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Canada's nurses want national hiring and retention strategy amid staffing 'crisis' widespread burnout

Logan Giesbrecht left his dream job as an emergency room nurse when the mental health strain of an understaffed department became unbearable, even before the pandemic's fourth wave hit and anti-vaccination protesters began gathering outside hospitals.

“The biggest frustration, and what I'm taking home from work, was basically doing the job of more than one nurse,” said Giesbrecht, who feared low staffing levels would risk patient safety.

He quit working at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, Canada, last April.

Representatives for nurses around the country are calling on the federal government to come up with a national plan to attract and retain nurses during a “crisis” they say needed action long before the uptick in cases from the Delta variant.

Statistics Canada released data this week from the second quarter of 2021 showing a steep rise in job vacancies for both registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses, which are part of a single category in its analysis.

Those professions had the largest increase in vacancies of all occupations over a two-year period, up by 10,400 to 22,400 - a hike of nearly 86 per cent, the agency said, adding nearly half of the vacancies had been open for 90 days or more, compared with 24 days across all occupations.

Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, said it's not uncommon for some registered nursing positions to be vacant for a couple of weeks, as workers switch jobs within a hospital or health region, but having vacancies unfilled for 90 days or longer is unsustainable.

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Source: CP24 News, 24 September 2021

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Canada's healthcare system has a data problem putting patients at risk, experts say

Greg Price died of complications after testicular cancer surgery, but a review of his case found missed faxes, follow-ups and botched data-sharing ultimately cost the vibrant 31-year-old Alberta man his life.

All the missteps in his case meant it took 407 days from his first complaint for Price — an engineer, pilot, and athlete — to be diagnosed with cancer. He died three months after his doctor said he should see a specialist, and while he was being passed between multiple doctors, his health data often was not.

Now, his sister, Teri Price, says too little has changed in medical information-sharing in the decade since her brother's death. This, despite a review of his case — the 2013 Alberta Continuity of Patient Care Study — that recommended life-saving changes to the healthcare system to avoid more experiences like his.

So, she's fighting to improve the system that she says not only failed her brother, but keeps failing to change.

Price says that Canadians assume that their health information is shared between doctors to keep them safe and studied to improve the system, but often, it's not. And medical front-line staff in Canada say problems persist when it comes to sharing everything from patient information to aggregate medical and staffing data. 

"Information tends to be broken up between the services that patients attend," said Ewan Affleck, a doctor in the Northwest Territories who has spent his career fighting for better data access, and a member of the expert advisory arm of the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Group.

"The cohesion and use of health data in Canada is legislated to fail." 

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Source: CBC News, 17 November 2022

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Canada: Alberta doctor sounds alarm after 7 patients contract infection from organ transplants

A disease that is more commonly associated with the trenches of the First World War, and can sometimes be found in refugee camps, has been detected in several patients in Alberta who received organ transplants.

Bartonella quintana, an infection caused by body lice, has been found in seven organ transplant recipients in Alberta since 2022, according to Dr. Dima Kabbani, a transplant infectious disease physician who treated the patients.

"It was quite alarming to us, especially that we know that this bacteria can cause a more serious type of infection because sometimes it can affect your heart valve or it can affect some of the major organs," Kabbani said.

"We were surprised to see that type of infection in Alberta."

The disease, which presents as skin lesions, was transferred to organ recipients from their deceased donors, all of whom were people who had been living with homelessness and who had been infected themselves.

"It signals that the bacteria is actually around individuals who are unhoused. So it tells you about a bigger public health problem," Kabbani said.

"If these individuals had access to just water to wash their clothes, or to shower, then we should not have been seeing this type of infection in people who are unhoused in Alberta."

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Source: CBC, 26 October 2024

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Canada: 6 Saskatchewan ICU patients with COVID-19 being transferred to Ontario

Saskatchewan will be transferring six COVID-19 patients to Ontario over the next 72 hours as the Prairie province struggles to deal with a record number of intensive care patients. 

One patient will be transferred Monday, with the other five expected by end of day Wednesday, according to the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).

Premier Scott Moe said planning for transferring patients has been going on for "a number of days" and that patients will be transferred to ensure they receive "the very best possible care that they can."

Additional out-of-province support that may be required beyond Wednesday is being finalized, according to the SHA.

"We recognize the stress this will cause the families affected," SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said in a news release Monday morning.

