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Hepatitis cases detected in children in Europe and the US

Health officials say they are now investigating unexplained cases of hepatitis in children in four European countries and the US.

Cases of hepatitis, or liver inflammation, have been reported in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and the US, health officials say.

Last week UK health authorities said they had detected higher than usual cases of the infection among children. The cause of the infections is not yet known.

The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) did not specify how many cases have been found in the four European countries in total.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) said less than five had been found in Ireland, and three had been found in Spain. It added that the detection of more cases in the coming days was likely.

Investigations into the cause of the infections are ongoing in all of the European countries where cases have been reported, said the ECDC.

In the US, Alabama's public health department said nine cases have been found in children aged one to six years old, with two needing liver transplants.

Investigations into similar cases in other states are taking place, it added.

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Source: BBC News, 20 April 2022

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Hepatitis C home test kits available to most-at-risk in England

Home test kits for a virus which attacks the liver are now available to order online in England, as the NHS tries to reach those needing treatment.

Hepatitis C tends to affect current or past drug users and people who have had contact with infected blood through a tattoo or medical procedure abroad.

It can lead to liver disease and cancer, but symptoms often go unnoticed for many years.

The NHS website says it can usually be cured by taking a course of tablets.

More than 70,000 people are thought to be living with the virus in England. Some may not know they have it, so would be unlikely to go to their GP for a test.

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Source: BBC News, 13 May 2023

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Henrietta Hughes is preferred candidate for the role of Patient Safety Commissioner

Henrietta Hughes has been named as the government’s preferred candidate for the role of Patient Safety Commissioner.

Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has today, 20 June 2022, invited the Health and Social Care Committee to hold a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing with Henrietta.

Henrietta is a practising GP with a background in women’s health who was the National Guardian for the NHS until 2021. In addition to her clinical work, she is an appraiser for NHS England and Chair of Childhood First.

She was selected following an open public appointment process to appoint the first Patient Safety Commissioner.

Following the select committee hearing, the committee will set out its views on the candidate’s suitability for the role. The Secretary of State will then consider the committee’s report before making a final decision on the appointment.

Source: Gov.UK, 20 June 2022

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HEE’s new £10m critical care workforce training package set for autumn roll-out

Health Education England (HEE) has announced that its new £10 million training programme, intended to ‘boost’ the critical care workforce, will be rolled out this autumn.

According to HEE, the funds it secured earlier this year will provide nurses and Allied Health Professionals with a ‘nationally recognised pathway’ to further their careers in Adult Intensive Care Units (ICUs).

Specialist training, delivered through a ‘blended learning package’ could help to strengthen the ICU workforce across England and will offer around 10,500 nursing staff the chance to undertake courses and ‘further their careers’.

There will be a focus on flexible training – enabling participants to balance family and caring commitments, as well as taking into account those who are unable to travel, when the roll-out of the programme begins.

The learning will be delivered by higher education institutions, Critical Care Skills Networks and acute trusts, and it is expected to take participants up to 12 months to receive the standardised qualification. It’s hoped that the programme could lead staff to career opportunities such as becoming a shift leader or clinical educator, or to lead on research.

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Original source: Leading Healthcare News

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HEE tells trusts to prioritise training, or services will suffer

The quality and performance of services will suffer if medical training is not ‘prioritised and funded’ by trusts, Health Education England (HEE) has warned.

HEE has set out actions in its “Covid training recovery interim report” that must be done alongside NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care and others to protect post-covid workforce recovery.

At the beginning of the pandemic, junior doctors’ training was severely disrupted because thousands of staff were redeployed to covid wards, while most routine elective operations and diagnostic procedures were stopped.

HEE says training has still not returned to pre-covid levels, and fears there could be further disruptions over winter if significant volumes of elective care are cancelled.

According to its report, if medical training is not “prioritised and funded”, the “long-term costs to service are significantly greater”.

“If delivery recovery is prioritised over training recovery there will be an initial increase in service delivery time and value, but this will be followed swiftly by a reduction in service delivery time and value,” it warned.

