Jump to content
  • articles
    9,899
  • comments
    84
  • views
    12,583,831

Contributors to this article

About this News

Articles in the news

NHS’s mounting failures and political neglect laid bare in sobering report

What would the NHS see if it looked in a mirror, asks Siva Anandaciva, author of the King’s Fund’s study comparing the health service with those of 18 other rich countries, in the introduction to his timely and sobering 118-page report.

The answer, he says, is “a service that has seen better days”.

Britons die sooner from cancer and heart disease than people in many other rich countries, partly because of the NHS’s lack of beds, staff and scanners, a study has found.

The UK “underperforms significantly” on tackling its biggest killer diseases, in part because the NHS has been weakened by years of underinvestment, according to the report from the King’s Fund health thinktank. It “performs poorly” as judged by the number of avoidable deaths resulting from disease and injury and also by fatalities that could have been prevented had patients received better or quicker treatment.

The comparative study of 19 well-off nations concluded that Britain achieves only “below average” health outcomes because it spends a “below average” amount for every person on healthcare.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 26 June 2023

Read more
 

NHS’s leading wheelchair provider told to improve as people wait up to two years

The NHS’s leading wheelchair provider has been told to urgently improve its complaints system by the health service ombudsman amid concerns disabled people are waiting up to two years for chairs.

The parliamentary and health service ombudsman (PHSO) took the unusual step of writing to AJM Healthcare after a sharp rise in complaints from wheelchair users. Most related to people not receiving new wheelchairs or the correct parts. The waits range from a month to two years, the ombudsman said.

Read full story

Source: Guardian 21 May 2024

Read more

NHS’s flagship £360m system to slash waiting lists delayed

A flagship programme intended to bring down NHS waiting backlogs is to be delayed after becoming mired in bureaucracy.

The £360 million federated data platform is seen as critical to reducing waiting lists, with a record 7.1 million people now waiting for treatment. 

When the plans were announced in the spring, health chiefs said that the system would be an “essential enabler to transformational improvements” across the NHS.

Experts have warned that progress in clearing the lists has been set back by chaotic recording systems. 

While NHS data was found to be littered with errors, such as duplicate entries and dead patients, many patients in need of follow-up care are not recorded once they have had their first slot. 

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Telegraph, 25 November 2022

Read more
 

NHS’ promotion of 111 First ‘not strong enough’, watchdog warns

Not enough people know about the NHS 111 First A&E booking service as the messaging hasn't been strong enough, says Healthwatch England. The service can be used for patient who need urgent care but are not in an emergency situation, and patients can call 111 to "book" into urgent care. However, not enough people know about it, or what it's used for.

“There’s a real gap in high quality communication to the public,” she said. “They [the NHS leadership] expect the public just to catch up with the changes they have made. 111 First [or] online booking services come along and we’re all supposed just to know how to use it. That’s caused a lot of frustration for people. Our evidence shows that when people understand and use [111 First], they like it. But not enough people know about it and the comms have not been strong enough.” Says Imelda Redmond, the outgoing national director for Healthwatch England.

Read full story (paywalled).

Source: HSJ, 2 August 2021

Read more

NHS: Woman waited nine months for hospital discharge

A woman who spent nine months in hospital waiting for a suitable care home placement became a "shadow of her former self", her mother has said.

Jocelyn Ullmer, 60, from West Sussex, saw her health deteriorate after being admitted to hospital in June last year.

Her mother, Sylvia Hubbard, 86, said: "We tried to get her out of hospital, but no-one wanted her."

Across England, around 60% of patients classed as fit to leave remain in hospital at the end of an average day.

Figures show the biggest obstacle is a lack of beds in other settings, such as care homes and community hospitals.

The government said it was investing £1.6bn over the next two years to help improve the situation.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 8 November 2023

Read more

NHS: MPs pilot system to measure delivery of key pledges

MPs are to launch a new system for evaluating whether key health targets are being met in England. 