"We continue to work every day to maximize capacity to provide care as close to home as possible, but this decision is necessary to maintain the quality of critical care services our patients need."

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Source: CBC News, 18 October 2021

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Canada no longer measles-free as outbreaks spread

Canada is no longer measles-free because of ongoing outbreaks, international health experts said on Monday, as childhood vaccination rates fall and the highly contagious virus spreads across North and South America.

The loss of the country’s measles elimination status comes more than a year after the highly contagious virus started spreading.

Canada has logged 5,138 measles cases this year and two deaths. Both were babies who were exposed to the measles virus in the womb and born prematurely.

Measles elimination is a symbolic designation, but it represents a hard-won battle against the infectious disease. It is earned when a country shows it stopped continuous spread of the virus within local communities, though occasional cases might still pop up from travel.

It is prevented by a vaccine administered routinely and safely to children around the world.

“It’s a deeply disheartening development. It’s a deeply worrisome development. And, frankly, it’s an embarrassing development,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University infectious disease expert. “No country with the amount of resources of Canada – or other countries in North America even – should lose their measles elimination status.”

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Source: The Guardian, 11 November 2025

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Can we change the culture around breaks in the NHS?

The culture of working without breaks is dangerous to doctors’ and patients’ wellbeing and only a cultural shift can change things, argues Heidi Edmundson. 

Heidi, Consultant for Emergency Medicine at Whittington Health NHS Trust, discusses in BMJ Opinion how it has become impossible to ignore the huge cost of burnout to both individual doctors and the medical workforce. Breaks are no longer being viewed as a luxury, but as an integral part of physician wellbeing, patient safety, and workforce sustainability. However exceptional reporting and the costs associated with recruitment and retention issues mean that they are becoming a financial issue as well. Heidi ran her own departmental “public health” campaign entitled “take a break” to see if she could change this culture. 

"I started this project with a desire to try and change culture and I have come to realize that changing the culture around taking breaks is really just the tip of the iceberg. What we really need is a huge cultural shift in our attitudes and behaviours towards staff wellness. This will require imagination, innovation, and investment at all levels."

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Source: BMJ Opinion, 28 June 2019

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Can the UK relax now that the peak has passed?

According to reports, Covid-19 cases may be falling, raising hopes that the peak of the third wave has passed.

However, experts are not so sure that Covid is truly in decline as figures have shown cases have gone up dramatically and declined just as quickly. 

Prof Christl Donnelly, from University of Oxford and Imperial College London has said "It's certainly is good to see case numbers going down, but we need a reality check. We've had a dramatic increase - and then on the face of it, a dramatic decrease. We have to be careful not to over-interpret that."

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Source: BBC News, 27 July 2021

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Can interim care help ease Scotland's hospital bed shortage?

Many people who are medically ready to leave hospital are not able to go home because of pressures in social care.

Health and social care teams across Scotland are working to create more room in hospitals as we go into winter when it traditionally gets busier.

In Lothian, they are using care homes as an interim measure to help rehabilitate people before they can go back home.

Nineteen rooms at the Elsie Inglis Nursing Home in Edinburgh are being used in an effort to help people get out of hospital.

Archie McQuater, who spent seven months in The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh after one of his big toes was removed because of an infection, has finally got out of hospital and is now staying at the Elsie Inglis.

The 94-year-old has been in the care home for two months and is trying to improve his mobility so that he can return home.

Archie is among 200 people in Edinburgh who have been moved from a hospital to a care home between November 2021 and September 2022.

NHS Lothian estimates it has saved about 13,000 bed days in hospitals during that time.

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Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022

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Can digital technology help embed a strong patient safety culture?

Within a few months of joining Great Ormond Street Hospital Foundation Trust as medical director, Mat Shaw became its chief executive. Heading up the organisation clearly brought with it new responsibilities and challenges, yet he says on one important issue there was little difference between the two roles – namely, the focus on patient safety and enabling clinicians to offer the best possible care for patients.

“I lived through the time when all notes were on paper, when you had five, six volumes of thousands of pages. I lived through that time when it was very difficult to actually know what information to collect, and from where you should collect it, to make decisions around patients. And I recognise we don’t always do the right thing based on those systems.

“So for me it’s been tremendously important to try and bring a system in, and the digital tools which are needed, to make care kinder and also safer, with better outcomes for patients. In our new strategy, digital is front and centre in a way that it’s never been before, because I consider this agenda so important to how we treat patients.”