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Source: HSJ, 13 October 2021

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Heavily criticised trust recognised for improvements on infection control

A trust which was heavily criticised for poor infection prevention and control last summer has been praised for making improvements.

East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust was served with an enforcement notice by the Care Quality Commission in August last year, citing “serious concerns” about patient safety. The trust had twice the national rate of patients infected with COVID-19 after admission to hospital.

But a new report, issued today, found significant improvements, with several areas of outstanding practice. The conditions imposed on the trust after last year’s inspection of the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford were also lifted, following the visit by the CQC in early March.

Cath Campbell, CQC’s head of hospital inspections in the South East, said the improvements were particularly commendable as the trust had been under extreme pressure as a result of the pandemic.

She said: “Leaders adopted learnings from other trusts, and from NHS Improvement which led to the development of a detailed infection prevention and control improvement plan. The trust then set up an improvement group to focus on implementing the actions in the plan and put a committee in place to review internal audit data and led improvements based on this information.

“Although there were still one or two areas for improvement which we have advised the trust to look at now, overall this is a very positive report.”

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Source: HSJ, 23 April 2021

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Heatwave pushes NHS to ‘tipping point’ as hospitals and ambulance services declare black alert

A spike in Covid absences and the extended heatwave have left NHS hospitals and ambulance services struggling to cope.

The hot weather is also driving more patients to A&E departments, and callers are being urged not to use 999 except in serious emergencies.

All 10 ambulance trusts in England are on black alert, the highest level, while health leaders warn that “ill-equipped” hospital buildings are struggling to store medicines correctly amid the abnormally high temperatures.

Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said: “The NHS ambulance sector is under intense pressure, with all ambulance services operating at the highest level of four within their local resource escalation action plans, normally only ever reserved for major incidents or short-term periods of unusual demand.

“Severe delays in ambulance crews being able to hand over their patients at many hospital emergency departments are having a very significant impact on the ambulance sector’s ability to respond to patients as quickly as we would like to, because our crews and vehicles are stuck outside those hospitals.”

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Source: The Independent, 12 July 2022

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HeartWare gadget was a ticking time bomb for our daughter

At the age of 36, Nola Borcherds could hardly walk ten steps without gasping for breath. A viral infection years earlier had weakened her heart and left her with a constant wheezy chest.

Her heart was failing and she needed a new one. No transplant was available, but the next best thing was an implant called HeartWare. Unlike pacemakers, which send an electrical pulse to keep it beating regularly, the device would attach to Nola’s heart and keep her alive by taking over its function, continuously pumping blood around the body.

Brochures promised the gadget could be life changing. It was smaller, safer and more effective than others, and designed to last up to ten years, raising her chance of a transplant.

When Nola’s pump was implanted in December 2018 it made a tremendous difference.  “Two to three months after she had it fitted, she could virtually run up the stairs,” her mother, Jenny Kiddie said.

But on 21 May 2021, two and a half years after the device went in, it stopped working. Doctors at Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon, west London, were carrying out maintenance when it failed to turn back on, cutting the supply of blood to her brain.

“The hospital called and said, ‘Nola’s become very unwell. How quickly can you get here?’” her mother said. “By the time we arrived, she was already in the morgue.”

What her family believe Nola did not know, and what the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), failed to react to, was that HeartWare pumps had already been linked to hundreds of deaths globally. 

As early as 2011 some doctors switched to alternatives. Yet the UK regulator allowed them to stay on the market — and they continued to be implanted on the NHS until last year. Some patients are still living with the pieces of equipment, because surgery to remove them is so risky.

Families, medical experts and lawyers want to know why the MHRA failed to take firm action despite repeated warnings about the devices, which they believe could have contributed to patients dying. By Nola’s death last year, the health regulator had passed on at least 16 safety alerts to doctors warning of problems identified by the manufacturer. 

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Source: The Sunday Times, 23 January 2022

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Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case

Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study1 shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease.

What’s more, the risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes.

