University News Last updated 02 October 2019
Increasing the number of registered nurses in the mental health setting could help protect the thousands of healthcare workers falling victim to ‘adverse events’ like aggression or harassment, new research has revealed.
A study by academics at Birmingham City University assessed three years of data from an NHS mental healthcare provider and found staff safety, like patient safety, correlates with nurse staffing levels and skill mix.
The study used ‘clinically required’ staffing levels and the variation from this to explore the reporting of adverse events on staff in the mental health setting to understand and characterise the culture of safety.
The report indicates that where clinical demand is inherently low, for example during the night shift, there is a greater risk of adverse events being reported.
Data showed that low staffing levels increased risk, but that this could be counteracted by increasing the number of registered nurses on a ward above what is ‘clinically required’.
The study also goes some way to defining a good reporting culture in healthcare, with a greater number of incidents, with a large proportion of no harm events being indicative of a good reporting culture.
The report revealed that thousands of staff had reported being victims in the workplace, and found that exceeding the clinical demand for nurses protected staff from potential harm.
The report, to be published in the Health Informatics Journal in October 2019, showed more than 10,119 ‘adverse events’ had taken place with nearly 20,000 NHS staff members being the victims.
More than 6,500 incidents of patient aggression were recorded, affecting over 12,000 staff and nearly 500 staff were victims of ‘sexual incidents’. Inappropriate behaviour was recorded 1,762 times with 4,058 members of staff listed as victims.
Dr Sarahjane Jones, Senior Research Fellow in Health and Social Care at Birmingham City University, said: “These findings are the first to directly address the safety of healthcare staff using data in this way.
It also highlighted that while increasing nurse safety had a key role to play in improving staff retention rates amidst a nationwide nursing shortage, there was not one single solution to this complex problem.