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Staff safety
Safe staff means safe patients
Staff and patient safety go together naturally. An environment where slips and falls are less likely benefits all of us; a reduction in back injuries means less sick leave being taken, improving continuity of care for patients and reducing agency costs for the Trust.
The Safety, Quality and Risk Unit has developed a strategy for continuous improvement in this area, alongside the well-established Occupational Health Service, which offers a range of services to reduce work-related injury and ill health, for example, physiotherapy and counselling.
Safety Action Groups
The Trust has created Safety Action Groups to focus on areas where a need to reduce injury or illness has been identified, such as needlestick injury and slips and falls. The groups are pursuing a whole range of programmes with full action plans. Successes so far include:
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the introduction of a new safety cannula to reduce needlestick injury
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a 'Skin Health Surveillance' scheme to reduce contact dermatitis from causes such as latex gloves
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better identification of staff with latex allergy and replacement of latex examination gloves with a non-latex alternative
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improved data collection for musculoskeletal injury
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improved training programmes in health and safety
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a pilot scheme to reduce patient falls, by looking at areas such as patient assessment, medication and environment.
Raising awareness of safety is one important way we can improve it. Safety Risk Manager, Jim Roy, says: "Improving safety… is everybody's responsibility, and safe staff in a safe environment is the bedrock on which maintaining high quality, safe patient care is based."