“It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, it doesn’t matter if you smoked, or you didn’t,” says study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the chief of research and development for the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System. “The risk was there.”

People who had recovered from COVID-19 showed stark increases in 20 cardiovascular problems over the year after infection. For example, they were 52% more likely to have had a stroke than the contemporary control group, meaning that, out of every 1,000 people studied, there were around 4 more people in the COVID-19 group than in the control group who experienced stroke.

The risk of heart failure increased by 72%, or around 12 more people in the COVID-19 group per 1,000 studied. Hospitalization increased the likelihood of future cardiovascular complications, but even people who avoided hospitalization were at higher risk for many conditions.

“I am actually surprised by these findings that cardiovascular complications of COVID can last so long,” Hossein Ardehali, a cardiologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, wrote in an e-mail to Nature. Because severe disease increased the risk of complications much more than mild disease, Ardehali wrote, “it is important that those who are not vaccinated get their vaccine immediately”.

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Source: Nature, 10 February 2022

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Heart surgery waits in England may rise by 40%, warns charity

According to the British Heart Foundation, it may take up to five years for cardiac services to return to pre-Covid levels. This warning comes after it was revealed nearly 14 million people could be on NHS waiting lists in England by next autumn.

"Tragically, we have already seen thousands of extra deaths from heart and circulatory diseases during the pandemic, and delays to care have likely contributed to this terrible toll. At this critical moment, the government must act now to avoid more lives lost to treatable heart conditions. Addressing the growing heart care backlog is only the start," says Prof Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation. 

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Source: BBC News, 9 August 2021

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Heart surgeon's failures contributed to multiple deaths

Seven people have died following multiple failures by a heart surgeon who continues to work for the NHS, the BBC has learned.

An NHS investigation found problems in Karen Booth's cases included clinical errors, carrying out operations she wasn't skilled or experienced enough to perform and not calling for help when she should have.

Serious concerns about Ms Booth's performance at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle were first raised by her colleagues in 2018 - but the hospital did not launch an investigation until 2021. Ms Booth is currently working as a mentor to other surgeons at the Freeman, which plans to allow her to resume her surgical career shortly.

Karen Booth "should never [again] practise as a surgeon", said the family of one man who died after being operated on by her.

The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Freeman, did not respond to most of the questions put to it by the BBC, including why it thought it appropriate to let Ms Booth resume her surgical career.

The trust did however point to a problematic working culture in the cardiac unit at the time of the failures, while internal reports have criticised poor governance procedures and a reluctance from senior staff to take responsibility over safety concerns.

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Source: BBC News, 2 October 2025

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Heart patients could now do their rehab remotely as ‘transformative’ plans get NHS green light

People with heart problems will be able to complete rehabilitation online in their homes rather than waiting for face-to-face appointments.

Experts said the programmes “offer real potential to transform” how this type of care is delivered to individual patients.

Six online platforms have been conditionally recommended to the NHS to support adults with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in new draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

They are Activate Your Heart, D REACH-HF, Digital Heart Manual, Gro Health HeartBuddy, KiActiv and myHeart.

Uptake for cardiac rehabilitation programmes, which can reduce the risk of further heart problems and hospital admissions, is low, according to NICE.

Each platform is designed to offer cardiac rehabilitation online, including exercise programmes, advice on diet, medication management and psychological support.

Some of the platforms also include wearable devices to monitor activity levels.

Dr Anastasia Chalkidou, healthtech programme director at NICE, said: “These digital platforms offer real potential to transform how cardiac rehabilitation is offered to people to meet their individual circumstances.

“We know that traditional programmes aren’t reaching everyone who could benefit – particularly women, younger patients and people from ethnic minority backgrounds.”

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Source: The Independent, 19 August 2025

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Heart check app keeps patients out of hospital

Monitoring heart patients via a smartphone app prevented readmissions and sped up discharges in a pilot scheme that its developers hope will be introduced across the country.

Patients sent data including their blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels and details of developing symptoms to their clinical team on an app.