A panel of experts reporting to the Commons health committee will assess progress made on policy commitments, starting with maternity services. They will rate performance from "outstanding" to "inadequate" and seek to drive improvements where needed.

Panel chair Dame Jane Dacre said it would be "fair and impartial" in its findings. She said she was keen to ask recent patients and users of NHS services to contribute to the panel's work as well as specialists in chosen fields, all of whom would have no political affiliation.

"It will be challenging, but I am committed to using available evidence to evaluate pledges, with the aim of improving patient care," she added.

The panel will scrutinise, on behalf of the health committee, major commitments made by the Department of Health, NHS England, NHS Improvement and other public bodies. It will base its approach on the Care Quality Commission, which evaluates care homes, hospitals, GP practices and other health services.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 5 August 2020

Read more
 

NHS: More cancer specialists needed in A&E, doctors say

Being placed on immunotherapy to treat Stage 4 cancer was a life-saver for Imogen Llewellyn.

Three years on, the 34-year-old is currently cancer-free, but said if it was not for specialist doctors, the side effects could have killed her.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) claims Wales needs more oncology experts in A&E to recognise and treat emergencies.

The Welsh government said all acute hospitals were expected to have an acute oncology service.

The RCP report wants investment in emergency cancer care because of the sheer volume of patients who need urgent care during their treatment.

With about a fifth of acute hospital beds occupied by people who have a cancer-related problems, they add that about a third of admissions could be avoided if same-day care were more widely available in Wales - which in turn would relieve pressure on hospitals.

Dr Hilary Williams, consultant oncologist and Wales Cancer Network lead for acute oncology, said: "Wherever a patient lives in Wales, they should be able to access excellent acute oncology services.

"When people think about cancer treatment, they might think about undergoing surgery or receiving chemotherapy, radiotherapy or immunotherapy in an organised way, perhaps during weekday hours in a specialist centre. But what happens when an emergency arises?"

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 24 January 2023

Read more
 

NHS: Government plans to reverse Cameron-era reforms

The government is planning to reverse reforms of the NHS in England introduced under David Cameron in 2012, a leaked document suggests. 

The changes would aim to tackle bureaucracy and encourage health services from hospitals to GP surgeries and social care to work more closely. The draft policy paper also says the health secretary would take more direct control over NHS England.

The reforms by Mr Cameron's government in 2012 saw the creation of NHS England - to run the health service - and the scrapping of primary care trusts in favour of GP-led clinical commissioning groups to organise local services.

Under the latest proposals, set out in a leaked document published by health news website Health Policy Insight, there will be "enhanced powers of direction for the government" to "ensure that decision makers overseeing the health system at a national level are effectively held to account".

Instead of a system that requires competitive tendering for contracts - sometimes involving private companies, the NHS and local authorities will be left to run services and told to collaborate with each other, says the draft White Paper, designed to set out proposed legislation.

There will also be more focus on GPs, hospitals and social care services working together to improve patient care.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 6 February 2021

Read more

NHS yet to see ‘a single penny’ of promised £500m emergency fund

Hospitals and care homes have not received a single penny of a £500m emergency fund promised by the government to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers announced they were injecting the cash into the health and social care system last month, to help get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital into either their own home or a care home as soon as possible in an effort to better prepare the NHS for the coming months.

“At the moment, one of the key challenges is discharging patients from hospital into more appropriate care settings to free up beds and help improve ambulance response times,” Thérèse Coffey, the then health and social care secretary, said on 22 September. “To tackle that, I can announce today that we are launching a £500m adult social care discharge fund for this winter.”

However, the Guardian has been told that none of the funding has materialised. Senior health and social care sources described the government’s failure to release the promised cash as “inexplicable” and “outrageous”.

More than 13,000 of the 100,000 NHS hospital beds in England currently contain “delayed discharge” patients, which has led to A&E units becoming heavily congested and long delays in ambulance handovers. As a direct result, thousands of 999 patients are suffering potential “severe harm” every month because ambulances are stuck outside hospitals.

