Judith Johnson PhD

Healthcare workforce crisis: Why are so many staff leaving the NHS?

The NHS has a healthcare workforce crisis. It is estimated that 40,000 nursing and midwifery posts currently stand vacant – enough to fill Hong Kong Stadium. Furthermore, 68% of junior doctors report that staffing gaps occur often, which they suggest sometimes put patients’ safety at risk. To try and plug these gaps, there has been a focus on upping recruitment, with strategies aimed at funding training places in the UK and attracting more staff from overseas. However, it has been suggested that rather than being a problem of poor recruitment, the crisis is primarily driven by too many staff leaving. A quick look at the data supports this view: around 200,000 staff have left their NHS jobs every year since 2011, adding up to a combined total of 1.6 million over 8 years. Why is this? Here I explore the NHS dataset on ‘why staff leave’ to try and understand this problem.

The dataset

The data on ‘why staff leave’ has been recorded in a consistent manner since 2011/2012 and is available to download in a single excel file. There are 38 categories, ranging from ‘Death in Service’ to ‘Voluntary Resignation – Promotion’ (to download the original dataset, click here).

Concerning trends 

Overall, the number of staff leaving jobs every year has been fairly stable with around 200,000 leavers per year. However, given the workforce crisis, there is a need to increase staff retention, and there is no sign that this is happening. There is also evidence that staff are increasingly leaving for specific negative reasons:

  • More staff are leaving due to poor work-life balance. In fact, more than twice as many cited this as their main reason for leaving in 2018-19 than 2011-12. This fits with broader data indicating increasing rates of burnout (see my previous blog post on burnout in mental healthcare staff for more on this).
  • More staff are leaving due to a lack of opportunities. Over 4800 cited this as their main reason in 2018-19 – more than twice as many who cited this as their reason in 2011-12.
  • More staff are resigning for health reasons. Similar to patterns seen with work-life balance and lack of opportunities, over twice as many staff cited this as their main reason for leaving in 2018-19 compared with 2011-12 – 4479 compared with 2126.

 

reasons for leaving

 

Positive trends

Sometimes staff leave their jobs for positive reasons, and the dataset reveals trends in some of these areas.

  • More staff are resigning due to gaining promotions. Over 15000 cited this as their main reason for leaving in 2018-19 – double the number who did in 2011-12.
  • More staff are leaving to take up education and training opportunities. Remarkably, the pattern is similar to that seen with promotions. Nearly 5000 left for this reason in 2018-19 – twice as many who said this was their reason in 2011-12.

 

positive reasons for leaving

 

The need for caution

These results highlight some concerning trends which suggest that dissatisfaction with work is one factor contributing to the current healthcare workforce crisis. However, they also reveal some positives – more staff than ever are leaving for education, training or a more senior post. When considering this data, there are two key issues to bear in mind. First, just because a staff member has left their job, it doesn’t mean they’ve left the NHS or even their organisation – they may simply have switched to another role. Second, if a person has had a few job changes over this 8-year period, they will be represented multiple times within the dataset. Both these issues could inflate the overall impression of the problem provided by this analysis.

Reflective practice groups for liaison psychiatry nurses: are they helpful? Our study

Liaison psychiatry nurses have a tough job. They are based in the Emergency Department and work with individuals experiencing acute distress; these patients may have recently self-harmed or attempted suicide and could be at high risk of further harm. Liaison psychiatry nurses contact gatekeepers to other services while under the pressure of national waiting-time targets. They usually have no continuity with patients after they are discharged and may be left wondering how their patients’ situations turned out in the end. Both mental healthcare staff and emergency department staff are high risk groups for burnout (Johnson et al., 2018; Potter, 2006); liaison psychiatry nursing combines each of these elements and so these nurses may experience particularly elevated stress.

In order to provide liaison psychiatry nurses with more support, one hospital introduced reflective practice groups. The groups were a protected hour: the liaison psychiatry nursing team left the department to go to a quiet room in another building where they could not be contacted. The groups were facilitated by a clinical psychologist already employed by the hospital. I particularly liked this feature; too often I hear about outside consultants being paid hefty sums to deliver wellbeing packages with hazy evidence bases, when most healthcare organisations already have a group of highly trained professionals employed in their  psychology department who can do this work. The psychologist enabled dialogue between the team members and facilitated their conversation but did not impose an agenda.