The figures were collated on a “dashboard”, which flagged any signs that a patient might need medical help, allowing doctors and nurses to bring them into hospital or alter their medication as required.

The 12-week pilot by Huma, a healthcare technology company based in London, involved 40 patients at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board in south Wales and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in north Wales.

Click here to read full article (paywalled)

 
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Heart attacks at record level after pandemic

Record numbers of people have been hospitalised with heart attacks in the wake of the pandemic, official figures show.

On Tuesday, health chiefs will launch a campaign urging those with symptoms to seek help, with fears that too many cases are being detected too late. The new figures for England show that more than 84,000 patients were admitted to hospital because of a heart attack in 2021/22 – a rise of more than 7,000 in a year. It follows warnings that heart deaths have risen by more than 500 a week since the first lockdown, with a fall in the numbers prescribed vital medication amid struggles to access GP care.

Health officials are afraid that people are still failing to come forward, adding to the collateral damage caused by the pandemic.

From this week, an NHS advert will encourage people to call 999 as soon as they experience symptoms of a heart attack, such as squeezing across the chest, sweating and a feeling of uneasiness, so people have the best chance of survival.

Prof Nick Linker, a cardiologist and NHS national clinical director for heart disease, said: “Cardiovascular disease causes one in four deaths across the country, so it is vital that people are aware of the early signs of a heart attack. Every moment that passes during a heart attack increases heart muscle damage, and nearly all of the damage takes place within the first few hours, so if you experience symptoms such as a sensation of squeezing or tightness across the chest alongside sweating, nausea, or a sense of unease, please call 999 so you have the best chance of a full recovery”.

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Source: The Telegraph, 15 August 2023

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Heart attack responses a ‘shambles’ as patients face eight-hour ambulance waits

Senior doctors have sent a warning over the “shambles” of heart attack care after pressures on the NHS have left patients waiting eight hours for an ambulance.

The caution comes as several hospitals in the past week have declared critical incidents over the level of pressure on their emergency care services.

Portsmouth Hospital said on Monday: “Demand for an emergency response is far outstripping the capacity available in Portsmouth and South East Hampshire at this time.”

Professor Mama Mamas, a consultant cardiologist in Stoke and Professor of Cardiology at Keele University, told The Independent: “I was on call this weekend and I was seeing delays of eight hours. It was several people, three or four this weekend with heart attacks that waited between four and eight hours … it’s a national disgrace that we’re in this situation.

“I think that patient care is being compromised. We know that time is muscle and an eight-hour delay getting an ambulance to a patient with a heart attack is impacting on the survival levels.”

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Source: The Independent, 13 October 2022

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Heart attack patients told to take themselves to hospitals due to ‘significant pressures’ on ambulance service

Patients in the West Midlands, including some of those suffering heart attacks, are being asked to get themselves to hospital amid worsening pressures on ambulance services this winter.

The West Midlands Ambulance Service has advised its 999 call handlers to ask patients if they can make their own way to the hospital when services are under high demand.

According to reports in The Sunday Times a memo was sent to staff explaining the change was needed due to delays in patients getting an ambulance.

The memo said category three and four patients – those who have fallen or are vomiting – will be told: “The ambulance service is under significant pressure, and we don’t have an ambulance available to respond to you. It may be a number of hours before one is available.”

“Is there any way you can arrange to safely make your own way to a hospital emergency department?”

All ambulance services have adjusted their guidance for call handlers, according to the reports.

West Midlands Ambulance Service confirmed that in some cases it is asking people if they can make their own way to hospital, and if they can’t, help will be arranged.

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Source: The Independent, 8 December 2024

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Healthy baby terminated by hospital in mix-up with sick twin

Doctors at a hospital in Birmingham mistakenly terminated a healthy unborn baby in a procedure instead of its sickly twin.

The unidentified mother decided to abort one of the fetuses because it was suffering from restrictive growth, which increases the chances of stillbirth and puts the healthy baby at risk. During the procedure at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation, surgeons accidentally terminated the wrong twin.

