Jump to content
  • articles
    9,877
  • comments
    83
  • views
    12,562,197

Contributors to this article

About this News

Articles in the news

NHS App caused ‘confusion and anxiety’ over waiting times

Waiting time information in the NHS App has been overhauled after causing “confusion, anxiety and mistrust” among patients, HSJ has learned.

NHS England changed the app’s waiting information page – which initially showed a mean average time – after it led to many patients calling hospitals to ask why they were waiting longer.

Alongside the mean average referral-to-treatment time for their trust, a new metric has now been added to the page, which shows “eight in 10 patients are seen within X weeks”.

A design history document, published by NHSE this month, admitted the previous version – introduced more than two years ago – was causing patients to believe they were seeing a personalised wait time, updated in real time.

This caused “confusion, anxiety and mistrust” when the average date passed, but they had not been contacted or had an appointment.

Many users also believed the waiting time referred to their initial appointment, rather than treatment.

NHSE said the initial information caused “increased call volumes and burden on frontline staff” as patients called hospitals for clarification.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 24 March 2026

Read more
 

NHS apologises after hospital doctor took own life

The doctor in charge of medical training for NHS England has apologised unreservedly to the family of a medic who took her own life.

Dr Vaish Kumar, a junior doctor, left a suicide note blaming her death entirely on the hospital where she worked, her family revealed last year.

Dr Kumar, 35, was wrongly told she needed to do a further six months of training before starting a new role.

It meant she was forced to stay at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QE) in Birmingham, where she had been belittled by colleagues, an inquest heard.

In a letter to Dr Kumar's family, seen by the BBC, NHS bosses admitted she did not need to do the extra training.

Dr Navina Evans, chief workforce and training education officer for England, told the family in the letter: "I wish to unreservedly apologise for these mistakes and for the impact they would have had.

"As an organisation we are determined to learn... not only across the Midlands but across England as a whole."

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 13 February 2024

Read more

NHS antisemitism review finds Jewish staff and patients ‘suffer in silence’

Jewish patients and staff within the NHS feel compelled to conceal their religious identity and "suffer in silence" due to antisemitism, according to Lord John Mann, who led a review into the issue.

Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, who was tasked last year with examining the problem, urged the NHS to embody its role as "a responsible and inclusive employer".

His review's recommendations, which are yet to be publicly released, are scheduled to be presented to Parliament on Thursday.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) revealed that Lord Mann’s investigation uncovered instances of "routine ostracism" experienced by some Jewish staff, leading some to contemplate leaving the health service entirely.

The report is also anticipated to highlight that certain Jewish patients have expressed reluctance to seek treatment or have delayed crucial care within the NHS, citing concerns about antisemitism.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 4 July 2026

Read more

NHS announces new test to be offered for all newborn babies

Newborn babies in England will now be routinely screened for a rare genetic condition, NHS England has announced.

Hereditary tyrosinaemia type 1 (HT1) affects around seven UK babies annually, causing long-term health problems if left untreated.

The condition prevents the normal breakdown of protein, leading to a toxic build-up in the blood. This vital screening will be incorporated into the standard blood spot test, taken from a baby's heel five days after birth.

Symptoms can include jaundice, fever, abdominal swelling, bleeding, bruising and failing to gain weight.

If untreated, the condition can lead to severe complications such as organ damage and liver failure.

Dr Harrison Carter, NHS director of vaccination and screening, said: “Being able to screen for tyrosinaemia will help give hundreds of thousands of families extra reassurance and peace of mind – and while rare genetic conditions will be ruled out in most cases, for those families affected it means treatment and care can begin straight away, to improve their baby’s chances of leading a healthy life.

Once screened by the NHS, babies with HT1 can be given medication called Nitisinone, which helps to prevent high levels of tyrosine in the blood.

They will also have a diet of regulated formula or breast milk along with a special milk low in tyrosine.