“Leaders across the NHS and local authorities are yet to see a single penny of this investment or any official detail on how it will be allocated,” said Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

“Currently, only two-fifths of patients in hospital are able to leave when they are ready to do so, including due to problems accessing social care, yet health leaders still do not know how and when the £500m will be released to the system. So close to winter, this is unbelievable.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 31 October 2022

Read more

NHS workforce plan relies on ‘significant’ substitution of qualified GPs, NAO warns

NHS England’s workforce ambitions are based on ‘significant’ substitution of fully qualified GPs with trainees and specialist and associate specialist (SAS) doctors, the public spending watchdog has revealed.

In a new assessment of the NHS long-term workforce plan, the National Audit Office (NAO) found that NHS England’s modelling of the future workforce had ‘significant weaknesses’ and that some of its ‘assumptions’ may have been ‘optimistic’.

Last year, the national commissioner committed to doubling medical school places to 15,000 and increasing GP training places to 6,000 by 2031. 

This was based on modelling which predicted that, without these changes, the NHS could face a staffing shortfall of 360,000 and a GP shortfall of 15,000 by 2036.

The NAO’s report has examined the robustness of NHS England’s predictions, and made a number of recommendations which could influence the refreshed projections NHSE has committed to publishing every two years.

The long-term workforce plan (LTWP) projected only a 4% increase in fully-qualified GPs between 2021 and 2036, compared to a 49% growth in consultants. 

"The total supply of doctors in primary care is projected to increase substantially over the modelled period but the total number of fully qualified GPs is not," the report said. 

It found that NHSE’s projected supply growth in general practice "consists mainly of trainee GPs", who accounted for 93%, as well as "making increased use of specialist and associate specialist (SAS) doctors in primary care". 

Read full story

Source: Pulse, 22 March 2024

Read more

NHS workforce ‘could not cope’ with third wave

The government has admitted the NHS in England does not have enough nurses and doctors to keep all its services running if there is a third spike in coronavirus cases as leaked figures show the number of staff off work because of the virus rising.

An analysis of the impact of coronavirus, released by Downing Street on Monday, warned that even with a 6% growth in NHS staff since August 2019 and extra funding “there is a trade-off between the NHS’s ability to deliver COVID-19 and non-Covid-19 care in the event that COVID-19 hospitalisations rise”.

It also warned of the psychological effects on staff saying: “It would be expected that higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) would be seen amongst health and social care staff.”

New leaked NHS data for England on Monday shows more than 82,000 NHS staff are absent from work with more than two-fifths, 42 per cent, linked to coronavirus either due to sickness or because they need to self-isolate.

This includes almost 27,000 nurses and 4,000 doctors absent from NHS wards.

Hospital leaders reiterated the strain the NHS was under in a briefing to MPs ahead of the vote on local tier restrictions today.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 1 December 2020

Read more

NHS workers betrayed: 'Cover up' allegations as most NHS Trusts say no staff died of Covid on their watch

NHS leaders and ministers face allegations of a “cover up”, as Byline Times reveals that almost two-thirds of NHS employers did not make a single, legally-required report of Covid being caught by staff working during the first 18 months of the pandemic.

And four-fifths (82%) of NHS employers have not reported a single death of a worker from Covid caught while working in those first two waves.

The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences (RIDDOR) rules mean that employers have a legal duty to report certain serious workplace accidents and occupational diseases – including Covid. 

The lack of acceptance of responsibility from NHS employers has left some families in limbo – and angry at what they consider to be deliberate “denial” of the experiences of those who died serving the public.  

David Osborn, a health and safety consultant and member of the Covid-19 Airborne Transmission Alliance (CATA), co-wrote the research. He said: “One wonders how many bereaved families who have been denied this payment did not have the benefit of [these reports] to support their case.”

Osborn wrote to Sarah Albon, Chief Executive of the Health and Safety Executive, to raise his concerns after speaking with family members of NHS workers who had died of Covid, saying the reports of zero NHS worker deaths from Covid caught in the workplace are “difficult, nigh impossible, to believe.” 

