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Inquest hears of opportunities missed in teen death

An inquest has heard opportunities were missed to "escalate" the treatment given to a 13-year-old girl who died in hospital.

Chloe Longster died a day after arriving at Kettering General Hospital in Northamptonshire on 28 November 2022.

She had been taken to the emergency department after waking up with pain in her ribs and cold-like symptoms.

An inquest into her death has heard some checks that might have alerted doctors to sepsis were not carried out.

Giving evidence on the second day of the inquest in Northampton, Katie Cockram, a nurse on duty on the day Chloe was admitted, was asked about a routine check that was due to be carried out at 22:00 GMT.

It followed evidence from a fellow nurse, Tanya Ball, who told the coroner yesterday that the check was missed.

Ms Cockram was asked whether she should have checked Chloe's condition or "re-escalated it to the doctors".

She replied: "If if hadn't been done, then yes, correct."

She agreed that this was "another opportunity to re-escalate their concerns about Chloe to the doctors", but added: "I would have faith in the doctors to do this once they had escalated in the first place."

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Source: BBC News, 9 October 2024

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Inquest hears evidence of mistakes in Nightingale patients’ care

An inquest into the death of a London bus driver at London’s Nightingale Hospital during the first wave of coronavirus has heard evidence about equipment mistakes which may have harmed patients.

Kishorkumar Patel, aged 58, was one of the first patients to be admitted to the field hospital at London’s Excel Conference Centre in April last year.

An inquest at East London Coroner’s Court was told doctors and nurses were forced to work “leanly” because of limited staff and ventilators to help patients breathe.

Mr Patel is one of 10 patients who had the wrong filter used on the ventilator machines which it is thought triggered a cardiac arrest in Mr Patel, a father of six.

A serious incident report identified 10 patients were affected by the use of the wrong filter, with three said to have been harmed as a result. 

Read coroner's report

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Source: The Independent, 6 October 2021

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Inquest finds neglect contributed to woman’s hospital death

The death of a young disabled woman following a routine eye operation was partly caused by malnutrition as a result of neglect, a coroner has ruled.

Laura Booth, 21, was admitted to the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield in September 2016 for a routine eye operation. She died the next month, on 19 October.

Booth had a number of learning difficulties and life-limiting complications, having been diagnosed with partial trisomy 13, a rare genetic disorder, shortly after she was born.

Her mother, Patricia Booth, told the inquest that her daughter stopped eating shortly after she was admitted to hospital, and that doctors ignored Laura’s attempts to communicate with them.

She said her daughter consumed only rice milk and blackcurrant juice in hospital, and she kept telling doctors: “This isn’t right, she can’t survive on no food.”

The coroner, Abigail Combes, concluded that Laura Booth became unwell while a patient at the hospital and, among other illnesses, “developed malnutrition due to inadequate management for her nutritional needs”. Combes said that Booth’s death “was contributed to by neglect”.

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Source: The Guardian, 26 April 2021

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Inquest finds gross failings in care of woman who drank too much water

An inquest jury has found there were “gross failings in care amounting to neglect” before a woman had a heart attack at a private mental health hospital due to complications from drinking excessive amounts of water.

Lillian Lucas, 28, known as Lily to her family and friends, died in September 2022 after being found unresponsive in her room on Milton ward at the Cygnet hospital in Kewstoke, near Weston-super-Mare, where she had been an inpatient since June.

An inquest jury at Avon coroner’s court found on Wednesday that opportunities were missed by staff to render care that would have prevented Lucas’s death, including a failure to monitor her worsening condition and inadequate response to her deterioration.

On 8 September 2022 she was found unresponsive in her room after drinking excessive amounts of water and transferred to Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI), the jury heard. She died the following day. Postmortem examinations found she died of a heart attack and the impact of psychogenic polydipsia, when due to a mental disorder a person experiences an uncontrollable urge to drink water.

The jury concluded on Wednesday that there were “gross failings in her care amounting to neglect”. In the record of the inquest, the jury said the Milton ward was “understaffed at a level deemed to be unsafe”.