When I was invited to contribute to the evaluation of this intervention I was delighted. We interviewed 13 liaison psychiatry nurses who had attended the group. They identified four main benefits of participating:

  • Sharing and learning. Participants found that sharing their experiences in the group helped them to feel less alone. They realised that other people in their team were experiencing similar challenges and they left the group sessions feeling clearer-minded and lighter.
  • Grounding and perspective. Participants said the group allowed them to take a step back and gain perspective on the difficulties of their work and the risks involved. It reminded them of the value their work has.
  • Space. Participants described the group as a safe space; they felt able to ask for help or to say they were unsure of things and seek advice from their colleagues.
  • Relationships. Participants said the group supported some positive interpersonal experiences between team members. The fact that they had an external facilitator and were guaranteed to be free from interruptions led them to feel they could raise difficult issues with their colleagues, in the knowledge they would be able to resolve these before the conversation ended.

It should be noted that not all nurses found the group beneficial. Some felt that the types of discussions they had during reflective practice were already happening elsewhere and they believed a protected space was not necessary. However, these nurses recognised that some of their colleagues benefited from the group, and were willing to participate in recognition of the overall team benefit.

We weren’t able to quantitatively evaluate the group as the number of participants in the study was too small. However, our qualitative data suggested that overall these groups provided a range of benefits which would have been hard to get from another forum, and some participants believed that sickness absence in the team would have been higher without them.

Practical tips for running reflective practice groups

For anyone wanting to run reflective practice groups, our study suggested a few things should be considered:

  • Groups shouldn’t include managers. The presence of managers changed the nature of the group and inhibited open discussion.
  • Protected time is key. Nurses stated that the groups were the only time they were guaranteed to have a conversation at work without interruption, and this was an absolute necessity for helping them feel able to discuss sensitive issues.
  • The facilitator must be external to the group. Previous research suggests nurses trained in reflective practice can supervise these groups and there can be benefits to having someone of the same discipline provide this facilitation. However, experienced clinical psychologists should be sufficiently trained to offer this in the absence of trained nurses. Our study suggests this is acceptable to nurses and the important thing is that the facilitator works in healthcare but is external to their team.

A practical and cost-effective solution

Further research is needed to establish the effectiveness of reflective practice groups for supporting staff wellbeing. However, the evidence base for burnout reduction interventions in general is still small (see my previous blog on this here), and the best methods for supporting staff are not yet established.  While we wait for evidence-based recommendations, reflective practice groups are a cost-effective form of support for liaison psychiatry nurses: they require no special equipment, no long periods of staff absence from work and can be facilitated by in-house psychologists, so no expensive outside consultants are required.

To read this study please see here. 


Tackling burnout in UK trainee doctors is vital for a sustainable, safe, high quality NHS: Our letter to the BMJ

In 2018, for the first time, the General Medical Council (GMC) included items on burnout in its National Training Survey. The survey was completed by 51,956 trainee doctors and 19,193 trainers, making it the largest burnout survey in UK doctors to date. The response rate was also extremely high – 96% of all doctors in training who were contacted completed it, as did 41% of all contacted trainers. As such, these results provide a reliable picture of the current situation in the medical workforce. The survey found that 24% of trainees and 21% of trainers feel burnt-out to a high degree or a very high degree (for the full report, see here).

When I read these results in the BMJ, I wasn’t surprised. Rates of stress and burnout are high in healthcare staff internationally; in the 2018 Medscape report on physician burnout and depression, out of 15,000 US doctors, 42% were burnt-out and 12% were categorised as ‘colloquially depressed’. I was also concerned: a growing body of research shows a strong and consistent link between higher staff burnout and poorer patient care. Papers I have authored and co-authored show:

• 70% of studies which have investigated burnout and patient safety in healthcare staff have found a significant link between the two (Hall et al., 2016).
• In nurses, higher burnout is linked with poorer perceptions of patient safety both at the level of the individual practitioner and the ward level (Johnson et al., 2017).
• GPs think that burnout affects the quality of patient care by reducing their abilities to emphathise, to show positive attitudes to patients and by increasing the number of inappropriate referrals made (Hall et al., 2017).

Together with Dr Maria Panagioti and Dr Christopher Bu, I decided to respond to the BMJ article on the survey findings to highlight the evidence that burnout in doctors affects patient care. In particular, our letter focused on a recently published systematic review and meta-analysis led by Dr Panagioti. The findings of the review are described in more detail in a previous blog post (see here), but in brief, the review reported that burnt-out doctors are at twice the risk of being involved in a patient safety incident and at twice the risk of having dissatisfied patients.

This research reinforces the importance of measuring burnout in the medical workforce and the need to reduce this. The best way to intervene is currently unclear; while evidence suggests that interventions which target organisations (for example, redesigning jobs) are more effective than those which target individuals (for example, delivering mindfulness courses; Panagioti et al., 2017), there are many interventions which blur this boundary. These include training interventions, which are delivered to individual practitioners but aim to support them in their work, rather than improve their personal coping skills. Evidence suggests these are effective for tackling burnout (Dreison et al., 2018). Clearly, more research is needed. However, while we wait for this, I would suggest that organisations respond to the expressed needs of their workforce, providing the interventions that are both requested and well utilised.

