Analysis of England's incident and mental health nursing workforce data 2015–2022

Abstract

What is known on the subject?

• Mental health services report adverse incidents in different ways and the relationship between adverse incidents and the workforce is uncertain. In England, there are national datasets recording all incidents and workforce statistics though there is no peer-reviewed evidence examining recent trends.

What this paper adds to existing knowledge?

• Although there has been an overall increase in the number of mental health nurses, more are working in the community and the number of nurses relative to adverse incidents has decreased. There have been service-provision changes but the role of mental health nurses has not significantly changed in this period, and we can therefore assume that their current practice is saturated with risk or increased reporting. To help understand the relationship between nurses and incidents, we need to transform how incidents are recorded in England.

What are the implications for practice?

• English mental health services report greater levels of patient-related factors such as self-harm or aggression rather than missed or erroneous care. This makes it difficult to understand if a rise in incident frequency is linked to reporting behaviour, patient risk, unsafe/ineffective care or other reasons and therefore planning workforce deployment to improve care quality is problematic.

Introduction

There is a paucity of empirical data examining incidents and mental health nurses and the relationship between the two remains uncertain.

Aim

Comparison of English national data for incidents and nursing workforce to examine recent trends.

Method

Descriptive analysis of two national datasets of incidents and workforce data for England between 2015 and 2022.

Results

A 46% increase in incidents was found; the leading causes are self-harm and aggressive behaviour. Despite the rise in adverse incident reporting, a 6% increase in mental health nurses was found, with more nurses in community settings than hospitals.

Discussion

Current services are incident reporting at greater concentrations than in previous years. Patient-related behaviour continues to be most prominently reported, rather than possible antecedent health services issues that may contribute to reporting. Whilst staffing has increased, this does not seem to have kept pace with the implied workload evident in the increase in incident reports.

Implications for Practice

Greater emphasis should be placed on health service behaviour in reporting mechanisms. Self-harm and aggression should continue to be considered adverse outcomes, but causal health service factors, such as missed care, should be present in pooled reporting to help reduce the occurrence of adverse outcomes.