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Source: HSJ (paywalled), 3 February 2021

 

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Can AI techniques help clinicians assess and treat patients with bone fractures?

Investigators have applied artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to gait analyses and medical records data to provide insights about individuals with leg fractures and aspects of their recovery.

The study, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, uncovered a significant association between the rates of hospital readmission after fracture surgery and the presence of underlying medical conditions. Correlations were also found between underlying medical conditions and orthopedic complications, although these links were not significant.

It was also apparent that gait analyses in the early postinjury phase offer valuable insights into the injury’s impact on locomotion and recovery. For clinical professionals, these patterns were key to optimizing rehabilitation strategies.

"Our findings demonstrate the profound impact that integrating machine learning and gait analysis into orthopaedic practice can have, not only in improving the accuracy of post-injury complication predictions but also in tailoring rehabilitation strategies to individual patient needs," said corresponding author Mostafa Rezapour, PhD, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "This approach represents a pivotal shift towards more personalised, predictive, and ultimately more effective orthopaedic care."

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Source: Digital Health News, 12 April 2024

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Campaigners say ‘decolonise the curriculum’ to help solve UK maternity inequalities

The increased risk of black and minority ethnic women dying during pregnancy needs to be seen as a whole system problem and not limited to just maternity departments, according to experts on an exclusive panel hosted by The Independent.

Professor Marian Knight, from Oxford University told the virtual event on Wednesday night that the health service needed to change its approach to caring for ethnic minority women in a wider context.

Campaigners Tinuke Awe and Clotilde Rebecca Abe, from the Fivexmore campaign, called for changes to the way midwives were trained and demanded it was time to “decolonise the curriculum” so it recognised the physiological differences between some ethnic minority women and white women.

Dr Mary Ross-Davie, from the Royal College of Midwives, said work was underway to ensure the voices of black women and other minorities were represented in its work and it was examining how it could deliver better training to midwives.

The data on maternity deaths in the UK show black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy in the UK than white women. For Asian women, they are twice as likely to die.

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Source: The Independent, 18 November 2021

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Campaigners demand action in a rally outside Parliament to mark World Patient Safety Day

Campaigners affected by the medical scandals of pelvic mesh implants, Primodos, and sodium valproate gathered outside Parliament to mark Patient Safety month with a powerful protest demanding justice and reform.

Joined by cross-party MPs from the First Do No Harm All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), the demonstrators called on the Government to fully implement all recommendations of the landmark Cumberlege Review.

The protest (Wednesday 10 September) was led by representatives impacted by the three medical interventions investigated in the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege.

The review, published in 2020, exposed systemic failures in patient safety and called for sweeping reform – including of the regulator the MHRA, an independent redress agency, specialist centres for treatment, financial redress and Sunshine legislation to improve transparency of payments from industry to the health sector.

Sharon Hodgson MP, Chair of the First Do No Harm APPG, who has been a vocal advocate for justice for women – including her mam who has been harmed by pelvic mesh, said after the event: “We are now five years on from the Cumberlege Review and over 18 months since the Hughes Report on redress – yet thousands of women and children are still waiting to be heard, acknowledged, and properly cared for. This is not just a delay; it is a systemic failure. Their pain, their stories, and their voices must not be ignored. Women and children deserve to be seen, believed, and supported. Campaigners are right to stand firm because until the Cumberlege recommendations are implemented and justice is truly delivered, the fight must go on.”

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Source: Sling the Mesh, 10 September 2025

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Campaigners call for action over UK’s ‘shameful’ lung health

The UK has the highest death rate for lung conditions in western Europe, research reveals, prompting calls from health leaders for urgent action to tackle the “national scandal”.

More than 100,000 people in the UK die from conditions including asthma attacks, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia every year, according to data analysis by the charity Asthma and Lung UK.

Across Europe, only Turkey has a higher respiratory death rate than the UK, analysis of data up to 2018 shows.

It described the UK figures as “shameful”, and said that lung conditions had for too long been treated like the “poor relation compared with other major illnesses like cancer and heart disease”.

Even before the pandemic, significant numbers of lung patients were not receiving “basic care” from their GP services such as medicine checks and help using their inhalers, the charity said. Over the past two years, the health of thousands more has deteriorated while they waited for respiratory care, and diagnosis rates have fallen.

Katy Brown, 64, a retired nursery nurse from Bristol, who was diagnosed with COPD in February 2021, said she was shocked by the lack of medical support she has received, and the poor general awareness of her condition.