This combination can stop the long-term complications of HT1 from developing.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 14 October 2025

Read more
 

NHS announces independent review into gender identity services for children and young people

The NHS has announced that Dr Hilary Cass OBE, former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, will lead an independent review into gender identity services for children and young people.

The review will be wide-ranging in scope looking into several aspects of gender identity services, with a focus on how care can be improved for children and young people including key aspects of care such as how and when they are referred to specialist services, and clinical decisions around how doctors and healthcare professionals support and care for patients with gender dysphoria.

It will also set out workforce recommendations for specialist healthcare professionals and examine the recent rise in the number of children seeking treatment. Dr Cass will then make clear recommendations for children and young people’s gender identity services reporting back next year.

The Gender Identity Development Service for Children and Adolescents is managed by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is due to carry out a focused inspection of The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Gender Identity Services for children and young people, during the autumn. The inspection will cover parts of the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions and will include feedback from people using the service, parents, relatives, carers, and staff. Separately, Dr Cass will also review the service’s clinical practice with the support of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and engagement of other professional bodies to provide multi-professional insight working closely with the CQC.

The review includes an examination of the issues surrounding children and young people who are prescribed puberty blocking and cross sex hormone drugs.

Dr Hilary Cass OBE, independent chair, said: “It is absolutely right that children and young people, who may be dealing with a complexity of issues around their gender identity, get the best possible support and expertise throughout their care.”

“This will be an inclusive process in which everyone will have the opportunity to make their views known. In particular I am looking forward to hearing from young people and their families to understand their experiences.

“This review provides an opportunity to explore the most appropriate treatment and services required.”

Read full story

Source: NHS England, 22 September 2020

Read more

NHS announces big change to how expectant mothers access maternity care

Expectant mothers across England will now be able to directly book appointments with midwives, bypassing the need for an initial GP visit, in a move designed to alleviate pressure on family doctors.

NHS officials said the change aims to free up tens of thousands of GP appointments.

Historically, women would first consult their family doctor before being referred for maternity care.

While online self-referral options have been introduced by local health bodies in recent years, only half of expectant mothers have used these services directly.

This has led many to still attend what NHS leaders described as "unnecessary" GP appointments to access maternity care.

The new system allows women to self-refer to local maternity services "at the touch of a button" via nhs.uk.

Officials stressed that women can still see a GP if they would like to, adding that some with long-term health conditions will need to discuss changes to their care or treatment plans with a doctor.

NHS England said that it is estimated that the new service could lead to 180,000 fewer calls to GPs and up to 30,000 fewer general practice appointments each year.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 12 August 2025

Read more
 

NHS announces 143 hospitals to roll out ‘Martha’s Rule’ in next step in major patient safety initiative

The NHS has today announced the 143 hospital sites that will test and roll out Martha’s Rule in its first year.

Confirmation of the first sites to test implementation of Martha’s Rule is the next step in a major patient safety initiative, following the announcement in February of NHS England funding for this financial year.

The purpose of Martha’s Rule is to provide a consistent and understandable way for patients and families to seek an urgent review if their or their loved one’s condition deteriorates and they are concerned this is not being responded to.

Read full press release

Source: NHS England

Read more

NHS and social care ‘tripping over each other’ on staffing

The NHS should help social care recruit and retain nurses, including with better pay and conditions, particularly for new service models where care staff take on more health tasks.

This is among the recommendations in the first workforce plan for adult social care, published by Skills for Care today, which also warns government must not delay promised improvements in staff pay, standards and conditions, while it waits to decide on funding reform.

The report also recommends a pay uplift for care staff which it estimates would cost between about £2bn and £6bn a year – but it suggests there would be a significant net benefit overall due to reducing turnover costs and increasing care capacity.

The report says integrated care systems should develop joint “one workforce” plans, “align terms and conditions, training and wellbeing support”, and “create the pipeline for registered nurses and nursing associates” to go into care roles.