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Source: Guardian, 24 April 2024

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Inquest finds ‘gross’ failures in care of UK student who died after rugby injury

The family of a student who died after hospital staff missed that she had developed sepsis despite a string of warning signs have claimed she was the victim of a “lack of care”, as a coroner ruled there were “gross” failures in her treatment.

Staff at Southmead hospital in Bristol failed to carry out the sepsis screening and observations needed to keep 20-year-old Maddy Lawrence safe after she was taken to hospital with a dislocated hip sustained in a rugby tackle.

Outside court, the student’s mother, Karen Lawrence, said: “It has been a constant struggle to understand how a healthy, strong and fit 20-year-old could lose her life to sepsis which was allowed to develop under the care of professionals.

“Her screams of pain and our pleas for help were merely managed, temporarily quietened with painkillers while the infection progressed unnoticed by hospital staff.

“Our daughter was failed by a number of nurses and medical staff; symptoms were ignored, observations were not taken, on one occasion for 16 hours. There was no curiosity, basic tests were not completed even when hospital policy required them.

“Maddy herself expressed concern on multiple occasions but her pain was not being taken seriously. As well as failing to fulfil their duty, those nurses and medical staff offered no sympathy, no compassion and little attention.

“This failure meant Maddy was not given the chance to beat sepsis. Significant delays in its discovery meant the crucial window for treatment was missed. Maddy did not die due to under-staffing or a lack of money. Her death was the result of a lack of care.”

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Source: The Independent, 8 September 2023

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Inquest finally delivers the truth about how Claire Roberts died

The parents of Claire Roberts said those responsible for their daughter's care should "hang their heads in shame". Alan and Jennifer Roberts were speaking after an inquest found that the nine-year-old's death in October 1996 was caused by the treatment she received in hospital. Outside Laganside courthouse, Mr and Mrs Roberts welcomed the coroner's findings but said the public can have "no confidence in patient safety" in Northern Ireland. 

Mr Roberts said that after a two decade wait the inquest had finally delivered the truth about how their daughter died. "We would like to thank the coroner for reaching a verdict after 22 years of cover-up that finally identifies the truth. The coroner has confirmed an unnatural cause of death. We have known as a family since 2004 the true cause of death - this has not been news to us but the coroner reaffirming what we have always known."

Mr Roberts also issued a demand to health officials for accountability, saying those responsible for failings in his daughter's care should "hang your heads in shame."

Source: Belfast Telegraph

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Innovative technology improves staff and patient safety

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust announce the successful pilot of ThermaFY Protect and the subsequent roll-out of the unique thermal screening technology across its hospitals.

As part of its CW Innovation programme, run jointly with its charity CW+, the Trust approached ThermaFY at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak to codevelop and install automated temperature scanning stations at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital to help reduce the spread of infection.

A unique project, ThermaFY Protect, was developed to provide bespoke thermal screening that combines temperature readings with staff identification. Following a successful pilot which involved six ThermaFY Protect screens being installed across the Trust’s main hospital entrances, the Trust and CW+ will now roll out the programme at all hospital entrances and off-site clinics.

Amanda Pickford, Founder and Chief Executive of ThermaFY, explains: “It’s been fantastic working with the team at Chelsea and Westminster, who share our entrepreneurial vision and have acted quickly and collaboratively to improve patient and staff safety. During the first pilot, our systems scanned over 500,000 people; now the stations are a permanent feature, scanning over 8,000 patients and staff every day putting patient and staff safety at the centre.”

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Source: Digital Health, 27 April 2021

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Innovative Medicines Fund launched to fast-track drugs

Patients in England can get early access to more cutting-edge medicines through a new fund.

The Innovative Medicines Fund (IMF) works like the existing Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), fast-tracking promising treatments, even if they are expensive and have not yet been approved for routine NHS use.

It will cover potentially life-saving drugs for rare and genetic diseases. The government has allocated up to £680m a year to be shared by the funds.

