The NHS should do more to prevent fatigue in healthcare staff

Abstract

Doctors’ need for wellbeing support didn’t end with the pandemic, write Peter Brennan and colleagues

Secondary Stressors and Their Psychosocial Impacts on Healthcare Staff: Lessons From a Qualitative Systematic Review From the Covid-19 Pandemic in the Uk

“…[12] More recently, Oeppen et al have called for the NHS to do more to prevent fatigue in healthcare staff because the needs of staff have not ended or stopped rising as the additional pressures from COVID-19 have reduced. [13] Adequately staffing healthcare services, delivering appropriate training, and providing rising volumes of and a carefully determined mix of basic and complicated levels of service are not the only challenges that arise within healthcare. We draw attention to the impacts of persisting demands on the morale of staff and the ways in which, initially, subtle, but now, much clearer alterations to the value-base of our healthcare services have occurred over the years.…”

Fatigue should be managed as a safety risk

“…The NHS crisis makes it more important than ever to fill the void of collective action on fatigue,1 with a focus on structural causes. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch has advised that patient safety would “gain more by looking at organisational resilience than staff resilience,”2 recently commenting that, “if the shift patterns and workload are imposed by the system, this is surely not an individual issue, but a healthcare one?”3…”

Staff wellbeing is more important than ever

“…If you were able to grab some respite in a wellbeing “lounge” at work during the pandemic, chances are that those free hot drinks and snacks have now dried up, although the risks of acute and chronic fatigue have not receded (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2676). 1…”