To read our letter to the BMJ, please see here.

To read my previous blog on tackling burnout, please see here.

Burnout in doctors and the quality of patient care: Our systematic review

There is increasing evidence that healthcare staff burnout is linked to a range of negative outcomes, including increased staff absences, higher rate of staff turnover, and poorer quality of patient care (see my previous blog on this here). In a systematic review I co-authored, we found that that 21 out of 30 (70%) studies looking at the link between higher staff burnout and poorer patient safety reported a significant association between the two (Hall et al., 2016). The review found hard evidence for what many clinicians could see happening in their wards and surgeries: when staff are hard pressed, patient care suffers. It was well received on social media and has since been cited dozens of times.

However, while this previous review found clear evidence for a link between staff burnout and patient safety, it seemed to me that two questions remained unanswered. The first was whether there is also a link between burnout and other aspects of patient care, such as patient satisfaction. The second was what the strength of this relationship is: that is, just how much do increases in burnout impact patient care?

So, when I was invited to contribute to a systematic review on the links between burnout and patient care in doctors by Dr Maria Panagioti, I jumped at the chance. The review led by Dr Panagioti aimed to answer both these questions. It gathered studies which investigated burnout in doctors in relation to a broader range of outcomes, including:

  1. Patient safety incidents, (e.g., adverse events, medication errors, diagnostic incidents)
  2. Low professionalism (e.g., adherence to treatment guidelines, quality of communication, malpractice claims, empathy)
  3. Low patient satisfaction

It also quantified the strength of these relationships using meta-analysis, which was not employed in the previous review.

Is burnout linked with patient safety incidents?

The review identified 21 studies which reported on the association between burnout and patient safety incidents. The results of the meta-analyses suggested that burnt-out doctors were twice as likely to be involved in a patient safety incident as those not suffering from burnout. All aspects of burnout (exhaustion, disengagement and low accomplishment) were associated with a significantly higher risk of being involved in a patient safety incident.

Is burnout linked with low professionalism?

28 studies were found which reported on the link between burnout and low professionalism (e.g., showing low empathy, having received a malpractice claim). The results of the meta-analyses suggested that burnt-out doctors were twice as likely to show low professionalism. When the different aspects of burnout were examined separately, disengagement was the aspect most linked with low professionalism. Doctors who were disengaged from their patients were 3-times as likely to exhibit low professionalism. Doctors high in emotional exhaustion or low in personal accomplishment were over 2.5-times as likely to exhibit low professionalism.

Importantly, the review found that the link between burnout and low professionalism was twice as high in trainee and early career doctors compared with more experienced doctors. This is particularly concerning when the recent GMC survey results showing that a quarter of trainee doctors are burnt-out are considered.

Is burnout linked with low patient satisfaction?

7 studies reported measures of patient satisfaction. It was found that burnt-out doctors were at twice the risk of having dissatisfied patients. Again, disengagement was the aspect of burnout most closely linked with low patient satisfaction, with disengaged doctors showing a 4.5-fold increased risk. Low personal accomplishment was also linked with twice the risk of low patient satisfaction. No link was found with emotional exhaustion.

Where now?

This review finds strong evidence that burnt-out doctors are at significantly higher risk of being involved in patient safety incidents, showing low professionalism and having dissatisfied patients. Having clarified the presence and size of the problem of burnout for patient care, the next step for us as researchers is to identify evidence-based solutions to this problem. While a number of interventions to reduce burnout have been proposed (see Panagioti et al., 2017), there is a need to identify 1) which interventions are most feasible and most effective, and 2) whether reducing burnout can improve patient care.

For my previous blog on tackling burnout, please see here.

The review described in this article was published in JAMA: Internal Medicine. To read it, please see here.

How can we tackle healthcare staff burnout?

A previous post looked at the negative impact of staff burnout on patient care. But how can we tackle this problem? In this post I will consider the evidence for the effectiveness of interventions for reducing burnout.

Types of interventions
Interventions to tackle burnout are often broadly split into those which are targeted at the ‘individual-level’ and those which are targeted at the ‘organization-level’. Individual-level interventions are context independent; they view employees as people who are suffering from poor mental wellbeing and aim to treat this. They may include stress management workshops, one-to-one cognitive therapy or the provision of support phonelines for staff. Organization-level interventions on the other hand are ‘context dependent’; they view employees as workers being impacted by difficult work circumstances. They may include the changing of shift-patterns or rostering practices, improving canteen facilities or the provision of job training.