The IMF, like the CDF, will mean a newly approved medicine could be prescribed immediately, before final recommendations on it are drawn up by the advisory body that weighs the cost versus benefit of drugs used by the NHS - an organisation called NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).

Patients would be able to access the treatment while data is collected for NICE to determine whether the medicine is affordable and effective enough to offer more widely.

A similar fund for innovative treatments - the New Medicines Fund - already exists in Scotland. Wales has a New Treatments Fund that helps pay for high-cost drugs which have been recommended as cost-effective by NICE.

Experts hope funds like these will improve the lives of many who might otherwise miss out.

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Source: BBC News, 7 June 2022

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Innovative ambulance software to speed up emergency care in Rwanda

New ambulance technology, developed in Rwanda with support from NIHR’s Research on Interventions for Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) programme, is speeding up emergency care for patients.

Rwanda Build Program (RWBuild) worked with local and international partners to develop the 912Rwanda software. The technology helps ambulance crews and hospitals to treat emergency patients faster, by automatically recommending the nearest available facility that can provide the care the patient needs.

While high-income countries have developed sophisticated ambulance systems to reduce the delay in getting patients to appropriate healthcare facilities, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often lack the financial and training resources to implement similar solutions.

Up to 250 million people suffer injuries each year in LMICs. In Rwanda, injury causes 9% of deaths, with 47% of these occurring before the patient reaches hospital. The software could help to improve outcomes for these patients, as well as helping to reduce deaths and disability from other emergency medical conditions, like post-partum hemorrhage, sepsis, malaria, heart attacks, and strokes.

The project has received more than £3 million from NIHR’s RIGHT programme, as well as nearly $1 million from the United States National Institutes of Health.

The initial phase of the 912Rwanda software is already operational in Kigali. This helps to prioritise ambulance deployment based on data collected by dispatchers. It has been used since December 2023 for over 20,000 journeys, allowing ambulance teams to locate patients quickly in areas where smartphone penetration and triangulation via cell phone masts is not possible.

The second phase, launched in August 2025, introduces triage software which incorporates a Destination Decision Support Algorithm. This enables ambulance crews to capture simple patient information that is used to recommend the nearest suitable healthcare facility to treat each patient. This is especially critical for patients with life-threatening conditions, who must reach treatment within one hour of symptom onset.

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Source: NIHR, 7 August 2025

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Innovation and new technology to help reduce NHS waiting lists

Surgical hubs, new technology and innovative ways of working will help tackle waiting lists and treat around 30% more elective care patients by 2023 to 2024.

Backed by a new £36 billion investment in health and social care over the next 3 years, ‘doing things differently’ and embracing innovation will be the driving force to get the NHS back on track.

The funding will see the NHS deliver an extra 9 million checks, scans and operations for patients across the country, but it’s not enough to simply plug the elective gaps. The NHS will push forward with faster and more streamlined methods of treatments.

Surgical hubs already being piloted in a number of locations, including London, are helping fast-track the number of planned operations, including cataract removal, hysterectomies and hip and knee replacements, and will be expanded across the country. Located on existing hospital sites, surgical hubs bring together the skills and resource under one roof while limiting infection risk and providing a COVID-secure environment, with more planned to open in the coming year.

The NHS has been trialling a range of new ways of working in 12 areas, backed by £160 million, to accelerate the recovery of services. This includes setting up pop-up clinics so patients can be treated quickly, in person, and discharged closer to home, as well as virtual wards and home assessments to allow patients to receive medical support from the comfort of their home, freeing up beds in hospitals.

GP surgeries are using artificial intelligence to help prioritise patients most in need and identify the right level of care and support needed for patients on waiting lists.

The latest cancer tests being deployed across the NHS are also helping speed up diagnosis and spot cancer early on. Thanks to the hard work of staff, a quarter of a million people were checked for cancer in June – the second highest number on record – and more than 27,000 people started treatment for cancer in the same period.