Nursing turnover in care providers is very high and it is thought nurses often leave for NHS jobs with better pay and conditions. However, nursing staff are increasingly needed to supervise “delegated healthcare tasks” for care users with rising acuity. It is an approach government, and many systems, want to grow as part of integrated teams, such as testing and monitoring in “virtual wards”.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 18 July 2024

Read more
 

NHS and private hospitals told to improve after patient death

The NHS and private hospitals need to improve how they work together after the death of an NHS patient treated privately during the pandemic, a watchdog has warned.

An investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) found some private hospitals took on more complex patients than they were used to, while problems with communication and confusion over responsibilities created safety risks.

It has called on the Care Quality Commission to do more to inspect how the two sectors work together and how patients are transferred between hospitals safely.

It launched an inquiry after the death of a patient, known as Rodney, aged 58, who was due to have keyhole surgery to remove part of his bowel due to cancer.

His NHS operation was cancelled and rebooked at a nearby private hospital after cancer services were transferred to the independent hospital due to COVID-19.

Rodney was asked to sign a consent form for open bowel surgery, rather than the less invasive keyhole procedure, due to guidance at the time around a "potentially increased risk of COVID-19 transmission with laparoscopic surgery", the HSIB said.

The cancerous part of his bowel was removed but eight days later his condition he deteriorated rapidly and was transferred to the local hospital so he could receive intensive care - which was not available at the private hospital.

When he arrived at the NHS hospital, a scan and more surgery showed a leak in his bowel which led to sepsis and organ failure. He died later that day.

As a result of the case, the HSIB launched a wider investigation into NHS surgical services being carried out in independent hospitals.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 28 October 2021

Read more

NHS and care homes in England to pause routine Covid testing

Most hospital patients and care home residents in England will no longer be tested for Covid unless they have symptoms, the government has said.

From 31 August, NHS and social care staff will also not be offered lateral flow tests unless they fall sick. Free testing for the general public ended in April in England, but continued in some high-risk settings.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: "This reflects the fact case rates have fallen and the risk of transmission has reduced, though we will continue to closely monitor the situation and work with sectors to resume testing should it be needed."

Read full story

Source: BBC News (25 August 2022)

Read more
 

NHS ambulance wait figures prompt call to tackle shortages

Almost a million people waited at least half an hour for an ambulance after having a medical emergency such as a heart attack or stroke last year, NHS figures show.

Ambulance crews responding to 999 calls in England took more than 30 minutes to reach patients needing urgent care a total of 905,086 times during 2019–20. Of those, 253,277 had to wait at least an hour, and 35,960 – the equivalent of almost 100 patients a day – waited for more than two hours.

In addition to heart attacks and strokes, the figures cover patients who had sustained a serious injury or trauma or major burns, or had developed the potentially lethal blood-borne infection sepsis.

Under NHS guidelines, ambulances are meant to arrive at incidents involving a medical emergency – known as category 2 calls – within 18 minutes.

The Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who obtained the figures using freedom of information laws, said: “It’s deeply shocking that such huge numbers of seriously ill patients have had to wait so long for an ambulance crew to arrive after a 999 call. It shows the incredible pressure our ambulance services were under even before this pandemic struck.

“Patients suffering emergencies like a heart attack, stroke or serious injury need urgent medical attention, not to be left waiting for up to two hours for an ambulance to arrive. These worryingly long delays in an ambulance reaching a seriously ill or injured patient could have a major long-term impact on their health.”

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 16 August 2020

Read more

NHS ambulance strikes will put patients at risk – but delays already at record high

Nine ambulance trusts in England and Wales are expected to be affected by industrial action on Wednesday, coordinated by the GMB, Unison and Unite unions.

The ambulance strikes will involve paramedics as well as control-room staff and support workers. The threat to patient safety on Wednesday will be exceptional.

Under trade union laws, life-preserving care must be provided during the strikes. But there remains a lack of clarity about what will be offered. Even at this late stage, NHS leaders say negotiations are continuing between unions and ambulance services to agree which incidents will be exempt from strike action.

All category 1 calls – the most life-threatening cases – will be responded to, while some ambulance trusts have agreed exemptions with unions for specific incidents within category 2 calls.

