As an athlete, you take great pride in your body and do everything you can to keep it in the best possible shape. You don’t trust it to just anyone. And it’s this trust that makes clinical negligence and personal injury at the hands of the NHS so frustrating. Nurses aren’t harming patients on purpose, but that knowledge only leaves patients wondering how and why it happened.
According to a new BMJ study on ‘care left undone’, poor communication and a lack of experience aren’t the only causes of low quality care. Insufficient staffing and time combined with heavy workloads could be a major cause of hospital mishaps. With no one available to perform all the necessary tasks, many of them are abandoned. And the study suggests it happens more often than you think.
Study Finds Poor Staffing Levels Cause RNs to Leave Work Undone
The BMJ survey collected responses from 2,917 registered nurses from 401 medical and surgical wards in 46 general acute NHS hospitals. It found an overwhelming 86% of nurses had left one or more care activities undone at the end of their last shift. Of these tasks, more than 50% involved patient education, communication or comfort. And it shows.
On wards where nurses rated patient safety below acceptable levels, a mean of 7.8 activities were left undone each shift. A mean of only 2.4 care activities were left undone on wards with an excellent patient safety rating. This suggests nurses see the quality of patient care fall as the number of tasks left undone increase.
Care Left Undone Due to Increased Pressure on Registered Nurses to Do More With Less
Experts believe wards experiencing a shortage of nurses have higher mortality rates due to inadequate patient surveillance. This could be due in part by a general shortage of nurses across the country and constantly shrinking hospital budgets. However, a shortage of Registered Nurses on the floor isn’t the only cause.
The BMJ survey found nurses on a day or afternoon shift were more likely to leave tasks unfinished. This makes sense when you consider these shifts have the highest patient-to-nurse ratios. So, if you have to stay in the hospital for a sports injury treatment or illness, you’ll likely receive better care on an evening shift when nurses have fewer patients to care for. (The survey found missed care happened most often when nurses had more than 7.33 patients to look after.)
The amount of care you require can also determine the quality of care you will receive. Patients requiring more care such as those needing help with daily living or frequent monitoring experienced the highest levels of missed care or care items left undone. This is great news for minor sports injuries, but it doesn’t offer much in terms of comfort for athletes who may require more intensive treatment.
Help for Athletes Who Experience Personal Injury or Medical Negligence Due to Missed Care
With 683,883 reported instances of medical negligence from October 2012 to March 2013, the NHS and other medical bodies recognize there is a problem. They’re working hard to eliminate the issue of missed care or care left undone. However, this is little comfort to those who have experienced a personal injury or medical negligence. No one can undo the damage, so they need to take the appropriate steps going forward. And it’s up to the patients to make sure it happens by speaking with a legal professional.
Athletes and other victims often avoid speaking with a solicitor unless they can’t get adequate compensation or feel the need to go to court, but this shouldn’t be the case. Lisa Jordan of Irwin Mitchell says many clients can get the answers and compensation deserve without going to court with the help of a good solicitor. Clinical negligence and personal injury victims can also get a multitude of other benefits from a strong legal team, which can include in-house nurses, independent medical practitioners and access to other resources clients may need going forward.
Care left undone will continue to be a problem as long as hospitals struggle with small budgets and a shortage of nurses. And that means athletes and other patients will continue to pay the price. Don’t suffer alone. Make sure you get the answers, assistance and support you need to rebuild your body and get back to normal.
David Larson passionately studies law. He frequently blogs about changes in the UK legal system that effect the everyday citizen.