Are organization-level or individual-level interventions most effective?
There is debate as to which type of intervention is most effective. Three recent meta-analyses have found somewhat conflicting results.

  1. In a meta-analysis of 15 randomised trials and 37 cohort studies in doctors, West et al. (2016) found that while organization-level interventions were more effective than individual-level interventions for overall reducing overall burnout, there was no difference when the outcome was either of the specific facets of burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation).
  2. In a meta-analysis of 20 randomised controlled trials in doctors, Panagioti et al. (2017) found that organization-level interventions were significantly more effective than those which were targeted at the individual-level.
  3. In a meta-analysis in mental healthcare professionals, Dreison et al. (2018) found that individual-level interventions were more effective than those targeted at the organization-level.

Why the difference?
These conflicting results could partly be due to different interpretations of what the categories of ‘individual-level’ and ‘organization-level’ interventions include. For example, whereas West et al. (2016) included communication training interventions in with individual-level interventions, Dreison et al. (2018) regarded these as training interventions, which they included in with organization-level interventions. The lack of clear findings could also be an artefact of how broad these categories are; when Dreison et al. (2018) broke down the category of organization-level interventions into training interventions and non-training interventions, their results differed again; training interventions were actually more effective for reducing overall burnout scores than individual-level interventions. It is possible that the categories of ‘organization-level’ and ‘individual-level’ interventions are so broad as to be useless.

Take home message
Despite the confusion over organization-level vs. individual-level interventions, the clear message is that overall, interventions ARE effective. DO SOMETHING and there is a good chance your staff will benefit.

Helping staff to love their work
A first step in developing any effective burnout intervention should be to look at the causes of why this burnout has developed in the first place. This may sound obvious but it is often overlooked. Studies into the causes of burnout have identified several contributors which interventions could seek to address, including poor staffing ratios on wards, lack of time for patient-facing work, inadequate IT facilities and lack of training or professional development opportunities. The unifying theme here is that we need to help staff to love their work – we need to help make the difficult aspects of their work more manageable and support them to maximise and capitalise on the parts of the job they love. A recent example of this is the introduction of a caseload-carrying model of care to midwifery in Australia. Caseload-carrying midwives follow the same women up throughout their pregnancy, rather than simply attending to women who arrive at a clinic when they are working (who will likely have their other appointments with different midwives). There were concerns that carrying responsibility for a caseload may increase the burnout levels of midwives, but in fact the opposite has been found. A study by Dawson et al. (2018) found lower rates of burnout and more positive work attitudes in caseload-carrying midwives than those working in the traditional model. If we consider the causes of burnout, we could hypothesise that caseload-carrying midwives enjoyed stronger relationships with the patients that they had and were able to employ and develop a greater skill-set due to working with women at all different stages of pregnancy.

I work in healthcare. What can I do to help myself?
Research suggests that making changes at the level of the organization is a key to targeting healthcare staff burnout. However, if you are a healthcare worker keen to improve your own self-care, there are things you can do:

  1. Help yourself get good sleep. A recent study suggests that people who get better sleep are less likely to report burnout three years later (Elfering et al., 2018). If you work night shifts, getting good sleep may be particularly difficult for you. The BMA have recently published tips for managing these. Amongst other things, they suggest taking naps of 10-20 minutes during the early part of night shifts, avoiding caffeine and nicotine in the final few hours of night shifts, and wearing sunglasses on your journey home in the morning, even on a cloudy day.
  2. Put in boundaries. Nurses who have clear boundaries between their work and home lives have higher wellbeing (Oates, 2018) and psychotherapists who put in boundaries on an emotional level between themselves and their clients (Simionato et al., 2018) have lower burnout.
  3. Spend time relaxing, listening to music and being out in nature. Nurses who do this report higher wellbeing (Oates, 2018).
  4. Look into training opportunities you can access via work. The budgets for Continuing Professional Development have been squeezed in recent years, but research suggests that healthcare staff who get more workplace learning have higher job satisfaction (Iliopoulous et al., 2018), and training could be one of the best ways to tackle burnout (Dreison et al., 2018).
  5. See if there is a way you can get more time to do aspects of the job you think are important. Carefully consider the parts of your work that give you the greatest sense of satisfaction. Is it building positive relationships with patients? Is it contributing to service level improvements? Is it learning about recent advances in your area and seeking to apply this knowledge to your own patients? Whatever it is, see where there could be scope to spend more time on this. Research suggests that doctors believe having adequate time for key tasks is the most important thing to reduce burnout risk (Fortenberry et al., 2018).

This blog was written in conjunction with a talk given at the Practitioner Wellbeing Conference in Manchester on 14 June 2018. To download a copy of the slides, click here.