Safe Staffing Escalation for In-patient Areas Policy

Executive Summary

This policy sets out the Trust responsibility for planning and delivering safe nursing and midwifery staffing levels. It defines duties and responsibilities to ensure that staffing levels are safe and optimal at all times in order to ensure the delivery of high quality care to patients and service users. It defines the escalation process in the management of staffing that falls below the threshold levels and actions to be taken.

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to provide effective support to those staff who have a responsibility for safe staff decision making on a shift by shift basis. It addresses the following questions:

1. How do we know there are enough staff deployed?
2. What do we do when there are not enough staff?
3. How and whom is it escalated when there are concerns?

The person in charge of the relevant area is responsible for assessing that staffing numbers are as expected on the rota and the ward / team is assessed as being safely staffed taking into consideration workload, patient acuity, dependency and skill mix.

Policy Details

See also:

• Quality Safety & Risk Management Strategy
• Incident Reporting Policy
• Care of Patients Requiring Close Observation Policy
• Rostering Principles and Procedure