The James Paget is one of the first hospitals in the country to take part in a three-year efficiency research programme to explore the relationship between nurse retention and how it affects patient safety.
Staffordshire University, in collaboration with Birmingham City University and NHS England and NHS Improvement, is undertaking the NuRS research programme, funded by the Health Foundation, to look at the underlying contributory factors to nurse retention and its impact on patient and staff safety.
Nurse vacancies are unequally distributed amongst the professions, specialties and geographic regions of England and this research study will look at what that means for patient care.
The study will be undertaken in two parts. The first will focus on understanding the relationship between nurse retention and patient and staff outcomes in combination with other contributory factors.
The study will collect anonymised data from existing hospital systems used to monitor things like staffing levels and bed occupancy to see what trends emerge.
The second part of the study will look to design and test an infrastructure for this information to be routinely available for healthcare managers to allow them identify where there are likely to be issues and to give an opportunity to address them.
This part will get input from a range of professions, including senior managers who might use these techniques to inform strategic decision making and frontline clinicians who might use it to improve care.
Senior Research Nurse Claire Whitehouse said; “This is an exciting opportunity which gives us the chance to make more use of the data we routinely collect and learn more about what we can do to improve both nursing and patient care.
“We’re delighted that the James Paget was one of the first to sign up and we’re looking forward to the insights we will gain from this.”
The study is being carried out in a number of secondary care providers, including hospital trusts and mental health care providers, and will also look at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.