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The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study

The pace-of-life hypothesis is a socio-psychological theory postulating that citizens of different cities transact the business of life at varying paces, and this pace is associated with a number of population level variables. Here we apply the pace-of-life hypothesis to a hospital context to empiri...

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Autores principales: Long, Janet C., Pomare, Chiara, Ellis, Louise A., Churruca, Kate, Braithwaite, Jeffrey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8372908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34407092
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255775
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author Long, Janet C.
Pomare, Chiara
Ellis, Louise A.
Churruca, Kate
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
author_facet Long, Janet C.
Pomare, Chiara
Ellis, Louise A.
Churruca, Kate
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
author_sort Long, Janet C.
collection PubMed
description The pace-of-life hypothesis is a socio-psychological theory postulating that citizens of different cities transact the business of life at varying paces, and this pace is associated with a number of population level variables. Here we apply the pace-of-life hypothesis to a hospital context to empirically test the association between pace and patient and staff outcomes. As pressure on hospitals grow and pace increases to keep up with demand, is there empirical evidence of a trade-off between a rapid pace and poorer outcomes? We collected data from four large Australian hospitals, inviting all staff (clinical and non-clinical) to complete a survey, and conducted a series of observations of hospital staff’s walking pace and transactional pace. From these data we constructed three measures of pace: staff perception of pace, transactional pace, and walking pace. Outcome measures included: hospital culture, perceived patient safety, and staff well-being outcomes of job satisfaction and burnout. Overall, participants reported experiencing a “fast-paced” “hurried” and “rapid” pace-of-life working in the Australian hospital sector. We found a significant difference in perceived pace across four hospital sites, similar to trends observed for transactional pace. This provides support that the pace-of-life hypothesis may apply to the hospital context. We tested associations between faster perceived pace, hospital culture, staff well-being and patient safety. Results revealed perceived faster pace significantly predicted negative perceptions of organizational culture, greater burnout and lower job satisfaction. However, perceived pace did not predict perceptions of patient safety. Different perceptions of hospital pace-of-life were found between different clinical settings and the type of care delivered; staff working in emergency departments reported significantly “faster-paced” work environments than staff working in palliative, aged care, or rehabilitation wards.
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spelling pubmed-83729082021-08-19 The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study Long, Janet C. Pomare, Chiara Ellis, Louise A. Churruca, Kate Braithwaite, Jeffrey PLoS One Research Article The pace-of-life hypothesis is a socio-psychological theory postulating that citizens of different cities transact the business of life at varying paces, and this pace is associated with a number of population level variables. Here we apply the pace-of-life hypothesis to a hospital context to empirically test the association between pace and patient and staff outcomes. As pressure on hospitals grow and pace increases to keep up with demand, is there empirical evidence of a trade-off between a rapid pace and poorer outcomes? We collected data from four large Australian hospitals, inviting all staff (clinical and non-clinical) to complete a survey, and conducted a series of observations of hospital staff’s walking pace and transactional pace. From these data we constructed three measures of pace: staff perception of pace, transactional pace, and walking pace. Outcome measures included: hospital culture, perceived patient safety, and staff well-being outcomes of job satisfaction and burnout. Overall, participants reported experiencing a “fast-paced” “hurried” and “rapid” pace-of-life working in the Australian hospital sector. We found a significant difference in perceived pace across four hospital sites, similar to trends observed for transactional pace. This provides support that the pace-of-life hypothesis may apply to the hospital context. We tested associations between faster perceived pace, hospital culture, staff well-being and patient safety. Results revealed perceived faster pace significantly predicted negative perceptions of organizational culture, greater burnout and lower job satisfaction. However, perceived pace did not predict perceptions of patient safety. Different perceptions of hospital pace-of-life were found between different clinical settings and the type of care delivered; staff working in emergency departments reported significantly “faster-paced” work environments than staff working in palliative, aged care, or rehabilitation wards. Public Library of Science 2021-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8372908/ /pubmed/34407092 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255775 Text en © 2021 Long et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Long, Janet C.
Pomare, Chiara
Ellis, Louise A.
Churruca, Kate
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title_full The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title_fullStr The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title_full_unstemmed The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title_short The pace of hospital life: A mixed methods study
title_sort pace of hospital life: a mixed methods study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8372908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34407092
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255775
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