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Keep up to date with the latest news, research and activity in patient safety.

Researchers warn social media driving harmful misuse of Alzheimer’s blood tests

Researchers have warned that social media may be misleading healthy people into taking Alzheimer’s blood tests, causing severe anxiety over biological markers that may never actually cause dementia.
Blood-based biomarker tests, including p-tau217 and p-tau181, detect biological signs of changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, which is a progressive brain disorder and the leading cause of dementia.
The testing looks for abnormal proteins, which can be a sign of brain changes due to Alzheimer’s. Much hope has been placed in the tests because they are often quicker and more accessible compared with other methods to diagnose Alzheimer’s, such as brain imaging or lumbar punctures.
There is global consensus among peak neurological bodies, including the Alzheimer’s Association, that such tests should never be used for healthy people with no symptoms.
The tests should not be used on their own to diagnose Alzheimer’s and need to be combined with other medical assessments, according to clinicians and peak bodies. Because they detect signs of Alzheimer’s early, a person can test positive for the biological markers of disease – but they may not ever go on to develop the clinical symptoms of dementia.
Dr Jenna Smith from the University of Sydney’s school of public health said this has not stopped laboratories, influencers and doctors around the world from promoting the tests on social media.
The researchers found more than one-third of posts promoted the tests for people without symptoms, and that accounts with explicit financial interests were more than three times as likely to do so.
“The main potential harms are being unnecessarily diagnosed and not having a clear pathway for what to do next,” Smith said.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 15 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Boards must ‘never again treat baby safety as side issue’, says Cooper

Maternity and neonatal services “cannot operate on the margins” and deaths of babies and children must be investigated as a priority by boards, the health and social care secretary has warned NHS leaders.
Yvette Cooper, responding to the Thirlwall Inquiry’s report, said there had been a “serious failure of governance” at the Countess of Chester Hospital which meant oversight of neonatal care had been downgraded, with only adult deaths investigated.
The report recommended that all hospital trusts must have in place effective mechanisms for board-level monitoring of all deaths of children and babies by next April, and they must also have a clear route in place for staff to escalate concerning data trends or patterns.
Ms Cooper told the Commons: “There is a section of the report that refers to the way senior oversight of neonatal care had been downgraded in the reorganisation of the Countess Hospital.
“It includes the fact that the board and the medical director reviewed deaths within the hospital. However, it only covered adult deaths. And the report says, ‘the board did not receive any reports about the deaths of babies and children at any stage during the period the inquiry was considering.
“This was a serious failure of governance which no one on the board seems to have noticed. This is further evidence of the inadequacy of the structure which removed the voice of children and babies from the board and the lack of profile of paediatrics and neonatology".
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 15 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

ICU pillow device aids care of sickest patients

Trials of an inflatable pillow developed to make moving ventilated patients lying on their front easier and safer have found it reduces the demands on ICU teams.
The BathMat was created by the University of Bath and Royal United Hospitals (RUH) to be used under a prone patient's chest and abdomen to raise them.
Patients lying prone have to be repositioned up to seven times a day and preliminary findings showed the device cut the number of staff needed from five to three.
Dr Alexander Lunt, senior lecturer at the university said the device was inspired by ICU teams' experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic which remain relevant as they "continue to operate under significant workforce pressure".
The RUH said the BathMat has been designed to free up intensive care teams, helping patients receive more consistent repositioning, "even during periods of workforce pressure".
The trial, which concluded in June this year, involved 30 patients and around 160 repositioning procedures. As well as reducing the number of people needed, it was also found it saved an hour of staff time per procedure.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 15 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Ministers vow sweeping NHS changes after ‘devastating’ report on Lucy Letby hospital

Ministers have promised sweeping changes to the NHS after a “devastating” official review concluded that three babies might have survived if hospital bosses and doctors had acted on concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby.
A public inquiry found a “complete failure” to protect babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.
In a series of findings, the inquiry chair, Lady Justice Thirlwall, said two newborn twins would not have died and five others would not have been harmed if Letby had been removed from the unit sooner.
Thirlwall said a third baby who died, a two-month-old girl, and two others who suffered unexplained collapses might have been protected if a doctor had detected an earlier insulin poisoning on the unit. One of those infants, now aged 11, suffered a lifelong brain injury and needs 24-hour care.
Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, said she was “profoundly sorry” for the “devastating” failures revealed in the report, telling MPs: “This must be a turning point for the NHS.” She said she had asked officials to urgently take forward plans for “cot cam” monitors for neonatal units in line with Thirlwall’s recommendation.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 15 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Staff slept while patient killed at NHS mental health unit

