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An NHS consultant has told The Guardian "I work in an NHS Covid ward – and I feel so angry".
Providing a first hand account of their experiences working on an NHS Covid ward, the consultant, who wishes to remain anonymous, has expressed their dismay at the rise in cases, the spread of misinformation and the exhaustion felt among staff members dealing with work place stress and mental illness.
Source: The Guardian, 19 July 2021
The human rights of vulnerable mental health patients are being violated because of the crisis in care, a regulator has warned.
Rob Behrens, the health service ombudsman for England, said urgent action was needed over repeated “tragedies” in NHS mental health services.
His warning comes as the latest NHS figures show there were 9,839 incidents of abuse against mental health patients from April 2021 to March this year – a higher figure than in any other sector.
It follows an investigation by The Independent last month that revealed allegations of systemic abuse of children within a group of private mental health hospitals run by a provider called The Huntercombe Group.
Mr Behrens said research carried out by his office showed that vulnerable people being detained in hospitals are “losing their human rights when they were put in difficult situations where they had no control”.
Mr Behrens told The Independent: “We can’t go on with leaders in the NHS and politicians saying ‘This cannot go on’, because it happens time and time again. It’s the amount of resource and commitment that is put into dealing with issues, which ultimately is going to turn this around".
When asked if mental health is a particular area of concern, Mr Behrens said: “Yes. It’s about human rights. It’s about vulnerable people exposing themselves to the arm of the state in a way where they have very little control, and where there needs to be accountability and scrutiny. That’s exactly where an ombudsman should be looking, to make sure that people without power are not being traduced by the system.”
Source: The Independent, 28 November 2022
October is Speak Up Month – a chance to raise awareness of Freedom to Speak Up and the work which is going on in organisations to make speaking up business as usual.
2020 has been an extraordinary year, and all NHS workers, whatever their role, have been under increased pressure from the COVID-19 crisis.
Throughout October the National Guardian Freedom to Speak Up will be sharing their Alphabet of Speak Up – from Anonymity to Zero Tolerance. 26 days to explore the issues, the people, the values, the challenges – everything which goes into what Freedom to Speak Up means in health.
#SpeakUpABC
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Two people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the death of a woman believed to have undergone a non-surgical Brazilian butt lift (BBL).
Alice Webb, 33, died after being taken to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in the early hours of Tuesday after falling unwell.
Gloucestershire Police said it had been called by the ambulance service at 11:35 BST on Monday and an investigation, led by the major crime team, was ongoing.
The two arrested people have been released on police bail.
Save Face, a national register of accredited practitioners who offer non-surgical cosmetic treatments, said this was the "first case of a death caused by a non-surgical BBL in the UK".
While non-surgical BBLs are not illegal in the UK, last year Wolverhampton City Council barred a company from carrying out the procedure after identifying risks associated with their processes, including blood clots, sepsis, and the potential for the death of body tissues.
Save Face’s director Ashton Collins said the organisation had supported 500 women who had suffered complications from the procedure.
Ms Collins said: “Liquid BBL procedures are a crisis waiting to happen. They are advertised on social media as ‘risk-free’, ‘cheaper’ alternatives to the surgical counterpart and that could not be further from the truth.”
Source: BBC News, 25 September 2024
A trust and the NHS’ staffing agency have launched an investigation after a coroner found two nurses and a healthcare assistant may have lied about carrying out patient observations.
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Source: HSJ, 4 October 2019
The aftercare of COVID-19 patients will have significant financial implications for ‘understaffed’ community services, NHS England has been warned.
This month the national commissioner released guidance for the care of patients once they have recovered from an immediate covid infection and been discharged from hospital.
It said community health services will need to provide “ongoing health support that rehabilitates [covid patients] both physically and mentally”. The document said this would result in increased demand for home oxygen services, pulmonary rehabilitation, diagnostics and for many therapies such as speech and language, occupational, physio, dieticians and mental health support.
One GP heavily involved in community rehab told HSJ: “There is a lot detailed information about what people might experience in recovery, but it doesn’t say what should actually happen.
“We have seen people discharged from hospital that don’t know anything about their follow-up and the community [health sector] hasn’t got any instructions of what they should be doing or what services have even reopened. This guidance needs to go a step further and rapidly say what is expected so local commissioners can put that in place.”