Professor Steve Powis, NHS England medical director, said:

"Although the pandemic is still with us and we will have to live with the impact of COVID for some time, the NHS has already made effective use of additional resources to recover services. From adopting the latest technologies to more evening and weekend working, NHS staff are going to great lengths to increase the number of operations carried out.

The further funding announced this week will support staff to deliver millions more vital checks, tests and operations, so if you have a health concern, please do come forward to receive the care and treatment you may need."

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Source: 8 September, Department of Health and Social Care

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Injured women face discrimination over life-saving drugs, say researchers

Injured women are experiencing sex discrimination in the administration of a life-saving drug that cuts the risk of bleeding to death by 30%, researchers have warned.

They found that female trauma victims were half as likely to receive tranexamic acid (TXA) as injured men – even though the treatment is equally effective regardless of sex.

“These results are very concerning. TXA is the only proven life-saving treatment for traumatic bleeding. Women were treated less frequently than men regardless of their risk of death from bleeding or the severity of their injuries,” said Prof Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who was involved in the study.

“This looks like sex discrimination, and there is an urgent need to reduce this disparity, so all patients who need the drug have the chance to receive it.”

“Whatever of the mechanism of injury, and whatever the bleeding risk we looked at, women were statistically less likely to receive tranexamic acid than men, apart from road traffic collisions with a very high risk of bleeding,” said Tim Nutbeam, whose research was published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. “However, when we looked at mechanisms of injury which we tend to associate less with major trauma, such as falls from standing, women and particularly older women were much less likely to receive it.”

As striking as these results are, they are not necessarily surprising, he added: “It is already known that women with chest pain are less likely to receive aspirin, less likely to be resuscitated for out of hospital cardiac arrest, and less likely to be taken to hospital by an ambulance using lights and sirens.”

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Source: The Guardian, 18 May 2022

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Injured patient left in urine-soaked bed sheets and labelled ‘lazy’ by nurses after botched surgery

A second “mutilated” patient left with life-changing injuries after botched hospital surgery has described how she was left in urine-soaked bed sheets for days by nurses who called her lazy when she was unable to get out of bed.

Lucy Wilson told The Independent she believes she would have been better looked after at a veterinary practice compared to the level of care she received from nurses at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital Trust in January last year.

She was one of three patients harmed by surgeon Camilo Valero in the same week and almost died after Dr Valero and other staff failed to recognise her life-threatening injuries following the operation to remove her gall bladder.

Dr Valero is under investigation by the General Medical Council but is still practising under supervision at the trust, which has refused to say whether the third patient survived their ordeal.

After requests by The Independent, bosses at the NHS trust have now committed to publishing details of a secret review carried out by the Royal College of Surgeons into Dr Valero’s work and the wider surgical services at the trust.

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Source: The Independent, 31 May 2021

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Injured 90-year-old, in 40-hour ambulance wait

A 90-year-old woman waited 40 hours for an ambulance after a serious fall.

Stephen Syms said his mother, from Cornwall, fell on Sunday evening and an ambulance arrived on Tuesday afternoon.

She was then in the vehicle for 20 hours at the Royal Cornwall Hospital. It comes as an ambulance trust warns lives are at risk because of delays in patient handovers.

It was also reported a man, 87, who fell, was left under a makeshift shelter waiting for an ambulance.

South Western Ambulance Service said it was "sorry and upset" at the woman's wait for an ambulance.

Mr Syms, from St Stephen, told BBC Radio Cornwall: "We are literally heartbroken to see a 90-year-old woman in such distress, waiting and not knowing if she had broken anything.

"The system is totally broken."

He said it took nine minutes before his 999 call was answered.

"If that was a cardiac arrest, nine minutes is much too long, it's the end of somebody's life," he said.

Mr Syms said paramedics were "absolutely incredible people".

He added: "The system is not deteriorating, it's totally broken and needs to be urgently reviewed."

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Source: BBC News, 19 August 2022

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Initiative launched for the safe use of agentic AI in health and care

An initiative called TrustX has been launched to help verify, deploy, and test agentic AI for use across the NHS and social care.

