Principles for return to service 鈥� staff recovery and patient safety
As the UK governments begins to map the nations’ route out of lockdown, the 快猫视频 is calling for the nursing voice to be at the table as return to elective and other services are considered.
First and foremost, staffing levels must return to pre-Covid levels as a minimum, particularly in areas such as Intensive care where ratios were diluted to unsafe levels. It is recognised that recovery from this pandemic will take years; during that long term recovery the fundamental issues of an under resourced nursing workforce must be tackled head on.
The college is increasingly concerned about the health and wellbeing of our members and their ability to provide current services safely and sustainably. The debate on the timing and process for returning to ‘normal’ service level must have patient-need at its centre – but that cannot come at the expense of our members’ well-being.
Pre-pandemic evidence showed increasing cases of work related stress, burnout and mental health problems amongst our members. Over the past 12 months, 快猫视频 Counselling services have seen a rise in frequency and intensity of referrals for workplace stress, trauma and incidences of moral distress. Sustained moral distress can evolve into moral injury which is defined as: “profound psychological distress which results from actions, or the lack of them, which violate one’s moral or ethical code” (Williamson et al., 2020).
Unlike the formal psychiatric diagnosis of PTSD, moral injury is not classified as a mental illness but 快猫视频 is concerned that individuals who experience moral injury may be at increased risk of developing mental health problems. Terms such as PTSD should be avoided without appropriate diagnosis.
The professional nursing voice must drive decisions and ensure services are only restarted when patient and staff health and well-being has been risk assessed in all sectors.
Patient treatment and care should not become financially driven political targets. The focus in the short to medium term needs to move away from arbitrary targets and be driven by patient need and the ability to safely staff services.
The impact of the pandemic on primary care and community services has been less public but no less significant. These services continue to manage far more patients in their own homes in order