risk assessment for staff shortage

[Guest guest]

We are all hoping for great improvements in staff numbers soon and the interim workforce figures from the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care record a very small rise in health visitors (from 7941 in September 2011 to 8065 in December) and an even smaller rise for school nurses (from 1165 to 1170). The rise for health visitors is particularly significant, because up to now, there have been consistent falls in the numbers, so that trends has been halted and reversed, but I would not expect this to be sustained ahead of the large cohort of health visitor students qualifying in September. I have been asked, though, 'what do we do in the mean time?' Does anyone have a system for assessing risk from the shortage of staff? The question has come to me a couple of times from people who are used to well established risk assessment tools used in acute care, where measures of things like deaths, falls, infections etc, can give a clear indication that things are not going well. Conversely, in preventive services, falling recorded numbers of such definite incidents as identified disabilities, child abuse referrals, post-natal depression etc might just mean they are not being picked up or acted upon. It would be interesting to know if anyone has been able to systematise a risk assessment process?best wishes Cowleysarahcowley183@...http://myprofile.cos.com/S124021COn