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Letters to the Editor
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Workload
Change law to enshrine corporate responsibility
From Mr A. J. Jukes, MRPharmS
Rebecca Ellis raised concerns about staffing levels and resources,
and included a few general issues about hospital pharmacy (PJ,
3 May 2008, p536).
I locum in the south east, London, Essex and elsewhere and am in close contact
with colleagues around the UK. The situation in hospital pharmacy seems to
have deteriorated over recent years with regard to staffing and the general
risk exposure of NHS staff.
Many professionals find themselves in situations
where errors are made and they are, ultimately, held responsible for them.
I have witnessed and had colleagues mention experiences that give rise to
concern, including: • Days where constant diversion from an original task occurs.
• Having, on average, only 20 seconds to view a patient on a ward.
• Avoiding rest breaks to cover the work demanded.
• Being disturbed several times while trying to screen clinically a chart for
a two-day-old baby and calculate dosing.
• Feeling physically and mentally unwell on an ongoing basis due to work pressure.
• Witnessing nurses trying to calculate intravenous drug dosing and rates and
being asked to discuss another patient, train someone junior, and answer a
phone at the same time.
All professionals are accountable for their own practice, but it is
often short staffing that forces individuals into high-risk situations
where errors are more likely. Employers — healthcare trusts — do
not seem to be held responsible for this in a lot of cases.
I would like to see legislation introduced that would protect individual employees
from being held to account for poor working conditions that have been allowed
to develop because of decision-making at a more senior level.
There should be corporate accountability at a trust level for operating malfunctions
on wards and departments. Inadequate staffing levels across trusts often create
the conditions for errors. I would like better protection in law for individual
employees in these circumstances.
If a nurse administers a steroid injection to the wrong patient, she is professionally
accountable, but she is not responsible for the dire circumstances on the ward
that have resulted from under-staffing, which led to multiple distraction and
fragmented working.
Trusts should be held responsible for their part in errors, where it can be
shown that adequate staffing levels to facilitate effective risk management
were not provided.
Andrew Jukes
Brighton,
East Sussex |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal