Jump to content
  • articles
    9,854
  • comments
    83
  • views
    12,506,283

Contributors to this article

About this News

Articles in the news

Many more women now beating early breast cancer

Most women with early breast cancer now beat the disease thanks to huge improvements in treatments in recent years, a BMJ analysis has found.

Their risk of dying within five years of diagnosis is estimated to be around 5% - down from 14% in the 1990s.

The BMJ analysis tracked more than half a million women with early, invasive breast cancer - mostly stage one and two - diagnosed in the 1990s, 2000s and between 2010 and 2015.

It found the prognosis for nearly all women "has improved substantially since the 1990s", with most becoming long-term cancer survivors.

And based on those trends, the researchers behind the Oxford University-led study say women diagnosed today also have a much lower risk.

"That's good news - and reassuring for clinicians and patients," oncologist and lead researcher Prof Carolyn Taylor says.

Cancer Research UK says this offers "reassurance" to many women but warns more highly-trained staff are needed to meet rising demand.

Read full story

Source: BMJ, 14 June 2023

Read more

Whistleblowing surgeon quits profession over fear of being “hunted” by NHS

A campaigning whistleblowing surgeon who wrote two books about his experiences has decided to leave the medical profession out of fear that he is being “hunted” by the NHS.

Peter Duffy, a consultant urologist, is quitting work several years earlier than planned and intends to remove his name from the medical register. After a two year investigation the General Medical Council has decided to take no action against him. But he told The BMJ that he is worried that, after several investigations into his conduct, he remains vulnerable as long as he stays on the register.

Duffy, 61, who blew the whistle on patient safety issues at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust’s urology department, left the NHS nearly seven years ago. He claimed he was forced to resign from the trust for his own protection and won a claim for unfair constructive dismissal in 2018, when the trust was ordered to pay him £102 000 in compensation.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: BMJ, 12 June 2023

Read more

Health officials ‘ignored evidence of non-Covid deaths’ during lockdown

The Covid inquiry is being urged to investigate if health officials dismissed evidence of collateral deaths during lockdown after a whistleblower claimed that pathologists’ concerns were shut down.

As the inquiry prepares to hold its first full public hearing this week, Prof Sebastian Lucas, who worked as a consultant pathologist at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, claimed that PHE was not interested in what he described as “collateral deaths”.

Prof Lucas wrote to Prof Kevin Fenton, the director of PHE London, on behalf of the London Inner South Jurisdiction Pathology Advisory Group. 

He approached the agency in January 2021 as the UK entered its third lockdown, warning that collateral deaths as a result of the pandemic had not been recorded properly.

The group, which was headed up by a coroner, had identified several deaths that would not have happened had the NHS been functioning as normal. This included people who did not want to bother the doctor or who took their own lives because of lockdowns.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Telegraph, 10 June 2023

Read more

How chatbots are helping doctors be more human and empathetic

Despite the drawbacks of turning to artificial intelligence in medicine, some US physicians find that ChatGPT improves their ability to communicate with patients.

Last year, Microsoft and OpenAI released the first free version of ChatGPT. Within 72 hours, doctors were using the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

Experts expected that ChatGPT and other A.I.-driven large language models could take over mundane tasks that eat up hours of doctors’ time and contribute to burnout, like writing appeals to health insurers or summarising patient notes. However, they found that doctors were asking ChatGPT to help them communicate with patients in a more compassionate way.

Dr Michael Pignone, the chairman of the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas at Austin, has no qualms about the help he and other doctors on his staff got from ChatGPT to communicate regularly with patients.

However, skeptics like Dr Dev Dash, who is part of the data science team at Stanford Health Care, are so far underwhelmed about the prospect of large language models like ChatGPT helping doctors. In tests performed by Dr Dash and his colleagues, they received replies that occasionally were wrong but, he said, more often were not useful or were inconsistent. If a doctor is using a chatbot to help communicate with a patient, errors could make a difficult situation worse.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: New York Times, 12 June 2023

Read more

World's Best Hospitals 2023

These are challenging times for hospitals. Covid-19 put unprecedented stress on health systems, as have inflation and global financial uncertainty. In the USA and around the world, leading hospitals are dealing with rising costs, aging populations and a medical workforce exhausted from battling a global pandemic.

