Safe Staffing

At Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals (DBTH), we take patient safety very seriously. As well as ensuring the best clinical outcome from the care we deliver, we aim to provide you with healthcare at its very best .

Staffing is complex and requires understanding about the skills of staff and workload on a ward at a particular time this includes acuity (how unwell a patient is and level of treatment require) and dependency (how dependent a patient is).

Nurse and midwifery staffing is constantly being reviewed and considered when there are changes in services.

Wards at DBTH have both senior and junior Sisters and, or Charge Nurses, and are supported by Matrons and Heads of and Directors of Nursing. This provides a professional framework to support safe and effective staffing.

Nurse staffing review

As an organisation we undertaking reviews of Nursing and Midwifery staffing. We also regularly use the ‘Safer Nursing Care Tool’ (SNCT) and Birth Rate Plus to help inform our reviews. This tool measures each patient’s dependency/acuity on a daily basis.

A calculation is applied to determine the number of staff required to care for those patients. The SNCT and Birth Rate Plus were endorsed by NICE in September 2014 and again in 2018, and have been promoted by NHS England/Improvement as the primary establishment setting tool nationally.

The results of the SNCT and Birth rate plus, along with professional judgement of ward sisters / charge nurses, matrons and Divisional / Corporate Senior Nursing team are used to determine ward staffing level requirements.

Publishing staffing information

All hospitals are required to publish information about staffing levels. This means, the number of Nurses, Midwives and support (care) staff working on our wards and departments. This is displayed separately for day and night duty and tells you how close the actual staffing levels are compared to the planned staffing levels.

Care Hours per Patient Day (CHPPD) is calculated by dividing the number of staff on duty over a 24 hour period by the number of patients on the ward at 23.59 hours. This is provided as an overall figure and broken down by registered professionals and support staff. Wards are expected to vary as patient acuity/dependency is not accounted for in this calculation.

In addition, wards which include day case beds or outpatient areas will have a higher ratio as fewer patients will be on the ward at 23.59 hours.

The full reports are available from the data files below. Some of the figures may be over 100% this is often due to a ward / department having more than the planned number of staff. This is often to as a result of a shortfall in one grade of staff being replaced by another to ensure adequate overall numbers are on duty to provide care or, on occasions when additional staff are required to meet specific demands on the ward, such as enhanced care observation of patients with unexpectedly complex needs or increased acuity on the ward requiring a higher level of nurse to patient ratio.

Staff sickness can affect planned staffing levels and staffing are monitored throughout the day at DBTH through daily safe staffing meetings and Divisional safe staffing processes. These meetings include an overview of planned and actual staffing levels and other important metrics including number of patients on the ward, acuity and dependency, which is accessible from our Patient Administration System and patient assessment digital data. Wards display planned and actual staffing on a shift by shift basis on ward information boards for patients and visitors to see.

Safe Staffing updates are also regularly provided to the Trust Board, a copy of which can be found at the link below:

Public meetings of our Board of Directors

Monthly reports

2024

2023

2022

2021


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