Staff falsified records, slept and were on their phones on the night one patient was killed by another on an NHS mental health unit in east London, an inquest has heard.
Hugo Flint-Cahan, 34, was being treated at Newham Mental Health Centre (NMHC), run by the East London NHS Trust (ELFT), when he was fatally attacked by 22-year-old Rolando Torres-Pena.
Hugo's family say they have been shocked by the "dangerous" failures in his care.
The Trust says it has undertaken a significant programme of work to "improve our inpatient culture, behaviours and practice".
In a narrative conclusion, the coroner found Hugo was unlawfully killed which was contributed to by neglect, recommended four members of staff be referred to their regulator and that the Metropolitan police review their investigation into what happened that night.
Hugo, who had been a patient at the NHMC for six months, was strangled in the early hours of 3 January 2023 by Torres-Pena who had arrived on the ward five days earlier.
A coroner criticised repeated failures by the Trust in a number of patient deaths - not just Hugo's.
Graeme Irvine, the Senior Coroner for East London, said it was like "ground hog day" as he heard evidence of "the same" errors, "over and over again," including the falsification of patient observation records and slow emergency responses.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 14 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Grasp ‘politically unpopular’ mergers or face more deaths

Politically unpopular and “very difficult” decisions are required to tackle rising maternal death rates and improve safety, a leading academic has warned.
Marian Knight, who investigates maternal deaths for the MBRRACE-UK programme, said a lack of capacity for C-sections was a “patient safety issue we need to be actively managing”.
She said the NHS had to think about “consolidation into fewer, bigger [maternity] units” to better manage C-sections, which currently account for around half of births in England.
Professor Knight’s comments follow the publication of the programme’s most recent report into maternal mortality last week.
It found that women who died between 2022 and 2024 had faced delays and postponements of scheduled C-sections, with assessors warning that limited availability of operating theatres and appropriately skilled surgeons may have worsened their outcomes.
The report said that “it was not clear if the safety of services is maintained in light of [the] increased demand [for C-sections].”
It therefore recommended that the Department of Health and Social Care review theatre and workforce capacity planning guidance to manage the additional workload.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 15 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

From a WhatsApp group to a national platform: digital and community provision is part of the wider safety ecosystem

Sandra Igwe MBE is Founder and CEO of The Motherhood Group, which began with mothers connecting and speaking honestly about experiences that too often remained invisible. It has since supported more than 18,000 mothers through community, counselling, peer support, programmes, advocacy, research, training and partnerships with health services and other institutions.
That same principle sits behind Mumbrite, a new digital maternal wellbeing and community platform. Mumbrite is designed to help mothers discover support, connect with others and feel that they belong. Through live audio conversations, expert-led sessions, culturally responsive wellbeing support, community profiles and events, mothers can enter a space without the pressure of having to perform or explain every part of themselves.
Digital and community provision can be especially valuable for a mother who is isolated, caring for a baby, returning to work, coping with baby loss or birth trauma, or not yet ready to walk into a clinical setting. It can help create a bridge. It must be responsibly governed and linked to appropriate professional pathways, but it should be recognised as part of the wider safety ecosystem rather than treated as peripheral.
In August, Channel 4 and Lloyds named Mumbrite one of four 2026 Black in Business winners. The award includes £200,000 of Channel 4 advertising airtime, a bespoke television campaign produced with Quiet Storm, and six months of marketing support and business mentoring from Lloyds. The advert is due to air in 2027.
This is not a £200,000 cash grant. Its significance is visibility and reach. It will allow a platform created from Black mothers’ lived experience to enter homes across the country and reach women who may never have known that culturally responsive support existed for them. For Black founders and Black communities, it is also a reminder that our ideas, expertise and solutions deserve investment, national visibility and room to grow.
Most importantly, the opportunity can help more mothers find community and support earlier. Visibility alone does not reform a system, but visibility can open a door. What happens after that door opens must be backed by safe pathways, skilled practitioners, sustainable commissioning and meaningful partnership with the communities being served.
Black Maternal Mental Health Week UK 2026 takes place from Monday 21 to Sunday 27 September.
Patient Safety Learning

Dead bodies exposed to view from public footpath

A body being prepared for release in a hospital mortuary was visible from a publicly accessible footpath through a fire exit door propped open in hot weather, inspectors have found.
The Human Tissue Authority said the mortuary office fire exit door at Worthing Hospital was “frequently opened for ventilation during periods of hot weather” and, when propped, gave “unrestricted access to the body store”. The camera covering it was not working, though the trust provided evidence on this before the report was published.
Inspectors could also see into the body store from the same footpath through the funeral directors’ entrance, where the doors were slow to close and had been left substantially open after a release.
The inspection, on 7 and 8 July, came less than three weeks after NHS England ordered every trust to review mortuary security, CCTV, estates, and staffing following “shocking” findings at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 14 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Cancer centres in the US are facing shortages of life-saving drugs, survey finds

