Health worker safety deserves a second look
Mains: General Studies- II: Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations.
Context:
The key is to adopt a systems approach and lay emphasis on a culture of health worker well-being
Harm in health-care settings:
- Health facilities are a place of healing and restoration.
- The world over, one in 10 patients’ experiences or is subject to harm in health-care settings like:
- operations done on the wrong patient,
- injections being administered in an unsafe manner.
Indian Scenario:
- Studies in India have shown that more than two-thirds of injections are given in an unsafe manner
- Over two-thirds of injections in primary care are unnecessary in the first place.
- It is not uncommon to find health-care organisations observe strict hierarchies between specialties, between designations, and between doctors and other health professionals, such as nurses.
- power differences can prevent reporting and cooperative organisational learning
- It increases chances of abuse: verbal, physical, emotional and sexual, putting the safety of health workers and patients at risk.
- India simply does not have enough health facilities to cater to all its population, even without a pandemic.
- The lack of adequate social care, such as care homes, community health services and community-based rehabilitative and palliative services, unduly increase the burden on health-care facilities
Why is health worker safety important for patient safety?
- To highlight this important issue, the World Health Organization observes World Patient Safety Dayevery year (September 17).
- The theme for 2020 was ‘Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety’ with a call to action to ‘Speak up for health worker safety’
- Much harm done to patients in health-care settings is because of:
- unsafe health-care practice
- unsafe health-care communication.
- Unsafe health-care practice refers to unsafe or unnecessary procedures, wrong medications, medications given in a wrong dosage, etc.
- Unsafe health-care communication refers to mistakes made in health-care settings due to miscommunication between health professionals like during patient handover in between staff shifts.
- The quality of both practice and communication is dependent on the safety and well-being of health workers.
- numerous studies have shown that health workers, such as residents, who have been on duty for more than 24 hours at a stretch, have a higher risk of making mistakes, increasing the likelihood of a direct impact on patient safety.
Linked to the workplace culture:
- During the current COVID-19 crisis, health workers are not only putting in longer hours but also working under increasingly difficult circumstances, which affect both their physical and mental health.
- The mental health of health workers is linked to the workplace culture.
- Some organisations have a culture of supporting staff,
- Responding to the needs and encouraging learning from mistakes;
- Others have a culture of fault-finding, blame, guilt and abuse.
- When instances of patient harm occur, whether people feel encouraged to report them, depends on the organisation’s culture and leadership.
- Without reporting, it is difficult for organisations to learn from mistakes and create systems, such as check lists in order to prevent similar future occurrences.
Organisational learning:
- Organisational learning is more important than individual learning because:
- Instances of patient harm, even when they occur at the individual level, are often an end result of a chain of organisational failures.
- Systemic under staffing, lack of reporting mechanisms, lack of dedicated time for hand overs, audits, training and team building, poorly maintained equipment and corruption in purchases, are all organisational failures
- Organisational failures gives cascade leading to avoidable harm to the patient.
Good systems can mitigate the effects of individual mistakes:
- It is pertinent to look beyond the individual to look at the organisation as the sum of multiple elements that interact with each other. This involves taking a systems approach.
- Example of overcrowding:
- In many hospitals, quality of care is often compromised because of overcrowding, such as in the emergency department.
- To take a systems approach in this situation would mean looking at it holistically — for example, from at least three angles using the input-throughput-output conceptual modeldescribed by Asplin et al in the Annals of Emergency Medicine in 2003.
- Example of overcrowding:
- Looking at whether patients who come to the emergency department need to be there in the first place or could be managed somewhere else such as in the community itself.
- Looking at whether there are inefficiencies such as shortage of doctors, nurses, equipment or space that is increasing the time taken for patients to be treated.
- Looking at whether the patients are staying longer in the emergency department than required because of lack of non-emergency department inpatient beds, delays at the pharmacy or delays in transportation of patients out of the emergency department.
- The conversation on health during COVID-19 has often centred on individuals, with certain individuals, such as health-care workers, seen as heroes, and others (including those referred to as ‘super spreaders’ in a stigmatising way), seen as villains.
- Many health workers have demonstrated excellence despite the limitations in the Indian health system.
- Creating sustainability would involve taking a systems approach to make sure all parts of the system, both of health care and of supportive social care are well functioning.
- Many health workers are overworked not by choice, but rather the lack of it since understaffing and shortages are a common feature of the Indian public health-care system..
Way ahead:
Stakeholder involvement
- A systems approach involves all stakeholders.
- Patients themselves need to be aware of patient safety as well as be empowered to demand safe health care and resist unnecessary medications and procedures.
- Hospital managers must understand the need for and be empowered to create systems of reporting, monitoring and organisational learning.
- Policy makers must prioritise staffing, co-designing functional and safe workplaces, and ethics in health care.
- Numerous persons find healing and restoration in health care.
- In crises such as COVID-19, quality of care can be compromised further. one can help improve patient safety by taking a systems approach and promoting a culture of health worker safety and well-being.