Among the hallmarks of great hospitals, however, are not just first-class care, first-class research and first-class innovation. The very best institutions also share another quality: consistency. The world's best hospitals consistently attract the best people and provide the best outcomes for patients as well as the most important new therapies and research. Of all the hospitals in the world, relatively few can do all those things year in and year out. 

To recognise them, Newsweek and global data firm Statista have put together their fifth annual listing of the World's Best Hospitals 2023. This year, they have ranked over 2,300 hospitals in 28 countries, including one that is new to the list, Taiwan. For the first time, they have ranked all top 250 global hospitals. They have listed the best hospitals by country; each country list also includes a listing of top specialty hospitals.

Read full story

Source: News Week

Read more

Maternity failures behind most big NHS payouts

More than three quarters of all multimillion-pound NHS medical negligence payouts are the consequences of failures in maternity care, new figures show.

In total, 364 patients or families received the highest-value compensation payments of at least £3.5 million after suing the NHS last year. Of those, 279 (77%) were maternity-related damages, according to figures from NHS Resolution. The large payouts have been offered to parents whose babies were stillborn or suffered avoidable life-changing disabilities or brain injuries.

Maternity makes up the bulk of NHS compensation payments. There were more than 10,000 clinical negligence claims brought against the NHS in 2021-22, with a total value of more than £6 billion. Maternity accounted for 62% of payments, or £3.74 billion.

When taking into account all cost of harm, including future periodic payments and legal costs, the cost of compensating mothers and their families rises to £8.2 billion a year. Analysis by The Times Health Commission found that this is more than twice the £3 billion spent by the NHS annually on maternity and neonatal services. Maternity claims have increased during the past decade amid a string of high-profile scandals and a shortage of midwives.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 12 June 2023

Read more

Covid inquiry prepares for first hearing after 220,000 deaths

More than three years after Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown, the Covid investigation will cover every aspect of the UK’s pandemic response.

More than three years after the first lockdown began, two years after the last one ended, the public hearings are at last starting. Over the months that come the inquiry will have many questions to answer. Should we have locked down earlier? Should we have not locked down at all? Did we eat out to help restaurants out, or eat out to help the virus out? Could more have been done to protect care homes from infection? Should more have been done to protect residents from loneliness?

Baroness Hallett, the judge presiding, said her chief role is “to determine whether [the] level of loss,” in the broadest sense of the word, “was inevitable or whether things could have been done better”.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Times, 13 June 2023

Read more

Three-day strike by doctors in England expected to have ‘enormous impact’

Almost all routine NHS care in England will be disrupted for three days this week when junior doctors strike in their latest attempt to force ministers to increase their pay.

Prof Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said the stoppage would have an enormous impact and lead to huge numbers of patients missing out on planned care.

Many thousands of junior doctors are due to stage a 72-hour walkout starting at 7am on Wednesday and continuing until 7am on Saturday.

“The NHS has been preparing extensively for this next set of strikes,” said Powis. “But we know that – with the sheer number of appointments that need to be rescheduled – it will have an enormous impact on routine care for patients and on the waiting list, as procedures can take time to rearrange with multiple teams involved.”

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023

Read more

Twenty-four UK doctors in five years censured over medical record breaches

Twenty-four doctors have been disciplined by the UK medical regulator in the last five years after accessing and using information from patients’ treatment records without good reason.

The General Medical Council (GMC) said it had struck off two of the 24 doctors it had sanctioned after finding that they had undertaken “inappropriate use” of medical records.

Another 10 were suspended, 10 were warned about their future conduct, one had a condition imposed on their licence to practise medicine and the other had to undertake not to repeat their behaviour.

The 24 cases were among 194 incidents of doctors allegedly accessing medical records without a clinical justification that prompted a complaint to the regulator between 2017 and 2022.

Privacy campaigners said it was shocking that almost 200 people had made complaints to the GMC accusing doctors of violating patients’ confidentiality in that way.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023

Read more

Hitting elective target ‘not in NHS’s control’, Sunak warned

The NHS Confederation chief says he will this week demand clarity about Rishi Sunak’s flagship waiting list reduction target, warning it may not be ‘the most sensible target [or] within the service’s control’.