Read full story

Source: Byline Times, 6 April 2023

Read more
 

NHS worker quit when she was stopped from wearing face mask

A healthcare worker in north-west London quit her job after she was refused permission to wear a protective face mask, the Guardian has learned.

In her resignation letter, Tracy Brennan chastised her superiors at Hillingdon Hospitals NHS foundation trust for forbidding her from wearing a surgical mask she had bought to protect herself – and the patients she was caring for – from contracting the deadly virus.

Brennan, a healthcare assistant, said she had returned to work after self-isolating for 14 days because her daughter had shown symptoms of Covid-19. She said that patients in the ward where she was working, which was not a coronavirus treatment ward, felt comfortable with her wearing the surgical mask and some positively encouraged her to do so.

Brennan wrote: “With a heavy heart and sadness, I feel I have no alternative but to hand this letter in as my formal resignation and will be unable to work my notice due to not being allowed to wear sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) for the duties I perform.”

Read full story

Source: Guardian, 4 April 2020

Read more

NHS will not hit virtual wards target, internal data suggests

The NHS is on trajectory to fall short of a flagship pledge to have around 24,000 “virtual ward beds” in place by December 2023, internal data has revealed.

NHS England’s figures from March, seen by HSJ, suggest the system is instead more likely to have created around 18,500 virtual beds by the 2023 deadline. 

Senior clinicians, including the Royal College of Physicians and the Society of Acute Medicine, have recently raised concerns about the speed and timing of the roll-out and staffing implications.

And now fresh concerns are also being raised about the programme following publication of a new academic study which suggests virtual wards set up by the NHS during Covid made little impact on length of stay or readmissions rates.

Alison Leary, professor of healthcare and workforce modelling, London South Bank University, was one of the first senior leaders to publicly voice concerns about the NHS’s virtual wards programme.

Professor Leary told HSJ: “I am not surprised [systems are falling] short. Since Elaine [Elaine Maxwell, visiting professor, London South Bank University] and I published our piece in HSJ, I have been contacted by several clinicians who have serious concerns over virtual wards and staffing them.”

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 31 March 2022

Read more

NHS will fail to hit waiting list target as A&Es face winter ‘tripledemic’

The NHS is likely to miss a key target to treat patients waiting more than a year for care, surgeons have warned, as new data shows A&E waits are increasing ahead of winter.

A core target to eliminate the backlog of patients waiting more than 65 weeks for NHS treatment by September is likely to be missed with 45,527 patients still waiting for more than a year and a quarter in August 2024, according to the Royal College of Surgeons.

Overall, some 6.42 million patients were estimated to be waiting for treatment at the end of August - up from 6.39 million in July. The number of treatments waiting to be carried out stood at 7.64 million in August, up from 7.62 million the previous month.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: “These latest figures show the pressure we saw over summer is not letting up with too many patients waiting too long for treatment, following a record September for A&E attendances.”

“We know this is likely to be another incredibly busy winter, with extra demand and the threat of a ‘tripledemic’ of Covid, flu and RSV [Respiratory syncytial virus], and last month we set out our winter plan which included better data reporting and more care in the community like falls services and virtual wards, so we can see patients as quickly as possible in the busy months ahead.”

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 10 October 2024

Read more

NHS whistleblowers: We lost jobs after reporting patient deaths

More than 50 NHS whistleblowers claim to have lost their jobs—with some driven to the brink of suicide—after standing up to protect patients’ lives as bosses bury their concerns.

The group of doctors and nurses said that they had been targeted after raising concerns about more than 170 patient deaths and nearly 700 cases of poor care.

One consultant said that it was the “biggest scandal within our country” and claimed the true number of avoidable deaths was “astronomical”. Instead of addressing the problems, the whistleblowers claim that NHS bosses are spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on hiring law firms and private investigators to investigate them instead.

