Hospital Neglect is a growing issue of public concern. It occurs much more often than is reported as medical professionals are reluctant to self-report issues they feel are not in line with patient safety protocols. Hospital neglect can be defined as a lack of attention, support or care by hospital staff to patients. It is a broad term that encompasses many different actions and may be the result of a range of issues including medical errors, abuse, failure to follow protocol or simply the perception by patients of being ignored by hospital staff.
The concept of neglect is difficult to conceptualise, partly because of its overlapping with other constructs such as error and abuse. This study developed a social psychology-based conceptual model for neglect and separated it into two components: 1 procedures, or ‘procedure neglect’; and 2 caring behaviours, or ‘caring neglect’. Procedural neglect is defined as a failure to follow an institutional procedure such as failing to wash, feed, turn or clean a patient. The underlying causes of this type of neglect are generally more related to system failings and error than the attitudes of healthcare staff.
Caring neglect, on the other hand, is more subjective and reflects the perceptions of patients that healthcare staff do not care about them. It is important to distinguish caring neglect from other constructs as it can have significant consequences for the emotional well-being of patients, even when such perceptions are inaccurate. The underlying causes of this type of patient neglect are typically more complex and involve a combination of factors, such as high workloads, stress, conflict, insufficient training, low job satisfaction and burnout i.e. a state of mental exhaustion 64.
The literature on patient CA Hospital Neglect is limited, with few studies explicitly investigating this area. The few studies that do exist tend to rely upon surveys with patients and healthcare staff or retrospective analyses of particular cases of extreme neglect. In addition, research into the causes of neglect is frequently buried within studies looking at medical error or abuse. This review aimed to bring together the available literature on patient neglect, and found that whilst there is an increasing focus on this area of concern, there is a need for more research to identify proximal causes of patient neglect e.g. organisational management and systems for reporting poor care, as well as distal causes e.g. the psychological mechanisms that underlie poor patient care. This work also suggests that it is possible to conceptualise and measure both forms of neglect and that doing so will help to address current concerns about the quality of healthcare provided by UK hospitals. This will require the development of new measures that are sensitive to the nuances of the constructs of both caring and procedural neglect. Further, such measures are likely to need to be designed in such a way that they do not hinder healthcare professionals from engaging in discretionary and non-measurable acts of caring.