Matthew Taylor also reflected in an exclusive interview with HSJ about a “pretty bruising” recent planning round for 2023-24.

Speaking ahead of the conference, which starts this week, he said he would ask Steve Barclay for “clarity” about “what exactly the government means when it talks about reducing waiting lists”.

The prime minister’s waiting list pledge is one of his frequently-referenced five priorities, which when he set them out in January stated: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly.”

But Mr Taylor said yesterday: “It’s a bit unclear to me… Does it mean the overall waiting list? Does it mean long waiters? And what about the other waiting lists that we don’t talk about [like psychiatric care for children]?”

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 13 June 2023

Read more

Nearly one in five of world’s newborns with sepsis die, study finds

A study in 11 countries over four continents has shown the “catastrophic impact” of antibiotic resistance on babies with sepsis, with nearly one in five dying.

The two year observational study enrolled 3204 babies with clinical sepsis in 19 hospitals in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. It found that 17.7% were blood culture pathogen positive, and mortality rates among infants up to 60 days old with culture positive sepsis was 17.7%.

The research, published in PlOS Medicine, also highlighted wide variation in treatment and frequent switching of antibiotics because of resistance, with 206 antibiotic combinations used by the hospitals studied in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, and Uganda.

Read full story

Source: BMJ, 9 June 2023

Read more

Fewer NHS staff feel able to raise clinical safety concerns, data show

The number of NHS staff who feel able to raise concerns about clinical safety has fallen for the second year in a row, an analysis of NHS staff survey data has shown.

A report by the NHS’s National Guardian’s Office, which represents local “freedom to speak up guardians” who help NHS workers to raise concerns, said that staff were increasingly disillusioned and that they believed that speaking up was “futile,” which had “worrying implications for patient safety.”

Dr Jayne Chidgey-Clark, National Guardian for the NHS said: “It is not acceptable that two in five workers responding to the NHS staff survey do not feel able to speak up about anything which gets in the way of them doing their job.

“These survey responses show us that there is a growing feeling that speaking up in the NHS is futile – that nothing changes as a result. When workers speak up about concerns, including the impact of under staffing and a crumbling infrastructure, their leaders themselves may struggle to be heard when trying to address these concerns.

“I would add my voice to that of others that this urgently needs to be addressed".

Read full story

Source: BMJ. 9 June 2023

Read more

Puberty blockers to be given only in clinical research

Puberty blockers will only be prescribed to children attending gender identity services as part of clinical research, NHS England has announced.

The move comes after an interim report into children's gender services said there were "gaps in evidence" around the drugs.

Blockers are used to "pause puberty" and work by supressing hormone release.

Dr Hilary Cass's report called for a transformation in the model of care for children with gender-related distress.

Currently, if a child seeks medical help, the drugs are one of the options a doctor could offer to help delay the onset of physical changes that do not match a child's gender identity.

This change will come into effect when new clinics replacing the Gender Identity and Development Service (Gids) begin to open later this year. No patients being treated by the current Gids service will be affected.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 10 June 2023

Read more

Inquests to be held for patients of jailed breast surgeon Ian Paterson

Inquests will be held into the deaths of at least 36 patients – and potentially dozens more – treated by the jailed former breast surgeon Ian Paterson.

As the fallout of one of the most horrific medical scandals in the history of the NHS continues, a pre-inquest review hearing at Birmingham and Solihull coroner’s court on Friday heard that 417 of Paterson’s cases where breast cancer was listed as the immediate cause of death had been examined.

Paterson, who attended the hearing remotely from prison, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2017, later increased to 20 years, for carrying out needless surgery on patients who were left traumatised and scarred.

Inquests have been confirmed in 36 cases, with a further 21 cases deemed likely to need an inquest after “preliminary” investigations. Another 36 cases are still to be reviewed.

The judge Richard Foster said a further 130 cases had been reported to the coroner where breast cancer was listed as contributing to death. A review of a selection of those cases was being carried out and a decision on whether they should all be reviewed would be made on its completion, he said.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 9 June 3023

 

Read more

Police investigate dozens of deaths at hospital in Brighton following concerns from whistleblowers

Police are investigating about 40 hospital deaths over allegations of medical negligence made by two consultant surgeons who lost their jobs after blowing the whistle about patient safety.