“I spent two years struggling to breathe and with constant chest infections, before I finally got a diagnosis of COPD,” she said. “Even now, over a year after my diagnosis, I’m still waiting for a test that will show how bad my condition is, and further treatment.

“There is a lack of awareness about how serious lung conditions are and how terrifying it is to struggle to breathe. It’s like having an elephant sitting on your chest. If I’d been diagnosed with another serious condition like a heart problem, I believe my treatment and the way I was dealt with would have been completely different.”

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Source: The Guardian, 28 February 2022

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Campaigners against care failings at three trusts will help scope national investigation

Three large teaching trusts are highly likely to be included in a government-commissioned “investigation” of NHS maternity and neonatal care after those campaigning for improvements at the organisations were included in the group establishing its terms of reference.    

The government announced on Thursday that Baroness Valerie Amos will lead the previously announced “independent” probe into 10 services across the country.

The announcement said: “The 10 maternity and neonatal units will be decided by Baroness Amos and her team, alongside the terms of reference of the investigation.”

It added that these were “being developed with the families who have experiences of maternity and neonatal care, including those in Leeds, Sussex, Nottingham and more”.

Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, and University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust have all been involved in recent maternity and neonatal scandals.

The Department of Health and Social Care said Baroness Amos was selected after bereaved families said they wanted someone with distance from the NHS to lead the probe. The investigation will make recommendations to improve care and safety by looking into systemic problems dating back over 15 years.

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Source: HSJ, 15 August 2025

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Campaigner: Mental health 'deaths crisis' getting worse

A campaigner in Norfolk says the "deaths crisis" at the county's mental health trust is getting worse.

Bereaved relatives met the mental health minister, Maria Caulfield, to discuss failings at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT).

The trust says it is on a "rapid, and much-needed journey of improvement".

Mark Harrison, from the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, said: "We judge people by what they do, not what they say."

Members of the campaign group met Ms Caulfield and other MPs in Westminster on 12 March and demanded an independent public inquiry into the trust.

It came after a report last summer which found that more than 8,000 mental health patients had died unexpectedly in Norfolk and Suffolk between 2019 and 2022.

At the meeting, it was agreed Ms Caulfield would meet bosses at the NSFT. The health select committee will also be asked to conduct an inquiry into the trust as part of a broader public inquiry.

But Mr Harrison said he had little confidence anything would change.

"The deaths crisis is just out of control and it's accelerating," he said.

"We have been doing this for 10 years. Every time somebody promises to do something, it doesn't come to anything."

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Source: BBC News, 20 March 2024

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Campaign urges NHS to improve diagnosis of potentially life-threatening childbirth condition

After five hospitals failed to spot that she had a rare but potentially fatal complication of childbirth, Amisha Adhia is to launch a campaign urging the NHS to do more to diagnose the condition and save lives.

Pregnant women are at much greater risk of developing placenta accreta spectrum if they have already given birth by caesarean section or had IVF treatment.

If it is not identified before the woman goes into labour, she is at risk of having to undergo an emergency hysterectomy or bleeding to death from a severe haemorrhage.

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Source: The Guardian, 18 February 2026

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Campaign success as new NHS England programme launches to get medication delivered on time in hospital

Following years of relentless campaigning by Parkinson's UK, charities and their community, NHS England has committed to ensuring that time critical medication is delivered on time in hospitals as part of an exciting three-year Medicines Safety Improvement Programme.

People living with Parkinson’s need their medication on time. A delay of as little as 30 minutes can mean the difference between functioning well and being unable to move, walk, talk or swallow.

And it’s not just Parkinson’s. People living with conditions such as epilepsy and diabetes also need their medication on time. Otherwise, there could be severe implications for their health and wellbeing.

Last year, as part of the Get It On Time campaign, Parkinson's UK published Every Minute Counts report, which found that only 42% of people with Parkinson’s admitted to hospitals in England received their medication on time every time. 

At the same time as releasing the ‘Every Minute Counts’ report, Parkinson's UK released a joint statement with other charities whose communities rely on time critical medication and health professional bodies calling on the government to take action on this issue.

Following meetings with the National Medical Director of NHS England, an emergency summit on time critical medication, and tireless campaigning by the Parkinson’s community, Parkinson's UK are pleased to announce that NHS England has committed to a national improvement programme to tackle this problem.

