Findings and news

Findings, presentations and news about the study

Our study in the news

1/3/2021 NHS teamwork in the pandemic: how is it for you? - Nursing Standard

A research project will investigate the experience of nurses and other front-line healthcare workers in the NHS during the Covid-19 crisis in a bid to inform future pandemic responses.

Read the article on the Nursing Standard website

2/3/2021 Oxford Brookes research into NHS staff Covid experiences - Oxford Mail

A new research project, led by Oxford Brookes University, is set to examine the team working experiences of NHS staff working during the Covid-19 crisis.

The 18-month project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, will interview healthcare personnel who either worked, or is currently working on Covid-19 wards to understand the impact of the environment.

Read the article on the Oxford Mail website

4/3/2021 Oxford Brookes University launches Covid-19 study to analyse effects on healthcare staff - LH News

A new research study will be conducted by Oxford Brookes University to investigate the strain on NHS staff working amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study, lasting for 18 months, will survey and interview staff from across health and care who have been involved directly in the delivery of care for Covid patients, and is being backed by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Read the article on the LH News website

Presentations at conferences and workshops

Frontline teams - The effect of Covid deployment on teamwork, leadership, career intentions and mental health in NHS personnel

Presentation at Centre for Psychological Research Seminar

Wednesday April 28 2021

Abstract: Experiencing a sudden and dramatic change to their ways of working, a key component of the NHS response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been to reinforce critical and intensive care wards by supplementing Intensive care units with staff from different care pathways. As such, thousands of student nurses, trainee doctors, physiotherapists or support nurses were asked to step up and provide services they were ill-prepared for in a highly hazardous and stressful environment. Lacking common training, preparation, shared communication patterns and well-defined leadership structures, the ad-hoc and fluid nature of these teams has been suggested to increase risks to patient outcomes, delivery of care, individual resilience, staff mental-health, and retention. Furthermore, different levels of occupational experiences and preparedness - exacerbated by the unprecedented loss of life - may have enduring effects on deployed staff, least prepared or experienced in emergency and critical care environments.

As contemporary research on medical teams is focused predominantly on stable teams, there is little evidence-based guidance for how to best assemble, lead and run such ad-hoc and fluid teams. As such, our research project is currently examining how non-technical factors for healthcare delivery (leadership, social support, communication, shared mental models, co-ordination) and expected moderating factors (different levels of occupational identity, preparedness, workforce allocation models as well as disruptions of work-life balance and personal life) impact on teamwork and performance, individual team member well-being and team member employment retention intentions in NHS Covid personnel.

The talk will discuss the present literature on healthcare delivery and teamwork, outline how the NHS responded to the pandemic, provide the conceptual background of our particular study and present our research design. Finally, it will discuss some of the preliminary findings from the first stage of our data collection and contextualize them with regards to other research conducted on NHS staff during Covid.

British Academy of Management Conference, 2021

August/Sept 2021

British Academy of Management Conference, 2021: Developmental Paper

Title: From a Crisis of Leadership to Leadership in a Crisis: leading sudden critical care teams in response to Covid-19

Abstract: We aim to understand how Covid-teams experienced leadership during long-term high stress situations by investigating how Covid-team leaders, senior clinicians and service leaders allocated personnel, established teamwork and cooperation during long-term high stress situations, and how frontline healthcare professionals deployed on Covid intensive and critical care wards experienced such leadership. We will present findings from the first qualitative phase of an online sequential mixed methods study involving semi-structured interviews of members of multidisciplinary NHS Covid teams. The interviews will build on our previous qualitative research on acute medical units, and on teamwork and leadership in cross-occupational military teams. Thematic data analysis will draw on extant leadership theory to allow new conceptual frameworks of experiences of leaders and leadership during the delivery of hospital based critical care to Covid affected patients.