America’s cancer treatment centres are continuing to face a years-long cancer drug shortage with implications for patient care, a new survey of more than 30 academic facilities reveals.
All of the centres included in the survey report experiencing a shortage for at least one anti-cancer therapy and more than 20% of centres are currently in shortage for five or more different medications.
The drugs treat some of the top-killing cancers, including testicular, bladder, uterine, ovarian, lung and breast cancer.
"It is disheartening that we remain in the same situation, including recurring or continued shortages of some drugs, despite years of raising the alarm," Dr. Crystal Denlinger, CEO of the non-profit National Comprehensive Cancer Network, said in a statement.
While care centers have developed strategies for keeping patient care and clinical trials on track, the shortages takes time and attention from treatment and adds stress to an already burdened system, she noted.
Some of the drugs most affected include ovarian cancer-fighting carboplatin, lung cancer-treating ifosfamide and bladder cancer-targeting cisplatin - though the drugs also work to treat other cancer types.
The Trump administration told The New York Times in June that the Department of Health and Human Services was working to alleviate the shortages and considering temporarily allowing imports of medications from companies that do not typically send supplies to the U.S.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 11 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

GP leaders issue ‘urgent’ patient safety concerns over Levemir discontinuation

GP leaders and experts are warning of an ‘increasingly urgent’ need to switch patients with diabetes from Levemir insulin before it is discontinued at the end of this year.
Local medical committees in London are among those writing to the integrated care board with patient safety concerns after pharmacies in the area are already reporting intermittent supply problems.
Manufacturer Novo Nordisk informed the Department of Health and Social Care in September 2024 that it would be withdrawing several older insulins including Levemir (insulin determir) in both its Penfill and Flexpen options.
Joint guidance has been issued from professional diabetes associations on alternatives to mitigate against knock-on shortages of other insulins.
It is thought thousands of patients could still be using Levemir and experts warned that switching was complex.
Dr Stephen Lawrence, a GP and associate clinical professor in primary care at Warwick University, said the discontinuation of Levemir was a ‘genuine patient safety concern’.
‘Insulin detemir cannot simply be replaced through an automatic prescription substitution.
‘There is no direct like-for-like alternative: the choice of basal insulin, dose, injection timing and delivery device must be tailored to the individual, with education and closer glucose monitoring during the early weeks after the change.’
He added it would be ‘unsafe’ to expect already pressured practices to absorb a large programme of reviews without safeguards.
"General practice may be well placed to deliver many switches, particularly where practices have established diabetes expertise.
"But it must be accompanied by protected capacity, training, a funded and clearly commissioned pathway, robust clinical governance and timely access to specialist diabetes advice for more complex patients."
Read full story
Source: Pulse, 11 September 2026

Patient Safety Learning

€5bn EU venture fund backs AI medical assistant Tandem Health

A €5bn (£4.3bn) EU fund which invests in some of the continent's most promising scale-up technology companies is leading a $100m (£73.9m) funding round for Tandem Health, an AI medical assistant which has built a presence at the epicentre of Britain's private healthcare industry.
Sky News has learnt that Swedish-based Tandem Health will announce on Monday that it has finalised a Series B fundraising led by the Scaleup Europe Fund, which is managed by the Stockholm-based private equity behemoth EQT.
Tandem Health was launched with the aim of reducing the administrative burden associated with clinical healthcare by using AI to generate notes while medical experts speak to patients.
In the UK, the company has a partnership with Accurx which has given hundreds of thousands of NHS practitioners access to Tandem Health's technology.
Tandem Health cites evidence showing that clinicians using its products report a 29% reduction in the amount of time they spend on administrative tasks.
Its AI medical assistant prepares patient summaries prior to appointments, provides clinical decision support during consultations and automatically handles the documentation and coding which follows.
Tandem Health says it is used by 10,000 care organisations across 14 European countries.
Read full story
Source: Sky News, 13 September 2026

Patient Safety Learning

First AI clinical negligence claims lodged

The NHS has received its first clinical negligence claims related to the use of artificial intelligence, HSJ can reveal.
NHS Resolution, which handles compensation claims brought against NHS trusts, yesterday confirmed it had received a “small volume of claims” in which “the use of AI in delivering patient care is a potential factor”.
It is the first time AI has been cited as a factor in patient harm in the UK.
HSJ earlier this year revealed the General Medical Council had received its first referrals over doctors misusing the technology.
NHS Resolution, an arm’s-length body of the Department of Health and Social Care which handles billions of pounds worth of compensation payments each year, would not give any details about the claims.
A spokesperson said: “Given the small volume of claims, we’re unable to discuss these due to the risk of identification of individuals.”
However, in guidance this morning the organisation said there were three likely categories for AI negligence claims: clinicians inappropriately relying on the AI and not applying their own judgement, using an AI for which a clinician is not trained, and ignoring the “known limitations/performance concerns” of an AI system.
The submission of the first claims does not necessarily mean patient harm occurred, or that AI is the main cause.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 11 September 2026
Related reading on the hub:
Ambient voice technology: exploring the patient safety risks (Patient Safety Learning)
MHRA: Medical device regulation for ambient voice technology products
Balancing promise and risk: AI hallucinations, confabulations and omissions in healthcare
National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare: Recommendations for a future regulatory framework
Patient Safety Learning