Last year Rob Behrens, the health ombudsman, warned The Times Health Commission that patient safety was at risk due to “toxic” and hierarchical behaviour among NHS doctors. Professor Phil Banfield, the chairman of the council of the British Medical Association, which represents doctors, wrote in The Daily Telegraph that whistleblowing “is not welcomed by NHS management… NHS trusts and senior managers are more concerned with protecting personal and organisational reputations than they are with protecting patients.”

In one case, the NHS spent more than £4 million on legal action against a single whistleblower, which included £3.2 million in compensation. Among the clinicians interviewed, 40 said that their employer took “no positive action” to address patient safety concerns; 36 said that patients remained at risk at their place of work; 19 said that NHS trusts covered up the problems, and ten said that their employers had denied there was a problem.

Whistleblowers’ representatives are urging the government to require independent medical assessments for claims and to ban the suspension or exclusion of doctors for speaking out about patient safety.

Dr Naru Narayanan, president of the hospital doctors’ union, has called for an independent national whistleblowing body outside of the NHS to register protected disclosures and protect individuals against recriminations. The Times Health Commission recommended that a no-blame compensation scheme should be introduced for medical errors, with settlements determined according to need. Backed by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, the scheme would help end the deadly cycle of NHS scandals and cover-ups and ensure families receive timely support.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 15 May 2024

Read more

NHS whistleblowers warn of 'unsafe' A&E staff shortages

A group of senior doctors has accused NHS Grampian of ignoring their safety concerns about emergency departments.

They told BBC Scotland News they were speaking out because they feel they cannot deliver a safe level of care.

The medics said staff shortages meant Grampian's two A&Es have no senior registrars on shift to make key decisions about patients for the majority of weekend night shifts.

Documents seen by the BBC News show medics have been raising concerns since 2021, both with NHS Grampian and the Scottish government, and in July this year submitted a formal whistleblowing complaint about the situation.

One doctor said: "The staff are in an impossible situation.

"We are witnessing ongoing harm with unacceptable delays to the assessment and treatment of patients.

"There have been avoidable deaths and at other times there are too long delays getting to patients who may be suffering from a serious condition like stroke or sepsis."

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 23 August 2023

Read more

NHS whistleblowers still face consequences

Criticism of NHS managers over the treatment of whistleblowers has been reignited by Donna Ockenden’s damning review of maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust.

Her findings come seven years after the “Freedom to speak up?” report from Sir Robert Francis QC, which found that NHS staff feared repercussions if they blew the whistle on poor practice. He recommended reforms to change the culture and support whistleblowers.

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 makes it unlawful to subject workers to negative treatment or dismiss them because they have raised a whistleblowing concern, known as a “protected disclosure”. But critics say little has changed since the Francis review.

According to Protect, a whistleblowing charity, 64% of those contacting it for advice said that they had been victimised, dismissed or forced to resign. Shazia Khan, founding partner at Cole Khan Solicitors, says that instead of being afforded protection, whistleblowers are “targeted as a form of retaliation by trust senior management and disciplined on trumped up charges to shut them down”.

Those seeking to vindicate their rights before an employment tribunal, Khan adds, will often be “priced out of justice” by well-resourced NHS trust lawyers who at public expense “deploy a menu of tactics” to defend cases. 

When Peter Duffy, a consultant urologist at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation NHS Trust, reported on allegedly unsafe practices by colleagues in 2016, he was demoted, falsely accused of financial irregularities, and threatened with a six-figure adverse costs order by Capsticks, the hospital’s law firm.

“All my witnesses dropped out after the medical hierarchy told them that the department might be dissolved if the case went badly,” Duffy says, which meant there was no one to rebut the trust’s evidence.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 7 April 2022

Read more

NHS whistleblowers need to be better protected by the law, says BMA

NHS whistleblowers need stronger legal protection to prevent hospitals using unfair disciplinary procedures to force out doctors who flag problems, the British Medical Association has said.

Doctors are being “actively vilified” for speaking out, which has resulted in threats to patient safety, including unnecessary deaths, according to the council chair of the doctors’ union, Phil Banfield.

Despite a series of scandals in recent years, it is becoming more common for hospitals to use legal tactics and “phoney investigations” to undermine or force out whistleblowers rather than address their concerns, he warned.