The allegedly botched operations took place at Royal Sussex County hospital (RSCH) in Brighton, part of University hospital Sussex NHS trust, when it was run by a management team hailed by Jeremy Hunt as the best in the NHS.

Last week, detectives from Sussex police wrote to the trust’s chief executive, George Findlay, confirming they had launched a formal investigation into “a number of deaths” at the RSCH. They were investigating allegations of “criminal culpability through medical negligence” made by “two separate clinical consultants” at the trust, the letter said.

It is understood about 40 deaths occurred between 2015 and 2020 after alleged errors in general surgery and neurosurgery departments. Both whistleblowers alleged the trust failed to properly investigate the deaths and learn from the mistakes made.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 9 June 2023

Read more
 

Police launch investigation into ‘abuse’ at NHS unit

A police investigation is under way into allegations of abuse at an NHS-run home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism, it has emerged.

Several staff from the home have already been “removed” from the site by Surrey and Borders Partnership Foundation Trust, although the trust would not comment on whether any disciplinary action has been taken against them.

The home – Oakwood, in Caterham, Surrey – will close at the end of the summer in response to the failings, the trust said. No one has been charged in relation to the allegations, which HSJ understands focus on coercive behaviour and unnecessary deprivation of liberty, with no allegations of violent or sexual behaviour.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 9 June 2023

Read more

All NHS board members to get equality objectives

Trusts and systems must draw up plans to improve the diversity of their executive and senior leadership teams over the next 12 months, and evidence progress against them by summer 2025, NHS England has announced.

A new equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) improvement plan also says every board and executive team member will have EDI objectives they will be assessed against during annual appraisals by spring 2024.

The targets form part of six “high impact actions,” each with set targets that aim to address the “widely known intersectional impacts of discrimination and bias” within the NHS.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 8 June 2023

Read more

Covid inquiry: Families unhappy with Welsh government

Bereaved families of coronavirus victims feel the Welsh government has not adequately taken part in the Covid public inquiry, their solicitor says.

Craig Court, who represents bereaved families, said the Welsh government had not participated "as well as they should have".

He claimed the Welsh government failed to deliver crucial paperwork with just days to go before Tuesday's inquiry. The UK-wide inquiry could go on as long as three years, and will predominantly look at the UK government's approach to the pandemic.

A Wales-specific inquiry was blocked by Labour members of the Senedd, with First Minster Mark Drakeford saying it should wait until after the UK-wide investigation had been completed.

Mr Court told BBC Wales "there is a great concern over the duty of candour" displayed by the Welsh government.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 9 June 2023

Read more

Ministers accused of neglecting ‘tidal wave’ of child mental ill health in England

Ministers have been accused of failing to grasp the “tidal wave” of mental ill health blighting children’s lives, after research found that only a quarter of English primaries will be able to offer vital school-based support by the end of next year.

With almost one in five pupils aged 7 to 16 now thought to have a mental health disorder, specialist support teams were set up to work with children in schools, addressing early symptoms and reducing pressure on overstretched NHS services.

According to new figures shared exclusively with the Guardian, however, pupils in almost three-quarters (73.4%) of primary schools in England will have had no access to the new mental health support teams (MHSTs) by the end of 2024.

The research follows reports that a quarter of a million children in the UK with mental health problems have been denied help by the NHS, with some trusts failing to offer treatment to 60% of those referred by GPs.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 9 June 2023

Read more

WHO treaty on future pandemics is being watered down, warn health leaders

The World Health Organization’s new pandemic preparedness treaty is being watered down and stripped of the key stipulations needed to prevent another global health disaster, say leading international health experts and civil society groups.

WHO’s 194 member states agreed in December 2021 to draw up a new convention to ensure that the world would be prepared for future global health threats and to prevent the “catastrophic failure” seen during the covid pandemic.

The “zero draft” of the accord, published in February, had excited observers because its scope went beyond the closest existing legally binding framework, the International Health Regulations. That draft stipulated strong obligations for information sharing and the importance of having a strong health workforce and universal healthcare, among other requirements.

The latest 42 page document, leaked during the World Health Assembly, has revealed that many passages that experts regard as key to improving global health have been weakened or made optional, meaning that they could be removed in the final draft.