The programme will run from 2024-2027 and is part of the National Patient Safety Strategy. It will address the most important causes of severe harm to patients. A key ambition of the programme will be to improve care for people by ensuring they receive the critical medication they need on time.

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Source: Parkinson's UK, 27 November 2024

Further reading on the hub from Parkinson's UK:

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Calls to overhaul NHS spending to fund weight-loss jabs for millions

Ministers should overhaul the NHS spending watchdog to enable millions more people to be put on weight-loss jabs, Tony Blair’s think tank has said.

Experts are calling for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which decides which drugs the NHS should buy, to start factoring in the wider economic benefits of medication rather than just their health effect.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has calculated that giving weight-loss jabs such as Mounjaro and Wegovy to 15 million eligible overweight adults would save the economy £52 billion in the long term. By cutting rates of illnesses such as heart disease, people would stay in work for longer, saving billions of pounds in benefit payments and increasing tax revenues.

There are 15 million obese adults in the UK who could benefit from weight-loss jabs but the NHS is embarking on a rollout of Mounjaro, offering it to just 220,000 people over three years. The NHS has said it cannot afford a mass introduction.

Dr Charlotte Refsum, the director of health policy at TBI, said Nice should consider “the wider economic benefit of medications because a healthy working-age population drives economic growth”. She added: “Prevention should be part of the Treasury’s growth agenda and Nice’s remit should be expanded to consider the macroeconomic benefits of medicines, including anti-obesity drugs.”

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Source: The Times, 19 September 2025

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Calls to make the term 'nurse' a legally protected title amid fears over patient safety

The government is being urged to make the term 'nurse' a protected legal title as it has now been found people are calling themselves a nurse despite not being registered or qualified. 

Recently it has emerged that even in the NHS, unregistered staff have been using the term 'nurse', meaning patients cannot be sure the person treating them is qualified raising concerns for patient safety. 

Currently, only the term 'registered nurse' is a protected legal title. 

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Source: The Independent, 21 June 2021 

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Calls to make at home early abortions permanent as major study finds they pose no greater risk

At home early abortions pose no greater risk and allow women to have the procedure much earlier on in their pregnancy, research has found.

The findings have sparked calls from leading healthcare providers for the option, which was rolled out in the wake of lockdown measures last spring, to be made permanent.

Researchers, who conducted the UK’s largest study into abortions, discovered there were no cases of significant infection which necessitated the woman to go to hospital or have major surgery.

The study, conducted by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and MSI Reproductive Choices, drew attention to the fact that despite misinformation to the contrary, not one individual died from having an at home early abortion.

Eight in ten women said at home abortions were their preferred choice and they would opt for it in the future, while waiting times from when the woman has her consultation to treatment improved from 11 days to 7 days.

Dr Jonathan Lord, medical director for MSI Reproductive Choices UK, said: “Being able to access abortion care earlier in pregnancy has also reduced the low complication rate even further.”

Dr Lord added: “Telemedicine has provided a lifeline for vulnerable women and girls who cannot attend consultations in-person. We have seen a major increase in safeguarding disclosures, including from survivors of domestic and sexual violence, as they can talk more freely about distressing and intimate details from the privacy of their own home at the beginning of the Covid emergency."

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Source: The Independent, 19 February 2021

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Calls grow for government to order Covid drug to boost protection for vulnerable

The UK must urgently procure stocks of a drug that can boost vulnerable people’s protection against Covid, experts have urged in a letter to The Times.

Evusheld, made by AstraZeneca, was licensed by the UK regulator the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in March.

Some people with immune system problems, such as blood cancer patients or organ transplant patients do not get sufficient protection from vaccinations and many are continuing to shield.

Campaigners believe that offering Evusheld to those people could allow them to resume normal life.

Evusheld is being used in countries including the United States and Israel but the UK government has yet to ask AstraZeneca for supplies.

In a letter published in The Times, Gemma Peters, chief executive of Blood Cancer UK, and Lord Mendelsohn, co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vulnerable Groups to Pandemics, say that this represents a failure of a promise made at the start of the pandemic that the government would “do everything in its power to protect the vulnerable”.

They write: “People who are immunocompromised are still dying from Covid at much higher rates than the rest of the population. They cannot afford to wait. They deserve better.”

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Source: The Times, 6 July 2022

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Calls for urgent regulation of weight loss surgery tourism after 28 Britons die from medical complications in Turkey

Medical tourism for weight loss is rising in popularity, with around 5,000 Britons a year travelling overseas for cut-price surgery.