Banfield said: “Someone who raises concerns is automatically labelled a troublemaker. We have an NHS that operates in a culture of fear and blame. That has to stop because we should be welcoming concerns, we should be investigating when things are not right.

“Whistleblowers are pilloried because some NHS organisations believe the reputational hit is more dangerous than unsafe care,” he added. “Whereas the safety culture in aviation took off after some high-profile airplane crashes in the 70s, the difference is that the aviation industry embraced the need to put things right and understand the systems that led to the disaster – the NHS has not invested in solving the system, it’s been bogged down in blaming the individual instead of the mistake.”

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 2 July 2023

 

Read more

NHS whistleblower wins £500,000 for unfair dismissal

A “commended” NHS nurse has been awarded nearly £500,000 for being wrongly sacked after she claimed that high workloads led to a patient’s death.

Linda Fairhall, 62, a 44-year veteran of the health service, said she made 13 separate pleas to bosses warning that her colleagues were overburdened, but she was ignored each time.

Fairhal told officials at the University Hospital of North Tees and Hartlepool that she was worried about a recently imposed policy that obliged nurses to monitor patients who took prescribed medicines and maintained that it led to nurses having to conduct 1,000 extra patient visits a month without extra resources.

She said nurses were overwhelmed by the additional responsibility, which resulted in rising “anxiety” among staff and higher rates of absence. However, Fairhall told the tribunal in Teesside that nothing was done in response to her concerns, and ultimately a patient died.

The tribunal heard that the nurse raised her last warning with officials just before she went on annual leave. On her return she was suspended and investigated for “bullying and harassment”, then sacked for gross misconduct.

A tribunal has now ruled that the decision to dismiss Fairhall was “materially influenced” by her complaints regarding patient safety, with the panel adding that it could not “genuinely believe” that she was guilty of misconduct.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 4 January 2023

Read the full tribunal decision: Ms L Fairhall v University Hospital of North Tees and Hartlepool Foundation Trust

Read more

NHS whistleblower tells tribunal he faced ‘brutal retaliatory victimisation’

A consultant obstetrician has claimed he was sacked from his hospital for raising whistleblowing concerns about patient safety over fears they would cause “reputational damage”.

Martyn Pitman told an employment tribunal in Southampton that managers dismissed his concerns and he was “subjected to brutal retaliatory victimisation” after he criticised senior midwife colleagues.

He said: “On a daily basis there was evidence of deteriorating standards of care. We were certain that the situation posed a direct threat to both patients’ safety and staff wellbeing. Concern was expressed that there was a genuine risk that we could start to see avoidable patient disasters.”

Rather than addressing these, Pitman said the trust had considered it “the path of least resistance to take out [the] whistleblower”.

Pitman was dismissed this year from his job at the Royal Hampshire County hospital (RHCH) in Winchester, where he had worked as a consultant for 20 years. He is claiming he suffered a detriment due to exercising rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

He said he “fought against [an] absolute barrage of completely unprofessional assaults on me” after he raised concerns about foetal monitoring problems that resulted in the death of a baby and the delivery of another with severe cerebral palsy.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 26 September 2023

Read more

NHS whistleblower Shyam Kumar wins case against regulator

A doctor who was sacked for raising patient safety concerns has won a case against England's hospital regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Orthopaedic surgeon Shyam Kumar worked part-time for the CQC as a special adviser on hospital inspections, but Manchester Employment Tribunal found that he was unfairly dismissed.

Between 2015 and his dismissal in 2019, Mr Kumar wrote to senior colleagues at the CQC with a number of serious concerns.

They included a hospital inspection, at which he claims patient safety was significantly compromised when a group of whistleblowing doctors was prevented from discussing their concerns.

Mr Kumar said, on many occasions, he reported concerns about a surgeon at his own trust, Morecambe Bay, who had carried out operations that were "inappropriate" and of an "unacceptable" quality and harmed patients.