The 2019 incident emerged in a Freedom of Information Act survey of hospital blunders.

Dr Fiona Reynolds, chief medical officer at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Trust, said: "A full and comprehensive investigation was carried out swiftly after this tragic case and the findings were shared with the family, along with our sincere apologies and condolences."

"The outcome of that thorough review has led to a new protocol being developed to decrease the likelihood of such an incident happening again."

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Source: The Independent, 6 September 2021

 

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HealthWatch's response to the annual CQC 'State of Care' report

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published State of Care. The report, which draws on the experiences of care people have shared with Healthwatch England, has found that health and social care services face some highly concerning challenges, including:

  • A workforce drained in terms of resilience and capacity, especially in social care, where the staff vacancy rate has risen;
  • A rising number of people seeking emergency care, leading to unacceptable waiting times; and
  • Tackling the health inequalities that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated.

The report welcomes the additional funding that the Government has allocated to help the NHS and social care address their challenges. However, CQC has called for the extra investment to be used to:

  • Develop new ways of working and don’t just prop up existing approaches and plug demand in acute care; and
  • Improve the training, career development and terms and conditions of social care workers to help attract and retain more staff.

CQC has also recommended that the short-term funding - currently in place to help discharge patients who are no longer in need of hospital care but may still require care services - be extended. 

The HealthWatch response

Responding, Sir Robert Francis QC, Chair of Healthwatch England said:

“During the pandemic, people have told us about the challenges they have faced. Whether this not being able to access dental care, problems using online GP services or being discharged from the hospital without the proper support. It’s great to see this report drawing so much on the experiences people have shared with us. 

“We urge Government to act on this report. The health and care system upon which we all depend is facing a hard winter, but, as this report makes clear, the longer-term picture is also challenging.

“The steps the CQC are recommending, like extending the extra funding to help people leave hospital safely and ensuring there is enough dental capacity, will help give services the breathing space they need to get through this winter.

“However, come spring we need to grasp the opportunity to build a better NHS and social care system. A system that tackles heath inequalities head-on, ensuring that no matter who you are or where you live, you can access high-quality care that meets your needs. A system that is sustainable, is designed round the needs of people and breaks perennial cycle of winter crises.”

Original source: HealthWatch
CQC report here

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HealthUnlocked moves to Corrona’s HealthiVibe to establish an innovative and holistic snapshot of the patient

London-based HealthUnlocked has been acquired by worldwide leader Corrona. 

HealthUnlocked is a social network of 1.3 million patients across hundreds of condition-specific communities. Moderated by over 500 patient advocacy groups, it captures insights to better understand what matters most to these patients.  

Corrona, based in Massachusetts, US, describes itself as a built-for-purpose source of gold-standard real-world evidence. 

“By combining with HealthUnlocked, we are expanding our broad set of capabilities–ranging from highly granular and longitudinal structured data across our eight registries, to broader patient insights from HealthUnlocked,” said Abbe Steel, Chief Patient Officer of Corrona.  

“The HealthUnlocked communities provide access to engaged patients across the globe, allowing us to better understand the patient experience and what matters most to patients."

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Source: Business Cloud, 22 October 2020

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Healthcare-related harm affects 1 in 10 NHS patients

Almost one in 10 people reported experiencing harm from NHS care in the past 3 years, according to a survey led by the University of Oxford. 

The study, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, found that 9.7% of respondents reported harm, with 6.2% attributing it to the treatment or care received and 3.5% citing lack of access to services.

Researchers noted that these findings exceed those of two previous British surveys which reported harm rates of 4.8% in 2001 and 2.5% in 2013. While acknowledging that the pandemic’s impact on healthcare access may have contributed to the higher figures, they said that the study highlights issues that “may be hidden from official data on patient safety.” 

As well as the withdrawal of medical care attributed to the pandemic, the increase could also be explained by using a broader definition of harm to include psychological as well as physical harm, the study authors suggested.