Source: HSJ, 10 June 2020
A trust has been accused of presiding over the deterioration of a key service amid communication problems between senior leaders and a ‘worrying series of resignations’ which has left the department with ‘no doctors’.
The British Association of Dermatologists wrote to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust on 13 July to request an urgent meeting with the provider’s management to discuss the matter.
The letter, seen by HSJ, outlines fundamental patient safety and staffing concerns about the trust’s dermatology service and accuses the trust of putting “continued communication barriers” between clinicians and management.
The letter, signed by BAD president Mabs Chowdhury, says there are now “no doctors in the department” after two consultants and a locum consultant resigned “due to apparent unhappiness with the running of services [and in] a continuation of a worrying series of resignations”.
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Source: HSJ, 19 July 2023
A senior NHS nurse was fired after warning the increased workload on her pressured staff had contributed to a patient’s death.
Linda Fairhall, 60, had an unblemished record of almost 40 years’ service when she turned whistleblower at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS trust. In 2015 she raised concerns over a new requirement for district nurses to monitor patients’ prescriptions. She said it meant a sudden increase of around 1,000 extra visits a month for her hard-pressed team of 50 nurses with no extra resources.
Over the next 10 months she reported 13 matters, alleging the health or safety of patients and staff was being or was likely to be put at risk.
After a patient died in 2016 she claimed it may have been prevented if her concerns had been addressed. She told the trust’s care group director Julie Parks she wished to start the formal whistle-blowing procedure. Soon after she was suspended over allegations of potential gross misconduct relating to her leadership, and then sacked.
Dr Henrietta Hughes, the UK’s national NHS guardian, said: “Workers who speak up should be thanked for doing so and the organisation should demonstrate they are taking action to address the issues raised.”
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust said it will appeal the decision.
Source: The Mirror, 2 March 2020
Ten junior doctors have been removed from a struggling hospital over concerns they were being left without adequate supervision on understaffed wards.
Health Education England (HEE) removed the 10 foundation year one doctors, all on a general medicine rota, from Weston General Hospital last month. The General Medical Council said the trust’s previous efforts to address the issues “have not been sufficient or sustainable”.
University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Foundation Trust did not say which services HEE had removed the juniors from or what mitigations had been put in place. However, the trust told HSJ none of the positions concerned were from the hospital’s emergency department, where the GMC has already imposed conditions on juniors’ training.
HEE very rarely uses its power to withdraw trusts’ trainees. HSJ reported last June the regulator had only removed two posts at trusts under enhanced monitoring since the start of 2019.
William Oldfield, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston FT medical director, said in a statement to HSJ: “We recognise the seriousness of the step taken by HEE to temporarily suspend the training programme for a small number of junior doctors at Weston General Hospital.
”We are working to provide the assurance HEE require to allow this training to recommence, and in the meantime we have appropriately mitigated the impact on services at Weston.”
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Source: HSJ, 10 May 2021
About a third of NHS trusts in England are using “technically obsolete” imaging equipment that could be putting patients’ health at risk, while existing shortages of doctors who are qualified to diagnose and treat disease and injuries using medical imaging techniques could triple by 2030.
According to data obtained through freedom of information requests by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, 27.1% of trusts in NHS England have at least one computerised tomography (CT) scanner that is 10 years old or more, while 34.5% have at least one magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner in the same category. These are used to diagnose various conditions including cancer, stroke and heart disease, detect damage to bones and internal organs, or guide further treatment.
An NHS England report published last year recommended that all imaging equipment aged 10 years or older be replaced. Software upgrades may not be possible on older equipment, limiting its use, while older CT scanners may require higher radiation doses to deliver the same image, it said.
Dr Julian Elford, a consultant radiologist and medical director at the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), said: “CT and MRI machines start to become technically obsolete at 10 years. Older kit breaks down frequently, is slower, and produces poorer quality images, so upgrading is critical."
“We don’t just need upgraded scanners, though; we need significantly more scanners in the first place. The [NHS England report] called for doubling the number of scanners – we firmly support that call, and recommend a government-funded programme for equipment replacement on an appropriate cycle so that radiologists can diagnose and treat their patients safely."
