adam Tasker and Julia Jones are graduate medical students at Warwick Medical School. They wanted to explore doctors’ perceptions of culture and identify ways to foster a Just Culture, so they conducted a qualitative research study at one of the hospitals where they were doing their medical training. We asked them about why Just Culture is important in the health and care system, and what they discovered from their research. -
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. Lesley talks to us about how personal stories enrich our understanding of data, drive real quality improvement and remind us that healthcare is all about people. She also explains how her own personal experience drives her work to improve healthcare experiences for patients and their families. -
News Article
New patient safety research by Northumbria University achieves global accolades
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Looking to improve practice through learning Errors, mishaps and misunderstandings are surprisingly common in medicine and around one in 10 patients suffer avoidable harm, impacting on patients, their families, health care organisations, staff and students. However a research project seeking to improve patient safety across Europe, led by Newcastle-based Northumbria University, has received international acclaim as it looks to improve practice through learning. The SLIPPS (Shared Learning from Practice to improve Patient Safety) project is Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, and is led by Professor Alison Steven, a Reader in Health Professions Education at Northumbria University. Professor Steven has a longstanding interest in the use of education to raise standards of care and ensure patient safety. Considering the rapid spread of Covid 19, she says improving patient safety and standards of care across Europe and beyond, has never been more important. Read full article here -
Content ArticleThe positive deviance approach seeks to identify and learn from those who demonstrate exceptional performance. This study from Baxter et al. sought to explore how multidisciplinary teams deliver exceptionally safe care on medical wards for older people. Based on identifiable qualitative differences between the positively deviant and comparison wards, 14 characteristics were hypothesised to facilitate exceptionally safe care on medical wards for older people. This paper explores five positively deviant characteristics that healthcare professionals considered to be most salient. These included the relational aspects of teamworking, specifically regarding staff knowing one another and working together in truly integrated multidisciplinary teams. The cultural and social context of positively deviant wards was perceived to influence the way in which practical tools (eg, safety briefings and bedside boards) were implemented. This study exemplifies that there are no ‘silver bullets’ to achieving exceptionally safe patient care on medical wards for older people. Healthcare leaders should encourage truly integrated multidisciplinary ward teams where staff know each other well and work as a team. Focusing on these underpinning characteristics may facilitate exceptional performances across a broad range of safety outcomes.
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Content ArticleGP practices are usually run separately from hospitals. In some places in England and Wales, the NHS organisations responsible for managing hospitals are now also running local GP practices. It is difficult in some areas for practices, which are small organisations, to recruit GPs and keep going. It is also desirable to coordinate GP services with hospital care. For these reasons, it may help if the organisations managing hospitals also run GP practices.
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Content ArticleWard audit is a specific and common form of audit and feedback used in hospitals around the world. This study in BMC Health Services Research describes the content of ward audits and how they are carried out. The authors found that ward audits can have unintended and sometimes negative consequences, often caused by punitive feedback. They highlight the need to make feedback more constructive, for example, by including suggestions for improvement.
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Content ArticleIn this systematic review published in BMJ Open, the authors analyse and compare the focus of 694 studies about safety culture in hospitals. The review identifies 11 key themes relating to safety culture across the studies. The authors suggest that the wide range of methods and tools available highlights a persistent lack of consensus in defining patient safety. They also highlight the value of qualitative and mixed method approaches in providing context and meaning to quantitative surveys that assess safety culture.
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Content ArticleMany diagnostic mistakes are caused by reasoning errors, but lack of feedback makes it difficult for healthcare providers to make improvements in this area. This paper, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, describes the reason for and process of developing 'The Diagnosis Learning Cycle', a new model for feedback and improvement in diagnosis. The model is based on theory and knowledge from both outside and within the field of healthcare. It proposes a standardised feedback mechanism that includes concrete measures of factors such as reasoning and confidence.
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Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has imposed extraordinary strains on healthcare workers. But, in contrast with acute settings, relatively little attention has been given to those who work in mental health settings. Liberati et al. aimed to characterise the experiences of those working in English NHS secondary mental health services during the first wave of the pandemic.
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Content ArticleThe importance of employee voice—speaking up and out about concerns—is widely recognised as fundamental to patient safety and quality of care. However, failures of voice continue to occur, often with disastrous consequences.
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Content ArticleClinician burnout in healthcare is a growing area of concern, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on. Research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Regenstrief Institute looked at ways organisations can address burnout.
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Content ArticleRacially and ethnically minoritised healthcare staff groups disproportionately experience and witness workplace discrimination from patients, colleagues and managers. This is visible in their under-representation at senior levels and over-representation in disciplinary proceedings and is associated with adversities such as greater depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, low job satisfaction and sickness absence. In the UK, little progress has been made despite the implementation of measures to tackle racialised inequities in the health services. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 48 healthcare staff in London (UK), Woodhead et al. identified how micro-level bullying, prejudice, discrimination and harassment behaviours, independently and in combination, exploit and maintain meso-level racialised hierarchies.
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Content ArticleThe aim of this study from Hutchinson et al. was to explore the reasons for and experiences of patients who make an unplanned return visit to the emergency department.
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Content ArticleTwo information technology (IT)-based interventions, which aim to improve prescribing safety in primary care, have been rolled out across England over the past few years. Researchers identified five strategies which could help ensure that the systems continue to have an impact over the longer term. The first system (computerised decision support, or CDS) raises a warning when a clinician is about to prescribe a medicine that could increase a patient’s risk of harm. The second method (PINCER) is led by pharmacists; it searches people’s medical notes to identify potential errors that have already happened. Pharmacists, GPs and other clinicians work together to investigate and correct any errors. The research team examined documents, interviewed relevant professionals and carried out workshops which also involved members of the public. They identified strategies that could help ensure that these systems have an ongoing impact in primary care.
