The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been pushed beyond its limit over the last 18 months. Services that were already overstretched and underfunded have encountered unimaginable levels of strain. According to a recent government report, this pressure has now become a national emergency, putting the entire future of healthcare at risk.
Behind the scenes, UK healthcare professionals are spinning multiple plates simultaneously. From treating Covid-19 cases and supporting vaccination programs, to providing basic care and treatment, our healthcare system is, unsurprisingly, struggling. In fact, recent research from Nuance found that the last few months have led to a dramatic increase in the levels of stress and anxiety in both primary (75%) and secondary (60%) care in the NHS.
This stress and anxiety, if experienced for a long period of time, could lead to burnout, which, in turn, could lead to clinicians abandoning the medical profession altogether. According to reports, GP surgeries lost nearly 300 full-time medical professionals in the months leading up to Christmas last year, and a shortage of 7,000 full-time doctors is expected by 2023. Furthermore, it is thought that as many as one third of nurses are considering leaving due to pandemic-related burnout.
NHS workers were the people we applauded every week during the most challenging days of the pandemic. Fast forward and the current level of unrelenting pressure is causing major harm to their own health. We need to protect the people who protected us. Without them, the NHS will no longer be able to provide its life-saving care and services.
The challenge of administrative procedures
The way health services are delivered has changed throughout the pandemic. One of the most prominent changes is the shift to remote consultations or virtual appointments. An RCGP survey of GP appointments found that as many as 70% of consultations were face-to-face before the pandemic. In the first weeks of the crisis, this dropped to 23%.
Although this new format has been predominantly welcomed by patients – who are benefitting in terms of time savings and convenience – for many clinicians, the rapid transition to virtual methods has created a lot more work, especially in terms of documentation. In fact, 67% of primary care respondents believe the effects of the pandemic have increased the volume of clinical administration. In addition to heavy workloads and time pressure, the increase in remote consultations appears to be an important contributor, given the risk factors and diagnostic uncertainty of remote consultations are usually higher than face-to-face appointments.
Prior to Covid-19, doctors were reported to spend an average of 11 hours a week on clinical documentation. During the pandemic’s peaks, this number is likely to have increased, when hospitals were most occupied and remote appointments were most needed. And, given the vaccination roll-out is still ongoing, along with concerns around new Covid-19 variants, remote consultations will continue to exist. Therefore, looking to the future, we must consider how to better support clinical professionals by reducing their administration burden.
AI speech recognition: the way forward
Modern technologies, such as speech recognition, can be used to help relieve some of the administrative pressure on clinicians, enabling them to work more efficiently and intelligently. These technologies are designed to recognise and record speech passages and convert them into detailed clinical notes, no matter how fast they are delivered. By reducing duplication and supporting cross-departmental standardisation, they can also improve the accuracy and quality of patient records.
Healthcare professionals can benefit from compiling patient records using secure, cloud-based voice solutions no matter where they are, allowing them to stay productive even when remote working is required for patient visits or for social distancing purposes. Such a change in compiling clinical documentation can not only reduce the administrative burden of consultations, but help to reduce the burnout of NHS staff. This is because clinicians are able to develop reports faster, spending less time in front of a screen and more time treating patients, simply by using their voice instead of writing or typing.
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust is a prime example of an organisation that has benefited from this technology. The team used speech recognition as part of a broader goal to help all employees and patients during the Covid-19 crisis. With a population of approximately 470,000 and 6,000 employees, the foundation intended to save time and allow doctors to increase safety while minimising the risk of infection. Using speech recognition in mobile devices, clinicians could quickly and easily update patient records without touching the shared keyboard. Such benefits have enticed the Trust to consider using speech recognition to support virtual inquiries through the likes of Microsoft Teams, in order to improve the quality of consultations and reduce some of the pressure on employees.
Technology that enables clinicians to spend less time doing admin and more time treating patients is poised to help staff to feel more engaged, more empowered and less burnt-out. Such impacts would no doubt improve retention within our NHS, as well as helping attract more talented clinicians of the future.
By Dr Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Nuance
