Health Services Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB) has explored the relationship between staff fatigue and patient safety in a new investigation report that makes a number of observations and recommendations to improve safety.
‘The impact of staff fatigue on patient safety’ follows the previous report from the HSSIB ‘Fatigue risk in healthcare and its impact on patient safety’, which introduced the concept of fatigue. It found staff fatigue contributes directly and indirectly to patient harm. However, there are many challenges to understanding and measuring the impact which will impede efforts to address this problem.
Furthermore, fatigue can have a negative impact on staff safety. For instance, lack of attention to the road if driving home after a long shift could lead to serious road accidents or near misses.
There is also limited regulatory and national oversight of the risks posed to patient safety by staff fatigue in healthcare.
Recommendations
HSSIB recommends that the national bodies – NHS England and/or Department of Health and Social Care – should identify and review any current process that may capture staff fatigue related data and identify how such information can be collated and enhanced to help the understanding of fatigue risk in healthcare. This data will help inform the development of any future strategy and action.
It also recommends that the NHS Staff Council convenes fatigue science experts and other stakeholders to develop and test a consensus statement that would define fatigue for all healthcare staff, which would support a consistent understanding among healthcare providers.
Observations
Among the observations around safety that HSSIB makes are that research funding and commissioning bodies could prioritise future research to measure and assess the impact of staff fatigue on staff and patient safety. Healthcare organisations and professional bodies could include fatigue issues in staff surveys to improve understanding of the issue.
Healthcare regulators and professional bodies could also play a part, by considering how they can contribute to driving improvement in understanding and awareness of staff fatigue, as well as how they can support and share best practice on mitigating strategies. They could also consider organisational and individual factors contributing to staff fatigue when they make decisions about regulatory assessment and action.
Accounting for the impact of staff fatigue on patient safety by government and national organisations when developing national priorities for NHS services would also result in improvement.