Source: The Guardian, 18 October 2021
NHS leaders have been accused of downplaying the impact of the Covid crisis and putting hospitals under scrutiny for declaring critical incidents and postponing surgeries.
A leaked email urges hospitals to use the “correct terminology” and make NHS leaders aware when declaring their status.
Sources said the message was a “thinly veiled threat” and that there was “subtle pressure” amid rapid spread of Omicron.
At least 24 trusts have declared critical incidents this week, including one in Northamptonshire on Friday afternoon, while new figures show a 59% rise in staff absences in just seven days.
Trusts in London were told hospitals will be scrutinised for declaring a critical incident if there is “doubt” over the decision, according to an internal email sent from NHS England on Wednesday.
In light of media coverage, it would be “valuable” to “raise awareness of the key terminology and encourage you to ensure that you are clear ... when considering a declaration,” it said. “National scrutiny on the declaration on incidents has heightened ... and [senior managers] will need to make additional enquiries where there is doubt as to the status of an organisation’s incident.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “We know that the NHS is under enormous pressure and it is important that local trusts are able to be honest and open with parliament and the public about the challenges they’re facing. We are increasingly concerned that ministers are more interested in covering up problems than solving them.”
Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem Health spokesperson, said: “This is an insult to every health worker who has given their all, and every patient with cancelled appointments and delayed surgeries.
Source: The Independent, 9 January 2022
Having spent 5 months in a hospital bed, Jame Hale, a disabled poet and essayist, urges us as we go into this election not to forget the damage that’s been done to the NHS – and the individual, human casualties that have resulted.
"High-quality staff are not enough if we put them in environments where they cannot do their best", Jame says to the Guardian newspaper.
"An NHS in this state is a stain on the country, and an ongoing risk to patient safety. It’s come about because of nine years of persistent underfunding and austerity, which has come on top of PFI hospital-building initiatives that have loaded hospital trusts with unsustainable repayments."
Source: The Guardian, 7 November 2019
NHS guidance ‘too long to read,’ say hospital staff as safety watchdog exposes systemic risks to patients.
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) revealed some NHS staff had admitted not reading official guidance on how to avoid the ‘never event’ error as part of a new report identifying deeper systemic problems that it said left patients at an increased risk.
The independent body warned patients across the NHS remained vulnerable to being injured or even killed by the error that keeps happening in hospitals despite warnings and safety alerts over the last 15 years.
HSIB launched a national investigation into the problem of misplaced nasogastric (NG) tubes after a 26-year-old man had 1,450ml of liquid feed fed into his lungs in December 2018 after a bike accident.
The patient recovered but the error was not spotted, even after an X-ray.
Source: The Independent, 17 December 2020
The parents of a baby who died after medical errors are to push for a new inquest into his death, after they say a "cruel" inquest denied them justice.
Hayden Nguyen died in 2016 after medics failed to treat an infection properly. However, despite the NHS trust admitting mistakes, coroner Shirley Radcliffe concluded the infant died of natural causes, after raising concerns about the hospital's initial investigation.
Hayden was six days old when his parents took him to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in west London in August 2016. He initially had a fever but rapidly deteriorated; he had a cardiac arrest and died within 12 hours of arriving there.
An internal NHS investigation concluded eight errors were made in Hayden's care, and the root causes of his death were failure to identify the signs of shock and failure to act on abnormal test results.
"When they had completed the investigation, they sat us down and took us through it line by line," says Alex Nguyen, Hayden's mother. "Although the content was incredibly disturbing, it was in a way healing and it helped a little bit with the grieving process."
An inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court, conducted by Dr Radcliffe, followed. However, the coroner was not happy with the hospital's investigation.
The hospital to issue a second report into Hayden's care, which halved the number of errors, and said the root cause of his death was the infection "which is known to have a high mortality".
Armed with this second report, the coroner concluded that Hayden had died of natural causes.
"What the coroner did was kill Hayden a second time," Hayden's father, Tum, told the BBC.
Source: BBC News, 14 May 2021
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated six mental health hospitals “inadequate”, just months after describing them as either “good” or “outstanding”, since the Whorlton Hall scandal was revealed.