Read full story

Source: BMJ, 31 May 2023

Read more

Met intervention ‘will not serve London well’, says ‘very disappointed’ NHSE

NHS England has described the Metropolitan Police commissioner’s warning that his force will stop responding to emergency mental health calls as ‘very disappointing’, HSJ has learned.

Last month, Sir Mark Rowley told NHS and social care chiefs he had instructed his force to withdraw from health-related calls in the capital no later than 31 August – a warning which attracted high-profile media coverage.

Sir Mark stressed the “urgency” of needing to implement a model that originated in Humberside called “right care right person”, where after a year of tense negotiations, police and health services reached an agreement under which many mental health calls are dealt with by health professionals rather than officers.

NHSE’s letter says it agrees with the issues Sir Mark raises, adding it is inappropriate for police to spend significant amounts of time on mental health callouts.

But it adds that the NHS was “very disappointed” to receive the commissioner’s letter, stressing that the problem is better solved in partnership than unilaterally declaring the force will not respond to calls.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 8 June 2023

Read more
 

Kettering General Hospital chief apologises over children's care

A chief executive whose hospital has been accused of failing children has admitted it has not always "got it right" and apologised at a meeting.

The care regulator has warned Kettering General Hospital (KGH) over its children's and young people's services and rated them inadequate.

Dozens of parents with children who died or became seriously ill have contacted the BBC with concerns.

Deborah Needham told a board meeting she was "here to listen" to worries.

In April it was revealed inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) raised concerns over sepsis treatment, staff numbers, dirt levels and not having an "open culture" where concerns could be raised without fear, following an inspection in December.

The CQC had inspected the Northamptonshire hospital's paediatric assessment unit, Skylark ward, and the neonatal unit after hearing concerns of safety.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 9 June 2023

Read more

NHS chiefs blame staff shortages for record 7.4m people on waiting lists in England

Health leaders have blamed staff shortages for waiting lists reaching another record high, with 7.4 million people in England waiting to start treatment as of the end of April.

One NHS leader said the figures showed that unsustainable “pressure continues to pile on an overstretched NHS”, and urged the government to speed up publication of its long-awaited workforce plan, which has been repeatedly postponed.

Waiting list figures in England have crept up again after showing signs of improvement in recent months, despite Rishi Sunak citing bringing numbers down as one of the government’s top five priorities for 2023.

Downing Street on Thursday insisted the NHS was “continuing to make progress to ensure patients are seen more quickly”, pointing to record numbers of doctors and nurses in the NHS.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 8 June 2023

Read more

Patients may be guilty of discrimination if they refuse care of transgender medic, NHS bosses told

Patients may be found guilty of discrimination if they refuse the care of a transgender medic, according to new NHS guidance.

Health bosses have been warned that patients have no right to be told a healthcare worker’s assigned sex at birth.

However, transgender health workers can choose not to treat patients if they feel uncomfortable doing so, the report by NHS Confederation says.

The report, published earlier this month in partnership with the LGBT Foundation, says patients can only request care from a same-sex staff member in limited circumstances, such as if they are having an intimate examination.

It states that when a patient requests an employee administering care to be a woman or a man, “the comfort of the staff member should be prioritised”.

Read full story

Source: Telegraph, 9 June 2023

Read more

Covid-19: Metformin reduces the risk of developing long term symptoms by 40%, study finds

Metformin—a cheap, safe, and widely available diabetes drug—could reduce the incidence of long covid if given during the acute phase of Covid-19, a new study indicates.

A two week course of metformin given within three days of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 led to 40% fewer Long Covid diagnoses over the following 10 months compared with people who had taken placebo, according to a randomised controlled trial.

The authors of the study, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, caution that the trial did not look at whether metformin would be effective as a treatment for those who already have Long Covid.

Jeremy Faust from Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research, said the findings, if confirmed, are “profound and potentially landmark.” Writing in a linked comment, he said, “This is the first high quality evidence from a randomised controlled trial to show that the incidence of long covid can be reduced by a medical intervention, metformin—an inexpensive treatment with which clinicians have ample experience".

Read full story

Source: BMJ, 8 June 2023

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.