However, in some cases, elderly people who fall during the strikes may not be sent help until they have spent several hours on the floor. Heart attack and stroke patients may get an ambulance only if treatment is deemed “time critical”.

There is no doubt that many of those patients making 999 calls on Wednesday will not get the care they need. Some will probably die as a result.

NHS leaders believe Wednesday’s strike will present a completely different magnitude of risk. Quite simply, patients not getting emergency treatment quickly enough can mean the difference between life and death.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 19 December 2022

Read more

NHS ambulance service doctored documents to cover up truth about deaths

Quinn Evie Beadle died in 2018. Her parents later found out that the “kind, caring” 17-year-old had been failed by a paramedic at the scene of her death — and that the ambulance service altered documents to try to stop them finding out the truth.

The teenager, who dreamt of becoming a medic but suffered poor mental health, was found after she hanged herself near her home in Shildon, Co Durham, on the evening of 9 December 2018. The paramedic who attended the scene made basic mistakes, and made no effort to clear her airway or continue with basic life support — despite the fact her heart was still active.

But instead of attempting to learn lessons, bosses at the North East Ambulance Trust (NEAS) set out to prevent the family learning what happened.

They changed a key witness statement given to the coroner at her first inquest, removing references to mistakes the paramedic had made and inserting the claim that any life support offered would “not have had a positive outcome”. They also withheld from the coroner a key piece of evidence — a reading from a heart monitor — which demonstrated Quinn’s heart activity.

It is thought Quinn’s death could be one of more than 90 cases in the past three years in which the NEAS failed to provide families with the whole truth about how their relatives died.

Senior managers repeatedly withheld key evidence from coroners about deaths linked to service failures, an internal report shows. In some cases, bosses doctored or suppressed evidence to cover up failures by staff.

An independent report into a small number of the cases, including Quinn’s, raised by whistleblowers found that, as in her case, statements were changed or suppressed and pieces of key evidence not disclosed.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: The Sunday Times, 22 May 2022

Read more

NHS AI Lab and Health Education England call for healthcare staff to be trained in AI

A new report published by the NHS AI Lab and Health Education England (HEE) has advocated for training and education for providers in how they deliver and develop AI guidance for staff.

The report, entitled ‘Developing healthcare workers’ confidence in AI (Part 2)’, is the second of two reports in relation to this research and follows the 2019 Topol Review recommendation to develop a healthcare workforce “able and willing” to use AI and robotics. It is also part of HEE’s Digital, AI and Robotics Technologies in Education (DART-ED) programme, which aims to understand the impact of advances of these technologies on the workforce’s education and training requirements.

In the previous report, the AI Lab and HEE found that many clinicians and staff were unaccustomed to the use of AI technologies, and without the suitable training patients would not be able to experience and share the advantages.

The new report has set out recommendations for education and training providers in England to support them in planning, resourcing, developing and delivering new training packages in this area. It notes that specialist training will also be required depending on roles and responsibilities such as involvement in implementation, procurement or using AI in clinical practice.

Brhmie Balaram, Head of AI Research and Ethics at the NHS AI Lab, added: “This important new research will support those organisations that train our health and care workers to develop their curriculums to ensure staff of the future receive the training in AI they will need. This project is only one in a series at the NHS AI Lab to help ensure the workforce and local NHS organisations are ready for the further spread of AI technologies that have been found to be safe, ethical and effective.”

Read full story

Source: Health Tech Newspaper, 25 October 2022

Read more

NHS AI expansion to help tackle missed appointments and improve waiting times

The NHS is set to roll out artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the number of missed appointments and free up staff time to help bring down the waiting list for elective care.

The expansion to ten more NHS Trusts follows a successful pilot in Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which has seen the number of did not attends (DNAs) slashed by almost a third in six months.

Created by Deep Medical and co-designed by a frontline worker and NHS clinical fellow, the software predicts likely missed appointments through algorithms and anonymised data, breaking down the reasons why someone may not attend an appointment using a range of external insights including the weather, traffic, and jobs, and offers back-up bookings.

The appointments are then arranged for the most convenient time for patients – for example, it will give evening and weekend slots to those less able to take time off during the day.

The system also implements intelligent back-up bookings to ensure no clinical time is lost while maximising efficiency.

It has been piloted for six months at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, leading to a 30% fall in non-attendances. A total of 377 DNAs were prevented during the pilot period and an additional 1,910 patients were seen. It is estimated the trust, which supports a population of 1.2 million people, could save £27.5 million a year by continuing with the programme.

The AI software is now being rolled out to ten more trusts across England in the coming months.

Read full story

Source: NHS England, 14 March 2024

Read more

NHS admin: how does it affect patient experience?

At one time or another, most of us have experienced feeling frustrated by bureaucratic processes, outdated IT systems or unsatisfactory interactions with administrative staff. 

As in many other parts of our lives, when the administrative aspects of a service seem poor (and when they seem good) it can have a significant impact on how we feel about our experience of using it overall. In the case of healthcare, this often comes at a time when we are already feeling anxious. In some cases, administration can also have an impact on the care we receive – for example, if an appointment is delayed. For these reasons alone (though there are many others) NHS administration is important.

Despite this, there has been very little research into NHS administration and its impact on service users, and it is not routinely captured in NHS data. The King’s Fund are kicking off a project to explore patients’ experiences of NHS administration in more detail. As a first step, they reviewed a random sample of over 300 comments written on the Care Opinion website between 2016 and 2018.

This analysis is just the beginning. Over the next few months, The King's Fund will speak to patients and NHS staff to understand the issues around NHS administration in more detail. For more information, see their project page.

Read full story

Source: The King's Fund, 13 September 2019

Read more

NHS adds digital prescriptions to app after successful trial

New digital prescriptions mean NHS App users in England can now collect medication from a pharmacy without having to visit a GP or health centre.

The usual paper slip given by doctors has been replaced by an in-app barcode, which can be scanned at any pharmacy.

Users can already request repeat prescriptions on the app - and every digital order fulfilled will save the GP three minutes, NHS Digital says.

It comes after a trial last year, involving more than a million users.

Patients can use the app to check what medicines they have been prescribed, and when.

Anyone who has a nominated pharmacy can continue to collect medication without a paper prescription or barcode, as the details are sent to their pharmacy electronically.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 30 January 2024

Read more

NHS across UK spends a ‘staggering’ £10bn on temporary staff

Ministers are facing calls to tackle the NHS’s chronic lack of staff as figures reveal that the bill for hiring temporary frontline workers has soared to more than £10bn a year.

Hospitals and GP surgeries across the UK are paying a record £4.6bn for agency personnel and another £5.8bn for doctors and nurses on staff to do extra “bank” shifts to plug gaps in rotas.

Widespread short staffing has increasingly forced the service in all four home nations to hand colossal sums to employment agencies to hire stand-in workers. In England alone, the bill for agency staff, particularly nurses and GPs, has risen from £3bn to £3.5bn over the past year – a 16% rise.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said years of neglect of the growing NHS staffing crisis by Conservative governments had obliged “desperate” hospitals to spend “huge” sums on agency staff, including doctors who can cost more than £5,000 to hire for a single shift.

The Royal College of Nursing said the levels of agency spending were “staggering”. It would be cheaper to employ more nurses as staff instead of having tens of thousands of vacancies, the general secretary Pat Cullen said. The NHS in England currently has 42,306 vacant nursing posts.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 16 January 2024

Read more

NHS accused of undercounting number of homicides by mental health patients

The NHS and government have been accused of undercounting the number of mental health homicides, with campaigners calling for “honesty and transparency” over how many patients commit violence.

Over four years there were 115 fewer homicides by mental health patients recorded in official statistics compared to information released under the Freedom of Information Act, it has emerged.