HSJ analysis shows that of the 13 mental health hospitals admitting people with learning disabilities or autism which have been rated “inadequate” by the CQC since May this year, six of them dropped at least two ratings in a short space of time. The six hospitals which dropped at least two ratings include Whorlton Hall — the County Durham hospital closed following a BBC Panorama report in May showing residents being mistreated — which the CQC rated as “good” in December 2017 before revising this to “inadequate” in May.
The BBC investigation prompted the CQC to investigate all similar mental health hospitals run by Cygnet, which took over the running of Whorlton Hall in January 2019.
Cygnet Newbus Grange in Darlington — which was rated “outstanding” in a report published in February 2019 – was judged “inadequate” by September, while Cygnet Acer Clinic in Chesterfield fell from “good” in November 2018 to “inadequate’ in a report published 12 months later.
The other three hospitals were the Breightmet Centre for Autism in Bolton, Kneesworth House in Hertfordshire and The Woodhouse Independent Hospital in Staffordshire.
It comes as the CQC prepares to publish independent reports on its role in relation to the Whorlton Hall scandal. NHS England — one of the commissioners, along with local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, of learning disability inpatient care — also last month initiated a “taskforce” on the issue.
The CQC has acknowledged it needed to “strengthen” its assessments of this type of care and said it had begun to do so, and was reviewing them further “from a human rights perspective”.
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Source: HSJ, 2 December 2019
Tens of thousands of people infected with coronavirus were incorrectly given the all clear by England’s Lighthouse Laboratories, a High Court trial will be told next week.
Court documents seen by The Independent show the labs are accused of unfairly selecting software that was shown in a test to produce significant numbers of errors and false negatives, samples that should have been positive or classed as needing to be re-taken.
The two companies behind the Lighthouse Labs in England – Medicines Discovery Catapult Ltd and UK Biocentre Ltd – are accused of treating British company, Diagnostics.ai unfairly and giving preferential treatment to Belgian company UgenTec, despite the British firm’s software performing better in the test.
The case, first revealed by The Independent in June, also includes a judicial review of the procurement decision against health secretary Matt Hancock – one of the first court hearings over the procurement processes followed by the government since the start of the pandemic.
The Independent understands lawyers for Diagnostics.ai will accuse the laboratories of choosing a software solution that went on to produce tens of thousands of incorrect results which will have led to infected people going about their normal lives while at risk of spreading the virus.
In June, UgenTec chief executive Steven Verhoeven told The Independent the suggestion its software had made errors was “incorrect”.
The Department of Health refused to comment on the legal action but said in June that the UgenTec software had been used for several months and was subject to quality assurance processes, though it did not give any further details.
Mr Justice Fraser will hear opening arguments in the case on Monday at the High Court.
Source: The Independent, 25 September 2020
The NHS could face a record compensation bill of more than £60m from civil claims lodged by the families of Lucy Letby’s victims, experts have said.
Parents whose babies have disabilities caused by Letby’s attacks at the Countess of Chester hospital could each expect to receive a payout of more than £10m to fund their future care.
Compensation paid by the NHS to parents whose babies died or were left with disabilities as a result of care at Shrewsbury hospital in Britain’s largest maternity scandal reportedly amounted to almost £50m. In a separate case, the health service had to pay £37m to a boy who was left brain damaged at birth.
Stephen Jones, the head of Leigh Day’s medical negligence team in Manchester, said the trust could argue that by committing the offences, Letby breached the employer-employee relationship to an extent such that it was not responsible for her. But he added: “I think there would be outrage that the trust wouldn’t accept responsibility for babies in their care.” He said compensation could run into eight figures for a family whose baby was severely injured and had a long life expectancy.
Emma Wray, a partner in Hodge Jones & Allen’s medical negligence department, suggested the NHS could set up a scheme for victims, as it has done with other scandals, to make claiming compensation easier.
Source: The Guardian, 23 August 2023
Theresa May has urged the government to consider “redress” for the victims of a hormone pregnancy test blamed for causing serious birth defects.
The former prime minister said that while Primodos victims had received an apology, “lives have suffered as a result” of the drug’s use.
In an interview for a Sky News documentary, she praised campaigners who had been “beating their head against a brick wall of the state” which tried to “stop them in their tracks”.