It aims to support the government’s NHS 10 year health plan, which calls for the large-scale adoption of AI tools, including technology to support diagnosis, automation of admin tasks, predicting demand for services, and ambient voice agents for tasks such as note-taking.

TrustX aims to address the risk of bias, potential errors and misinformation from AI agents by evaluating how they behave in real-world situations, interact with other technologies and data sources, and how they may change over time.

The initiative is being run in partnership between Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS), the University of Cambridge’s Trustworthy AI Lab, the Responsible AI Institute and The King’s Fund.

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Source: Digital Health, 11 December 2025

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Inhaled steroids to be tested as a possible treatment for COVID-19

The NIHR-supported PRINCIPLE trial is to start investigating the inhaled corticosteroid budesonide to find out if it can help treat COVID-19 in patients who aren’t in hospital. 

Led by the University of Oxford, the PRINCIPLE is the UK’s national platform trial for COVID-19 treatments that can be taken at home. It is evaluating treatments that can help people aged over 50 recover quickly from COVID-19 illness and prevent the need for hospital admission. The study, funded by NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has so far recruited more than 2100 volunteers from across the UK with support from NIHR’s Clinical Research Network.

Inhaled budesonide is often used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with no serious side-effects associated with short-term use.

In some patients with COVID-19, the body’s immune response to the virus can cause high levels of inflammation that can damage cells in the airways and lungs. Inhaling budesonide into the airways targets anti-inflammatory treatment where it is needed most, and can potentially minimise any lung damage that might otherwise be caused by the virus.

Patients taking part in the study will be randomly assigned to receive an inhaler in the post, alongside the usual care from their clinician. They will be asked to inhale two puffs twice a day for 14 days with each puff providing a 400 microgram dose of budesonide. They will be followed up for 28 days and will be compared with participants who have been assigned to receive the usual standard-of-care only.

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Source: National Institute for Health Research, 27 November 2020

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Inga Rublite inquest: hospital missed two chances to treat woman dying in A&E

Staff at a hospital in Nottingham missed two opportunities to treat a woman found dying under a coat in a crowded emergency department, a coroner has concluded.

An inquest into the death of Inga Rublite, 39, found she died of natural causes but medical staff failed to recognise “persistent and escalating symptoms of brain haemorrhage” as she waited in A&E for more than eight hours.

Dr Elizabeth Didcock, an assistant coroner for Nottinghamshire, said Rublite should have been assessed by a senior doctor and sent for a head scan when she arrived at Queens medical centre (QMC) just after 10.30pm on 19 January this year.

When Rublite was next assessed by a nurse, at about 2am, and reported to be in severe pain, this should have been escalated to a doctor, she said.

“[Rublite] had persistent and escalating symptoms of brain haemorrhage that were not recognised,” said Didcock, adding that the department was “excessively busy” that night. “There were 76 patients waiting to be seen, and reduced medical staff generally across the department.”

Didock concluded Rublite suffered a second severe bleed on the brain shortly before she was found, which caused her death. “If she had been admitted for close monitoring, as she should have been, she would still have had [a] second rapid and devastating bleed.”

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Source: The Guardian, 25 July 2024

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Influx of very low risk referrals sparks review of cancer services

NHS England is in talks about changing a pathway for women with breast problems after performance against the two-week target for them to be seen plummeted. 

HSJ understands discussions are ongoing between NHS England and the Association of Breast Surgery about changing the symptomatic breast pathway for some patients. This has been prompted by concerns that one stop breast clinics – which take those referred both via the symptomatic route and the standard two-week pathway for suspected cancer – are being flooded with very low risk patients, potentially meaning those at higher risk of cancer wait longer for tests and diagnosis.

The symptomatic pathway, which is for patients where cancer is not initially suspected by their GP, was introduced in 2010 because only about half of diagnosed breast cancers were being referred on the normal two-week pathway. The national target is for 93% of patients to be seen within two weeks. 

However, since 2018-19, national performance against this has reduced from 85.8% to 64.1% last year. 