The FOI request, collected by Hundred Families, a charity that supports bereaved families, asked NHS England for the number of patient homicides that had been reported to them, by region, for each of the years between 2018 and 2023.

Read full article (paywalled).

Source: The Times, 9 January 2026

Read more
 

NHS accused of racism as black nurses report being put in Covid areas

The NHS has been accused of “shocking and systemic” racism during the pandemic as black healthcare workers say they were given poor PPE and pushed into the Covid frontline first.

Hundreds of black and brown healthcare staff across the UK have spoken to academics at Sheffield Hallam University about their experiences of racism during the pandemic.

The accounts raised issues of racism within the health service which led to black and brown nurses and midwives being put at greater risk than their white colleagues, due to poorer PPE, training, workload and shift patterns.

Rosalie Sanni-Ajose, a senior theatre practitioner, who worked across multiple London NHS hospitals through an agency called Yourworld told The Independent: “During the pandemic, we found that most of us (black agency nurses) have been placed in ITU to look after Covid patients are on a Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine or the ventilator."

“Then when I work in A&E, they divided areas into sections - green area, red area, and the normal areas. So some of the ethnic minority staff were then put in the red areas all the time. Further some of us, we have comorbidities like asthma, or diabetes, or have an exemption that has been clearly stated they not allowed to work there.”

Through its research, which involved 350 black and brown nurses, midwives and healthcare staff across the UK, Sheffield Hallam University found 77% of respondents said they’d been treated unfairly when they challenged racism.

Just over 50% of the respondents said they’d experienced unfair treatment in the pandemic in relation to Covid deployment, PPE or risk assessment.

One third have left their job as a result of racism, while more than half have experienced poor mental health due to the racism they experienced.

The academic team, lead by Professor Anandi Ramamurthy said the healthcare professionals’ reports reveal “a story of systematic neglect and harassment which predates the pandemic.”

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 5 March 2022

Read more
 

NHS accused of “burying” damning child cancer report

NHS bosses have been accused of “burying” a damning report into child cancer services commissioned following complaints that patients were “dying in agony”. Completed in 2015, the document highlights failings at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, one of the UK’s flagship cancer organisations. It found that, despite being supposedly a centre of excellence, children admitted for cancer treatment were routinely transferred between hospitals to get the care they needed.

Compiled by Professor Mike Stephens, the report was commissioned after a coroner found “astonishing” failures in the care of a two-year-old girl, Alice Mason, leading to her suffering irreversible brain damage and dying in 2011. It recommended a radical shake-up of the Marsden’s services. The document was never made public, however, and former NHS medical director for London, Dr Andy Mitchell, accused the head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, and Cally Palmer, England’s National Cancer Director and Chief Executive of the Royal Marsden, of suppressing its publication.

Dr Mitchell told the Health Service Journal (HJS): “I can’t imagine any other individuals having the power and influence to be able to stop this report moving forward.”

NHS England has denied that its then Medical Director, Sir Bruce Keogh, was improperly leaned on and said the report remained unpublished because it made “implausible suggestions” which would have forced children with cancer to travel further for care. But Gareth Mason, Alice’s father, said: “To write a report, shelve it and not debate it, that is a cover-up [and] it has left children since Alice and danger, and the Marsden won’t acknowledge that.”

The controversy surrounds the performance of a so-called “shared care system”, with the Marsden’s Sutton site forming part of a network for South London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

Critics say the format meant children were transferred between sites more regularly than they should have been and were put in danger because information was not properly shared.

Read full story

Source: The Telegraph, 19 June 2019  

Read more

NHS accused of ‘lack of urgency’ in addressing racial inequality of vaccine rollout

The NHS has been accused by a major charity of failing to address the emerging gap in Covid booster vaccine coverage for racialised communities.

Blood Cancer UK has told The Independent it has “serious concerns” over what it claims is a “shocking” lack of urgency from the NHS in addressing the gap in booster vaccine doses for immunocompromised people from black and minority ethnic communities.