A review in 2017 found that scientific evidence did “not support a causal association” between the use of hormone pregnancy tests such as Primodos and birth defects or miscarriage. But Ms May ordered a second review in 2018, because, she said, she felt that it “wasn’t the slam-dunk answer that people said it was”.
“At one point it says that they could not find a causal association between Primodos and congenital anomalies, but neither could they categorically say that there was no causal link,” she said.
The second review concluded last month that there had been “avoidable harm” caused by Primodos and two other products – sodium valproate and vaginal mesh.
An interview for Bitter Pill: Primodos, which will air on Sky Documentaries, Ms May said: “I think it’s important that the government looks at the whole question of redress and about how that redress can be brought up for people.
Source: The Independent, 28 August 2020
A management coach and adviser to the Care Quality Commission has been appointed as the new ‘national guardian’ for the ’freedom to speak up’ programme.
Jayne Chidgey-Clark will take up her new role on 1 December. The national guardian’s office leads, trains and supports the network of over 700 freedom to speak up guardians in England, as well as providing “challenge and learning to the healthcare system”.
Ms Chidgey-Clark, a registered nurse, has served as a specialist adviser to the CQC since 2017. She has run her own coaching, consultancy and interim management business since 2009. She was a clincial adviser to NHS England’s new care models programme for three years until 2018 and the director of the end of life care modernisation project at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust between 2008 and 2011.
Her appointment comes after Henrietta Hughes announced in June she was stepping down from the role after five years.
Ms Chidgey-Clark, who is the third appointee to the position, said: “I feel excited and privileged to have been appointed as the new National Guardian for the NHS. I am passionate about, and committed to, making a real difference in people’s lives through the planning and delivery of the highest quality, effective care with excellent outcomes for people who use our health services, and their families.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 11 November 2021
Barts Health NHS Trust has been told to take action to prevent future deaths after an elderly woman was unlawfully killed at one of its hospitals.
East London acting senior coroner Graeme Irvine sent a report to the trust in which he raised concerns over the death of 78-year-old Surekha Shivalkar in 2018.
The report follows an inquest into Mrs Shivalkar's death, which reached a narrative conclusion incorporating a finding of unlawful killing.
A Barts spokesperson said the trust had made a number of changes after carrying out an investigation.
Mrs Shivalkar underwent hip replacement revision surgery at Newham Hospital on September 28, 2018 in a procedure estimated to last between four and five hours, the coroner wrote.
She had a number of serious conditions, including ischaemic heart disease, osteoporosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. But Mr Irvine said an inaccurate risk of death of less than 5% was given, as no formal risk assessment tool was used.
The surgery took longer than seven and a half hours, during which time Mr Irvine said Mrs Shivalkar sustained a "prolonged and dangerous" period of hypotension, or low blood pressure.
He said the anaesthetist failed to communicate this to the surgical team and agreed to prolong surgery at the six hour point.
Mr Irvine said: "Poor communication between the orthopaedic surgical team and the anaesthetist during surgery led to a collective failure to identify a critically ill patient."
Source: Newham Recorder, 17 January 2022
Infection control rules in hospitals are ‘now disproportionate to the risks’ posed by covid and should be relaxed, some of the NHS’s most senior leaders have warned.
The government rules – such as not allowing covid-positive staff to work, and separating out services for covid, non-covid and covid-contact patients – make a big dent in hospital capacity and slows down services.
Glen Burley, who is chief executive of three Midlands trusts and involved in national-level discussions on elective matters, told HSJ: “Pretty much every pathway has a covid and non-covid route, which slows down flow and staff productivity.
“There is a growing argument that these rules are now disproportionate to the risks. With covid cases in the community also rising now, we may have to question again the relative risks of continuing to isolate staff.”
NHS Confederation director of policy Layla McCay told HSJ: “Healthcare leaders are concerned the current [IPC] measures are having a serious knock-on effect on capacity and that the measures in their current form are reducing efficiency and capacity within healthcare settings.
“We need more clarity on if and how current measures can be safely adjusted so [the NHS] can further increase bed capacity and patient throughput, as well as the ability to transport patients more quickly and efficiently.”
But NHS Providers, which has previously said relaxing the IPC guidance would not enable a “rapid” increase in the NHS’ capacity to tackle the elective care backlog and could pose significant “risks”, remains more cautious.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 21 March 2022
The former police chief who investigated mental health services in a crisis-hit health board was “shocked” by the poor working relationships and “blame shifting” he uncovered.