There are concerns the pathway has led to too many patients being referred for diagnostic procedures which are inappropriate for their symptoms, preventing those who are more in need of such tests from accessing them in a timely manner.  

Association of Breast Surgery president Chris Holcombe said: “GPs tend to be quite cautious and send most people along even if the risk is quite small. We will get patients who are 25 and, to be honest, before they come to clinic, I could tell you with 99 per cent certainty they won’t have cancer. But they are worried as anything.”

Alternatives to the symptomatic breast pathway which could reduce pressure on one stop clinics and also offer patients a better service are now being evaluated, he said. “There are appropriate ways to see these patients other than in a very high resource clinic,” he added. “But they still need to be seen and seen quickly otherwise they will just bounce back into the one stop clinic.”

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Source: HSJ, 10 October 2022

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Influenza drug ‘good contender’ for at-home treatment against COVID-19

An antiviral typically used to treat influenza is a “good contender” for a drug that could be taken at home by people infected with COVID-19, according to a scientist who is trialling the medicine.

Favipiravir, licensed as a flu treatment in Japan since 2014, has already shown potential in reducing lung damage in hospitalised Covid patients and speeding up the time taken to clear the virus from the body.

But two UK trials, in Glasgow and London, are investigating whether the drug could be taken by people in the community before their disease has progressed, therefore keeping them out of hospital.

The government has promised to “supercharge” the search for and development of a new generation of easy-to-take, at-home drugs that can reduce transmission and quicken recovery from COVID-19.

A new taskforce, modelled on the team behind Britain’s vaccine procurement programme, is to oversee this work. It intends to deliver two effective treatments - offered in tablet form - to the public as early as autumn.

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Source: The Independent, 22 April 2021

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Influential MPs demand Government action plan on PPE within two months

The Public Accounts Committee has given the Department of Health and Social Care two months to report back with a plan to ensure personal protective equipment (PPE) provision during a second COVID-19 spike.

The influential group of MPs said they were 'extremely concerned' by PPE shortages faced by NHS and care workers during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK.

According to the DHSC it never ran out of stock of PPE but rather Covid-19 had 'put supply chains and distribution networks under unprecedented strain', posing challenges with ensuring the right equipment was at the right place at the right time.

BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: 'We may be past the first peak of this virus, but we should be under no illusion that the demand for PPE is over – especially as the NHS begins to manage the huge backlog of demand caused by the pandemic, all under tighter infection control measures.'

In light of the threat of a second wave of Covid-19 doctors and colleagues 'need cast-iron guarantees from Government that the failures of the past months will not be repeated, that there will be enough of the right PPE and that it will be properly tested, quality-controlled and safe to use', Dr Nagpaul added.

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Source: Pulse, 8 July 2020

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Influential figures call for ‘single UEC service’ for NHS

The NHS should create a “single 24/7 service” for urgent and emergency care for every A&E department’s catchment area to address what is currently a “fragmented and disjointed” system, six expert groups have said.

The recommendation is part of a wide-ranging plan to reform the urgent and emergency care system, which has been jointly authored by bodies including the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the Royal College of GPs and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives.

The expert groups’ reform blueprint, titled Our Urgent and Emergency Care Improvement Proposals, comes ahead of the government’s anticipated “improvement plan” for the sector.

It concludes the NHS has “got the winter it prepared for” and has “normalised and accepted” poor care. 

Proposed actions in the plan include creating a “single 24/7 service” for each emergency department catchment area, bringing together teams in EDs, urgent community response services and virtual wards, which would be focused on caring for people in their communities.

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Source: HSJ, 22 January 2025

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Infections linked to Glasgow child cancer hospital deaths

An infection "probably" linked to Glasgow's children's hospital was the "primary cause of death" of a young cancer patient, the BBC has learned.

Infections from contaminated water at the hospital were also found to have been an "important contributory factor" in another child's death.

A review looked into the cases of 84 children who developed infections while undergoing treatment at the hospital.

It found that a third of infections "probably" originated in the hospital and the rest were "possibly" acquired there.