But experts have warned the industry is putting patients' lives at risk and is in urgent need of regulation.

Botched surgery can lead to infections “leakage, sepsis, and even death,” a report by the BMJ highlights.

At least 28 British people had died between 2019 and March 2024, due to complications from elective medical procedures performed in Turkey figures provided by the Foreign Office revealed.

Dr Jessica McGirr of the Obesity Research and Care Group RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland and Imperial College London highlight that although cheaper often these packages do not cover care after the operation or long-term nutritional or psychological support that you would be offered in the UK.

An inquest into 40-year-old Hayley Butler, a dog groomer from Norwich who died of organ failure after a sleeve gastrectomy at the Ozel Gozde Hospital in Izmir, revealed the surgery “had not been done properly”.

A doctor Tanveer Adil, who works at Luton & Dunstable Hospital, explained she died as a result of the procedure and the "lack of safety netting" afterwards.

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Source: The Independent, 16 July 2025

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Calls for urgent action to prevent learning disability deaths

An urgent call for action has been issued in order to help prevent learning disability deaths. 

Life expectancy among people with learning disabilities is at least 25 years less than the rest of the population. A report comparing data found that while life expectancy had increased, inequality was still an issue. 

Data findings have showed there was a higher incidence of death among those with learning disabilities during the pandemic, with April 2020 showing 59% of all deaths were due to the virus. 

Moreover, the pandemic has seen further access to healthcare inequalities, in one such instance the father of a man with Down's Syndrome was told by a doctor that should his son require the use of a ventilator, access would be denied. 

Read full story.

Source: BBC News, 12th June 2021

 

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Calls for support for UK midwives struggling with substance abuse

The Royal College of Midwives is calling for members to be given the same support as doctors when they struggle with drug and alcohol problems.

Research shared with the Guardian – the first of its kind into substance abuse among midwives – has revealed that significant numbers of midwives have problems with drugs or alcohol. It found that 28% said they had problems and 16% said they worked while under the influence of various substances.

Dr Sally Pezaro, the author of the research, found that along with alcohol, midwives used cannabis, cocaine, heroin and sedatives. She said reasons given include work-related stress and anxiety, bullying, traumatic clinical incidents and to maintain overall functioning.

Pezaro, a midwife and fellow of the Royal College of Midwives, said there was no dedicated support programme available for midwives, while doctors struggling with substance abuse can get support from the NHS practitioner health programme. The incidence of substance abuse among midwives, based on the survey of 623 people, appears higher than among doctors – 8%-15% of whom have been found to have substance abuse problems.

Pezaro is calling for more support for midwives. “If midwives seek help they lose their licence to practise. Doctors are treated less harshly by their regulator, the General Medical Council, than we are by ours – the Nursing and Midwifery Council,” she said. Between 2014 and 2016 26% of 1,298 fitness to practise cases that came before the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) involved drugs or alcohol.

A Royal College of Midwives spokesperson said: “It is a brave decision to step forward and say you have a problem and are grappling with substance misuse, which blights the lives of people and their families. For anyone who does this, including healthcare professionals, there should be a compassionate approach.

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Source: The Guardian, 22 November 2021

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Calls for public inquiry into 20,000 sexual abuse allegations on NHS wards

The government is facing calls for a public inquiry into the scandal of sexual abuse in mental health hospitals, following an investigation by The Independent.

Rape Crisis England and Wales has warned that the “alarming” scale of abuse within the UK’s psychiatric system requires “major intervention” from ministers.

It comes after an expose by the Independent and Sky News revealed that almost 20,000 reports of sexual incidents – involving both patients and staff – had been made in more than half of NHS mental health trusts in the past five years.

As well as a public inquiry, which would give survivors the chance to give evidence, Rape Crisis England and Wales wants the government to appoint a named minister with responsibility for addressing the problem.

Chief executive Ciara Bergman said: “That anyone in the already vulnerable position of needing or being detained for in-patient care because of their mental health needs should experience sexual violence and abuse whilst in the care of the state, is deeply concerning.

“We are concerned that without major intervention and leadership at the highest levels, this could lead to more incidents of sexual violence and abuse happening, and this behaviour being accepted as inevitable, when it is not, and is indeed absolutely preventable.”

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Source: The Independent, 15 March 2024

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