David Strang, who led the independent inquiry into the issues in NHS Tayside, said staff felt isolated and unsupported and people complained about each other’s practices without coming together to sort the issues out.
He described asking staff questions based on information he had received and being met with the response: “Who told you?” He added: “A lot of staff felt there was a real blame culture and that risk and blame fell to the front line.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: 6 February 2020, The Times
NHS England has encouraged trusts to consider taking legal action against patients who refuse to leave hospital beds when step-down care is made available.
NHSE guidance sent to trusts late last year, seen by HSJ, advised clinicians that where people “with mental capacity” refuse to vacate a bed because they do not accept NHS-funded short-term care offers, the “local discharge choice policy” should be followed, which could involve legal action.
The guidance said the process “may include seeking an order for possession of the hospital bed” under civil law, and that “appropriate formal notification of the process must be given to the person and their representatives/carers”.
These legal powers were open to trusts prior to covid, but the memo from NHSE comes amid increasing pressure on trusts to improve discharge rates, as waits for emergency and elective care continue to soar.
Helen Hughes, chief executive of Patient Safety Learning, said: “Given the current pressures posed by covid, it is understandable that the NHS is seeking to ensure that the hospital discharge process is as swift and effective as possible.
“However, hospital discharges are complex processes and can potentially result in avoidable harm if patients are discharged before they are clinically ready. It only takes one element of this complex process failing to put a patient’s safety at risk.
“We would be particularly concerned if patients and their carers were put under pressure to accept potentially unsafe discharge options due to the threat of possible legal action by an NHS trust.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 14 January 2022
The Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) is calling for action to be taken after a recent report suggests little progress has been made to prevent errors within the perioperative environment.
The patient safety charity made the call following the release of NHS Improvement’s latest Never Event report; Provisional publication of Never Events reported as occurring between 1 April and 31 December 2019, which revealed an alarming 81% (284) of the never events recorded happened while a patient was on the operating table.
Lindsay Keeley, patient safety and quality lead at AfPP said: “The survey highlighted that there’s a need to take action now if we are to support the healthcare profession in reducing the occurrence of never events. It has become clear that receptive team culture, a strong leadership team and better support for staff is what will help to reduce the risk of a never event occurring. It’s vital that those in leadership positions begin to understand the contributory factors in the recurrence of never events and the challenges faced by staff."
She went on to highlight some of the recent initiative taking place: “What is promising is that there are practitioners who are developing new, practical and simple solutions every day that can support other team members and can be used within theatres across the country."
"One example is Rob Tomlinson’s introduction of the 10,000 Feet initiative – a safety initiative designed to cut through noise and distraction within the theatre environment, particularly at critical points of the patient’s journey. If correctly implemented, initiatives like this can cut through the hierarchies that stop people feeling unable to speak up when they see something that shouldn’t be happening, thus reducing the occurrence of never events"
“We of course need to be mindful that there will always be challenges within perioperative practice in the form of interruptions and distractions, but the key is how as practitioners we engage with this to recognise and reduce never events.”
Source: Clinical Services Journal, 25 February 2020
A study conducted by NHS Education for Scotland and Health Improvement Scotland found patients felt safer by having someone listen to their experiences after adverse events.
The findings were published in the BMJ and have been positively received by NHS boards across the country.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s Donna Maclean said: “The compassionate communications training has seen an unprecedented uptake across NHS boards in Scotland, with the first two cohorts currently under way and evaluation taking place also.”
Clear communication and a person-centred approach was seen as being central to helping those who have suffered from traumatic events.
Researchers found many said their faith was restored in the healthcare system if staff showed compassion and active engagement.
This approach is likely to enhance learning and lead to improvements in healthcare.
Health boards were advised that long timelines can have a negative impact on the mental health of patients and their families.
Rosanna from Glasgow, who was affected by an adverse event, said: “I believe this study and its findings are crucial to truly understanding patients and families going through adverse events.
“Not only does the study capture exactly what needs to change, but it also highlights the elements that are most important to us: an apology and assurance that lessons will be learnt is all we really want.
Source: The National, 30 May 2022
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