Lead author of the new study, Dr Michele Peters, medical sociologist at the University of Oxford, told Medscape News UK : “In the past, harm has usually been measured using clinical rather than patient perspectives.” She explained that this emphasis tended to highlight harm associated with clinical errors rather than harm related to system issues, such as long waits for treatment. 

The latest study is one of the first to explicitly assess actions taken following harm due to lack of access to care. Around half of those awaiting treatment experienced physical or psychological consequences, with longer waits more common in deprived areas.

“Current waiting list management approaches do recognise that some people are particularly vulnerable to deterioration during the waiting period,” Peters said. This means they may end up in poor condition when called for treatment. She noted that some interventions, such as weight management or smoking cessation support, aim to maintain patients’ health while they wait for procedures like hip replacements.

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Source: Medscape, 2 April 2025

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Healthcare workers outside of NHS finding it harder to access testing, survey suggests

Healthcare workers providing support outside of the NHS are finding it harder to access coronavirus tests than their colleagues inside the service, a survey of nurses has suggested.

A poll of 22,000 health and care workers conducted by the Royal College of Nursing found 44% of respondents did not know how to access testing – while 76% said they had not been offered a test.

The problem was also particularly pronounced among the temporary workers, with four in five not offered testing compared to three-quarters of full time workers.

Meanwhile the survey found 79% of those working outside of the NHS had not been offered a test, compared with 75% in the health service.

Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said: “It is concerning to see that some nursing staff, particularly those outside the NHS, are still having issues accessing COVID-19 testing.

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Source: The Independent, 4 May 2020

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Healthcare workers need more ‘time to care’

Steve Gulati, Associate Professor and Director of Healthcare Leadership at HSMC (University of Birmingham) discusses the concept of "time to care" within healthcare.

A UK-wide poll of healthcare workers revealed that most NHS staff think they have too little time to help patients and the quality of care that services provide is falling. This reported reduction in the time to care is perhaps inevitable after almost a decade of health funding failing to keep up with increases in demand, and is a cause for concern for all of us – patients, carers or those working in the NHS. Where does this fit in to the wider picture – and can anything be done about it?

It is not just NHS workers who are feeling the pinch – levels of public satisfaction with the NHS are at an all-time low. Interestingly, the two most cited reasons relate to access (difficulties or delays in getting appointments) and, tellingly, to staff shortages. Even against this gloomy backdrop, the collectivised funding model upon which the NHS is founded continues to find significant public support. All of this points towards a painful congruence – NHS staff feel that they do not have enough time to care, and the public is noticing.

Is ‘time to care’ an outdated concept, harking back to an age of long patient stays, a paternalistic bedside manner and unrealistic expectations? Both staff and patient experience suggest not. Although technology plays an increasing role in healthcare diagnostics, treatment and recovery, delivering care remains a deeply human phenomenon and is essentially a relational and personal task. Recognising that frontline healthcare workers need time to care is not a new phenomenon. Influenced by service improvement methodologies, the ‘productive ward’ initiative in the mid-2000s placed an explicit emphasis on using efficiency techniques for the express purpose of releasing nursing staff to have “time to care”. It was acknowledged that productivity was more than metrics around bed occupancy and throughput, for example, and that the driving purpose of service improvement was to time to care. Whilst research indicated a nuanced impact, the principle is long recognised.

If solutions to these problems were easy, they would have been implemented by now. There is no doubt that on one level, it really is a matter of resources – no system can carry a vacancy factor of around 10% for any length of time without there being an evident impact. However, even within an environment of constrained resources, choices are made every day by caregivers and leaders alike about what receives attention and what is allowed to move into the ‘important but not urgent’ category. That is in no way to blame the hard-pressed caregivers, but instead to indicate that even when it really does not feel like it, every individual has a level of agency.

Feeling as though one does not have time to do one’s job is, put simply, unpleasant for all workers but should especially concern us in care environments. The impact on clinical safety and quality is an obvious starting point, but it is also important to recognise the impacts on care workers themselves with regard to emotional labour and the impact on the psychological contract that working in a caring profession, when people feel that they don’t have enough time to care, must have. As eloquently stated by the Vice-President of the Royal College of Physicians in Wales, it is “…very clear that good clinicians, be they nurses, doctors, therapists or pharmacists, need time to train, time to care and time to rest”. Even in challenging times, self-care and compassionate, values driven leadership can make a difference. Caring is everyone’s business.