He warned the CQC that the trust management wanted to bury it "under the carpet". The tribunal noted that his concerns were found to be justified and the surgeon eventually had conditions placed on his licence to practise.

The CQC "accepted the findings".

Mr Kumar, who has been awarded compensation, says his concerns were ignored.

"The whole energy of a few individuals in the CQC was spent on gunning me down, rather than focusing on improvement to patient safety and exerting the regulatory duties," he said.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 5 September 2022

Read more
 

NHS whistleblower recorded her bosses’ ‘racist’ chat

A black NHS worker has launched legal action against the health service’s blood and transplant authority after witnessing years of alleged racism within the service.

Melissa Thermidor, 40, from Bushey, Hertfordshire, has lodged an employment tribunal claim against NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) and two executives who have since left the authority. Betsy Bassis and Millie Banerjee, who were the chief executive and chairwoman, have denied the allegations and intend to fight the tribunal claims.

One colleague allegedly said: “White donors are more likely to shop at Waitrose and black donors at Tesco.” At subsequent meetings, the phrase “Tesco donors” was used. Staff also allegedly referred to “you people” when speaking to black members of the team.

Thermidor claims she was constructively dismissed after whistleblowing about racism within NHSBT. The health authority, which supported 3,386 organ donations in the year to March last year as well as collecting blood from 761,000 donors, has been embroiled in allegations of bullying, racism and poor culture under Bassis and Banerjee’s leadership.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 21 August 2022

Read NHS Blood and Transplant's response to the article.

Read more
 

NHS whistleblower in West Suffolk will ‘never be the same again’

A whistleblower at the centre of a bullying scandal at West Suffolk hospital says she will “never be the same again” after being “pursued” by NHS managers when she raised concerns about a doctor injecting himself with drugs while on duty.

Dr Patricia Mills was exonerated last week in an independent NHS review that was highly critical of the way she was ignored and then subjected to disciplinary investigation that verged on “victimisation”.

The review, by Christine Outram, chair of the Christie NHS foundation trust, said Mills’s concerns about the self-injecting doctor were “well founded” and yet, instead of acting on them, managers subjected her to an investigation that lacked “fairness, balance and compassion”.

It included what Outram called the “incendiary” and “extremely ill-judged” demand to Mills and other doctors for fingerprint samples as part of a management hunt for an anonymous letter-writer who had tipped off a grieving family about a potentially botched operation.

“I do feel vindicated,” Mills, a 53-year-old anaesthetist, told the Guardian, but she said the 21-month investigation into her conduct, which was only formally dropped in September, has had a lasting impact.

“I will never be the same again. To be absolutely pursued like that by your employer inevitably has long-term consequences in terms of psychological wellbeing. It was an orchestrated campaign that really floored me.”

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 17 December 2021

Read more

NHS whistleblower claims patients were 'spectacularly abandoned' with surgery scandal as senior figures 'protected reputations at all costs'

An NHS whistleblower has raised serious concerns about a spinal surgery scandal, warning that patients may have been “spectacularly abandoned” while senior figures “protected reputations at all costs”.

Retired consultant anaesthetist Dr Glyn Smurthwaite said he and colleagues spent years attempting to raise concerns about the practice of former spinal surgeon John Bradley Williamson, but felt these were not adequately acted upon at the time.

The surgeon worked at Salford Royal Hospital between 1991 and January 2015, when he was dismissed for misconduct unrelated to clinical care.

“We had one opportunity to make an intransigent trust do the right thing,” he said.“We have spectacularly abandoned patients.”

His warning comes as an NHS England-commissioned “review of the reviews” into the case is expected to report this month.

However, the Sunday Express has learnt it is unlikely to recommend a full recall of all former patients treated by the surgeon.

Instead, patients may be advised to come forward themselves if they wish to have their care reviewed.

Read full story

Source: GB News, 19 April 2026

Related reading on the hub:

Read more

© 2026 Patient Safety Learning. All rights reserved.

Patient Safety Learning is registered as a charity with the Charity Commission Registration number 1180689.

×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.