The charity has said NHS England has failed to set out any “concrete” plans since it revealed 84% of immunocompromised people from a white British background had three vaccine doses by mid-December, compared to just 43% of immunocompromised people from a Pakistani background.

The news comes after the government announced people over 75 and immunocompromised children would be eligible to receive a fourth Covid vaccine by Spring.

According to an analysis published by Open Safely, a team of data scientists at Oxford University, of those who are part of the shielding population, as of the 22 February just 72% of Black people have had their booster does, and 73% of south Asian people. This compares to 89% of white people.

NHS England has highlighted a number of actions it is taking to address the situation such as using pop-up sites within communities and providing free transport.

Speaking with The Independent chief executive of Blood Cancer UK Gemma Peters, said: “We have serious concerns about how the poor roll-out of third doses for the immunocompromised has left people from some communities much less well-protected than people from a white British background. But while it is deeply troubling that a racial disparity in access to third vaccine doses has been allowed to develop, just as shocking has been NHS England’s apparent lack of urgency in addressing it."

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 25 February 2022

Read more

NHS A&E and cancer nurses set to join ‘most disruptive’ strikes yet

Nurses in England are preparing to escalate their dispute with the government by involving staff from NHS A&E departments, intensive care and cancer wards in a series of 48-hour strikes.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is understood to be planning to announce walk outs for two consecutive days and nights, rather than limiting action from 8am to 8pm as they have done so far.

NHS leaders warned the looming strike could be the “biggest impact” on patients yet seen, with the union preparing to end a process where the RCN had agreed to exemptions with hospitals.

The RCN told NHS leaders on Friday it is preparing to step up its dispute by asking its members working in emergency departments, intensive care units and oncology to join the strike.

But the union, expected to announce the strike this week, will make a very limited set of provisions for the most urgent clinical situations as part of a legal obligation not to endanger life.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers said: “A continuous 48-hour strike that includes staff from emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care services would likely have the biggest impact on patients we’ve seen.”

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 12 February 2023

Read more

NHS 24 warns of call delays over high festive demand

NHS 24 is urging people to treat common illness at home as it faces its busiest period over the festive season.

Helpline bosses have warned that it will take longer to answer calls as the service faces staffing pressures and increased demand caused by Covid.

It expects 170,000 calls over Christmas and New year - including two four-day weekends with GP surgeries closed.

The public have been advised to use the NHS Inform website to check symptoms before phoning NHS 24.

Janice Houston, NHS 24 associate director of operations and nursing, said the spread of Omicron had left the service "missing key staff" with people required to self-isolate.

"This year is exceptional and particularly busy," she said.

"We plan within an inch of our life for our busiest period, so I would just ask the public to be patient with us.

"We need to re-plan depending on who can't come to work from self-isolating. It might take a bit longer to answer the phone, but you will always get good care."

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 24 December 2021

Read more
 

NHS 111: Parents anger over four child deaths

The parents of a girl who died after failings by NHS 111 said they were horrified to learn coroners had already warned about similar shortcomings.

Hannah Royle, 16, died in 2020 after the NHS phone service failed to realise she was seriously ill.

BBC News found concerns had been raised about the call centre triage software in 2019 after three children died.

The NHS said it had learnt lessons from each case, but said it had not established a link between the deaths.

Hannah, who was autistic, had a cardiac arrest as she was driven to East Surrey Hospital by her parents. She had suffered a twisted stomach, but call handlers believed she had gastroenteritis.

A coroner's report said NHS 111 staff failed to consider her "disabilities and inability to verbalise" when using the triage software.

Known as NHS Pathways, the algorithm relies on answers being given over the phone to a set series of questions. The system guides call handlers, who are not medically qualified, to direct patients to other parts of the NHS for further assessment and treatment.

In 2019, three coroners issued reports "to prevent future deaths" after serious abdominal illness in Myla Deviren, Sebastian Hibberd, Alexander Davidson and were missed by NHS 111.

In all cases, coroners raised concerns about the ability of children to understand call handlers' questions or articulate their symptoms.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 24 May 2022

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.