NHS reports busiest ever summer as heatwaves drive up hospital admissions

The NHS came under its most intense strain ever as a result of the summer’s five heatwaves, amid warnings that extreme heat is having an unprecedented impact on human health.
A&E units, ambulance services and the NHS 111 telephone advice line all experienced record demand for their services in England in June, July and August as Britain experienced record temperatures.
NHS England’s latest performance statistics, published on Thursday, prompted claims that the growing climate emergency has left the NHS with a “twin crisis” as it struggles to meet patients’ need for care in the summer as well as winter.
“Extreme heat is now an NHS pressure point, not just a weather story,” said Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund health thinktank.
“The NHS is now facing a twin crisis, with summer joining winter as a major pressure on services and leaving little room for staff and the system to recover between peak periods.
“One major factor is climate change. As its effects become more pronounced and record-breaking heatwaves become more frequent, the impacts on people’s health and our health system are becoming more obvious,” she added.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 10 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

NHS rationing revealed: Half of ICBs deliberately delaying patient care with “minimum waits”

Nearly half of health boards in England are deliberately delaying care for patients by imposing minimum waiting times, The BMJ can reveal.
A total of 17 of the 36 integrated care boards (ICBs) have introduced minimum waits of between 12 and 16 weeks for procedures including hip, knee, and cataract surgery, freedom of information requests show.
The Royal College of Surgeons said it was “concerned by the scale” of measures that can prolong patients’ pain, while the Royal College of General Practitioners said the thresholds were “difficult to justify.”
The minimum waits are being used by local ICBs as a rationing tool to slow down the rate of procedures and control costs.
But experts pointed out that imposing blanket 16 week waits, in particular, meant that patients were likely to breach the 18 week target.
Reacting to the data, the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s president, Tim Lane, said, “We are concerned by the scale of this and, particularly, by the variation in approaches between ICBs.
“Patients should be able to expect that access to treatment is determined by their clinical need, not by where they live.
“We recognise the significant financial and capacity pressures facing the NHS, but minimum waits risk meaning that patients who are clinically ready for treatment are deliberately made to wait.
He added, “For patients, this can mean living with pain, living with reduced mobility, experiencing anxiety for longer, as well as being unable to work or carry out normal activities.
“There is also a risk that a patient’s condition may deteriorate while they are waiting, potentially changing their clinical needs and priority for treatment.”
Read full story
Source: BMJ, 9 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Call for health board boss to quit over patient safety concerns

Concerns over patient safety at a north Wales hospital have prompted a call for a health board chief executive to resign.
Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) visited the emergency department at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Denbighshire, in May and said it needed "significant improvements."
A follow-up last month found progress had been made but challenges remained and "enhanced oversight" of the department was still needed.
The emergency department at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd came out of special scrutiny in 2024 before being given the designation again in summer 2026.
In its report, HIW said it identified "several immediate assurance concerns that required urgent action by the health board" relating to waiting area safety, paediatric emergency care, medicines and equipment management, and safeguarding oversight.
Patients, relatives and carers also shared their experiences in 660 survey responses, highlighting long waiting times, overcrowding and issues relating to privacy and dignity - though they also recognised the compassion and professionalism of staff.
A follow-up visit over two days in August found improvements including in staff wellbeing and engagement, patient flow, and paediatric governance.
But the HIW report also flagged challenges still which remained in waiting room oversight and reducing delays in medial and surgical referrals.
It said enhanced monitoring would focus not just on if actions had been completed, but also on whether they were "delivering measurable improvements, reducing risk and making a sustained difference to the experience of patients and staff."
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 10 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Migraines and acne among five more conditions pharmacists can treat

People will be able to go to their local chemist in England this autumn and get on-the-spot treatment for 12 common conditions without going to their GP first.
Pharmacists can already prescribe medication for seven conditions - sore throat, earache, sinusitis, shingles, impetigo, infected bites and urinary tract infections.
Five more - migraines, acne, scabies, ear infections and badly blocked noses - are now also being added to that list.
NHS England said the move was to ease pressure on busy GPs and A&E departments while making sure people could get treatment quickly and conveniently.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 10 September 2026
Patient Safety Learning
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