The authors of the "case note review", which should be published next week, said they recognised that some families would be disappointed that they could not have "greater certainty" about the links between their child's infection and the hospital environment.

They said this was down to the limits of a retrospective review but also criticised the shortcomings in the data provided by the health board.

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Source: BBC News, 20 March 2021

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Infection rules for NHS staff leave them at risk from airborne Covid, warn experts

Pressure is growing on the government to change its stance on coronavirus infection rules which it is feared may leave NHS staff and patients at risk from airborne transmission.

Experts told The Independent the current guidance from Public Health England (PHE), which effectively says staff working on general wards can rely on just surgical masks for protection, was “outdated and potentially misleading” and put NHS staff at risk.

At the start of the pandemic the emphasis on stopping infection was focused around droplets containing the virus both in the air over short distances and on surfaces. Increasingly scientists have begun to warn the virus can also spread through much smaller aerosols which can remain airborne for a lot longer and over further distances.

On Friday, the World Health Organisation updated its information on how Covid spreads to acknowledge the risk of aerosols and last month papers released by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said health workers may need to use better protection for longer.

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Source: The Independent, 6 May 2021

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Infection control experts issue open letter on care home visiting

A group of experts in nursing and infection prevention and control (IPC) is today warning against the use of IPC measures as a “rationale” for stopping safe and compassionate visits in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a new open letter published in Nursing Times, the specialists say that preventing people from visiting loved ones in social care settings in the name of IPC is a “misinterpretation and at times even abuse” of IPC principles.

The letter is the brainchild of independent global health consultant and former Infection Prevention Society (IPS) president, Jules Storr. Among the signatories are five former IPC presidents, current president Pat Cattini as well as incoming president Jennie Wilson. Dr Ron Daniels, chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust, is also on the list, Helen Hughes, chief executive of Patient Safety Learning, as well as leading IPC nurse specialists, nurse academics, a GP and carers.

Ms Storr, a nurse by background, and the hub topic lead, said she was motivated to take action after hearing “the most heart-breaking” stories from health professionals and relatives of residents about restricted visits in the UK in the wake of COVID-19.

Some had not seen relatives for weeks or months, whilst others were only allowed to see their loved one once a week for 20 minutes at a distance, she said.

One individual had told her how when their father had died only one family member was permitted in the home and they were not allowed to sit close enough to hold his hand.

Ms Storr said these practices were “absolutely outrageous and wrong from an infection prevention point of view”.

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Source: Nursing Times, 16 October 2020

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Infected blood: Tory rebellion expected on payouts amendment

The government faces a rebellion with at least 30 Tories backing an amendment to extend interim payouts to more victims of the infected blood scandal.

Up to 30,000 people were given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 80s. Thousands have died.

A Labour amendment will be brought on Monday calling for a new body to be set up to administer compensation. More than 100 MPs, including Tories Sir Robert Buckland, Sir Edward Leigh and David Davis, are backing the move.

In a letter sent to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves called the scandal "one of the most appalling tragedies in our country's recent history."

She added: "Blood infected with hepatitis C and HIV has stolen life, denied opportunities and harmed livelihoods."

She praised Theresa May, who set up the Infected Blood Inquiry when she was prime minister in 2017. But she warned: "For the victims, time matters. It is estimated that every four days someone affected by infected blood dies."

The chancellor, himself a former health secretary, told the inquiry in July that the government accepted the moral case for compensation. But he said no final decisions could be made before the inquiry publishes its findings - now expected in March next year.

In August 2022, the government agreed to make the first interim compensation payments of £100,000 each to about 4,000 surviving victims and bereaved widows.

But inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff, said in April this year that the parents and children of victims should also receive compensation and also called for a full compensation scheme to be set up immediately.

The Commons Speaker will decide on Monday which amendments to the bill MPs will vote on. But the government has said it will not be supporting the amendment.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "We are deeply sympathetic to the strength of feeling on this and understand the need for action. However, it would not be right to pre-empt the findings of the final report into infected blood."

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Source: BBC News, 3 December 2023

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