Link to original article: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/healthcare-workers-need-more-time-to-care

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Healthcare worker catches Covid twice in less than three weeks

A healthcare worker caught Covid on two separate occasions over the course of just 20 days, a new study has shown.

It is believed to be the shortest recorded time between two infections since the start of the pandemic. Since the arrival of the highly infectious Omicron variant, reinfections have become far more prominent.

The 31-year-old woman from Spain first became infected with Delta in December 2021 – 12 days after she had received her Covid booster vaccine.

Lab analysis showed that she had initially been infected by the Delta variant, followed by Omicron.

Her case, which is being presented to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Portugal, is believed to represent the shortest recorded time between two separate infections.

Dr Gemma Recio of the Institut Catala de la Salut in Spain, who is one of the study’s authors, said: “This case highlights the potential of the Omicron variant to evade the previous immunity acquired either from a natural infection with other variants or from vaccines".

“In other words, people who have had Covid-19 cannot assume they are protected against reinfection, even if they have been fully vaccinated."

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Source: The Independent, 21 April 2022

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Healthcare staff must be given time to recuperate from pandemic, say leaders

The NHS must have a realistic and steady approach to resuming services disrupted by the pandemic that explicitly recognises the need for staff to recover, NHS leaders have said.

In a letter to the prime minister leaders from the NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare providers, warned, “The NHS cannot recover its services at the same rate of increase when staff are so exhausted.”

The letter noted that there were over 5000 more patients with COVID-19 in UK hospitals right now that at the peak of the first wave and that this was taking its toll on staff. The leaders called for sustained local mental health support for the NHS workforce beyond the end of March and for a long term, fully funded plan to increase staffing numbers.

The government must also set out clear expectations for the public on when routine procedures and other treatments would be fully back on line, they added.

“With a workforce on its knees and many of the pre-pandemic challenges still very much at play they need your government both to acknowledge the consequences of the immense pressure their workers have been under so far, and to be realistic and honest with the public about what the NHS can safely deliver moving forward,” the letter said.

Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said that while health leaders would continue to prioritise urgent care and patients with the greatest clinical need, the prime minister must “be upfront with the public about what the NHS can safely deliver in this next phase.”

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Source: The BMJ, 11 February 2021

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Healthcare services in Northern Ireland 'on its knees'

Waiting times for outpatient appointments, hospital procedures, emergency care, GPs and community health services have all hit record levels in Northern Ireland, with health care staff and patients declaring it the "worst ever" crisis to hit health services in the region.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, ever-growing patient demand, staff shortages, and the failure to put together a new Executive government following the recent Northern Ireland elections are being cited as the key drivers of the crisis, with health care staff now at breaking point.

Speaking to Medscape UK, British Medical Association Northern Ireland (BMA NI) council chair Dr Tom Black said the current crisis in Northern Ireland's health services essentially boils down to "workload and workforce" issues.

Waiting lists to access hospital appointments in Northern Ireland were already long before COVID-19, but the pandemic has significantly exacerbated the situation, he noted. Northern Ireland has the worst waiting lists in the UK, with more than 350,000 people currently waiting for a consultant-led appointment – more than half of them waiting over a year, with many waiting two, three, and even more years for an appointment.

"We're now heading towards nearly 400,000 on hospital waiting lists, which is a huge number when you consider that is one-in-five of the total population," Dr Black commented.

This week a judicial review is due to get underway at the High Court in Belfast after two patients initiated a legal case against the health services over excessive waiting times for access to care. One of the women has been waiting over five years to see a neurologist after being referred by her GP for suspected multiple sclerosis. The case is seeking a judicial declaration that the length of the waiting lists are unlawful and breached their human rights.

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Source: Medscape UK, 24 May 2022

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