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Even more’ nurses considering quitting the profession, survey reveals

There has been a sharp rise in the number of nurses considering quitting the profession compared to this time last year, suggest results from a new survey.

The research also found that “existing tensions” among the workforce appeared to have been “exacerbated” by the COVID-19 crisis.

The survey findings feature in a new report published by Royal College of Nursing and cover the views of almost 42,000 of its members across the UK and Channel Islands.

Of those who responded to the survey, 36% of nurses were thinking of leaving the profession, an increase from 27% reported in a similar piece of research carried out at the end of last year.

When considering the reasons for quitting, 61% of staff indicated that the level of pay was the “main driver”, while others said they were dissatisfied with the way nursing staff had been treated during the pandemic (44%).

Meanwhile, 43% of nurses cited low staffing levels and 42% a lack of management support as key reasons for wanting to leave nursing.

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Source: Nursing Times, 17 July 2020

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Symptom tracker app reveals six distinct types of COVID-19 infection

British scientists analysing data from a widely-used COVID-19 symptom-tracking app have found there are six distinct types of the disease, each distinguished by a cluster of symptoms.

King’s College London team found that the six types also correlated with levels of severity of infection, and with the likelihood of a patient needing help with breathing - such as oxygen or ventilator treatment - if they are hospitalised.

The findings could help doctors to predict which COVID-19 patients are most at risk and likely to need hospital care in future waves of the epidemic.

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Source: Reuters, 17 July 2020

 

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Matt Hancock orders urgent review into how coronavirus daily deaths are calculated

Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent review into how Public Health England (PHE) calculates daily COVID-19 death figures.

It comes after scientists said they believed PHE was “over-exaggerating” the daily coronavirus death toll, by counting people if they die of any cause at any time after testing positive for the disease.

Professor Yoon K Loke, of the University of East Anglia, and Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care, said on Thursday night that a “statistical flaw” in the way PHE compiles data on deaths created a disparity in figures published by the different UK nations.

“It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not,” they wrote. “PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid-positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.”

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Source: The Independent, 17 July 2020

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Coronavirus: 'Deep concerns' over brain injury rehabilitation

There are "deep concerns" for brain injury survivors after many reported losing rehabilitation services during the COVID-19 lockdown.

A survey by the charity Headway found 57% of people, injured since 2018, had seen face-to-face services stopped. The first two years of recovery are crucial in regaining skills, such as talking, with fears this could affect future independence.

The government acknowledged it had been "a challenging time".

Headway conducted its survey across all brain injury rehab services, with 1,140 respondents. It found about 60% of those were frustrated by the situation, their anxiety and depression had increased and they felt more socially isolated.

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Source: BBC News, 17 July 2020

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Patient safety - will there be a big step forward?

The list is a dismal and shameful one - Mid-Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay, the rogue surgeon Ian Paterson, maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford.

All are patient safety scandals involving tragic stories of life-changing mistreatment of patients and, in some cases, the loss of loved ones.

Pledges have been made that patient safety will be put front and centre of health policy. New regulators have been put in place. But now yet another review has found the health system in England to be "disjointed, siloised and defensive" and that the culture needs a shake-up.

It has called for a new patient safety champion with legal powers to be put in place.

The plan is to have an individual with "real standing" outside and independent of the system, accountable to the parliamentary Health and Social Care Select Committee.

The Commissioner would be expected to take up and investigate patient complaints where appropriate, and hold organisations to account - the review had stated that the failure of health authorities to respond to concerns was a recurrent theme.

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Source: BBC News, 8 July 2020

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Trust with record covid deaths asks NHSE for help

The hospital trust which has been recording the largest number of covid deaths for several weeks has asked NHS England and NHS Improvement for help with infection control.

East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust is also getting help from the Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group, including a senior infection control and prevention nurse who is now working with the trust.

It has seen persistently high numbers of covid deaths at a time when most other trusts have seen them dwindle to nothing or almost nothing. In the week to 10 July, it had 18 deaths – 9.5% of the national total. 

In a statement to HSJ yesterday the trust said it had “recently asked for support from NHS England and NHS Improvement to strengthen our infection prevention and control resource”. 

It said it had also introduced “a strict ‘front door’ policy, limiting the number of people on site, taking temperature checks before people enter the building, providing face masks and hand washing facilities”; begun testing asymptomatic staff; and regularly testing asymptomatic patients.

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Source: HSJ, 16 July 2020

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RLDatix launches robust transformational framework hat further connects patient safety & risk management

RLDatix, the leading provider of intelligent patient safety solutions, have announced a new framework—Applied Safety Intelligence™—that will tighten the relationship between patient safety and risk management by moving the industry from a retrospective review of adverse events toward a future of proactive prevention. This profound shift will usher in a new era of future-forward patient safety.

Traditionally, patient safety and risk management efforts have been driven by a retrospective capture of harmful events, often resulting in long wait times to reach resolutions for patients and families, hefty litigation and punitive damages to health systems, and a profound negative impact on the care teams involved. With Applied Safety Intelligence, healthcare organisations will be able to reduce preventable harm and, in many cases, avoid it altogether.

"As the global leader in patient safety, RLDatix is unmatched in its ability to drive innovation that leads to safer care," said Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix. "With Applied Safety Intelligence, we are putting patient and caregiver safety at the center of value-based care as we continue challenging traditional conventions around inevitable harm, provider burnout and enterprise risk. Together with our customers, we are catalysing a future where the human and financial impact of unsafe care is significantly reduced. "

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Source: CISION PR Newswire, 15 July 2020

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‘Insufficient’ national response to deaths review programme, report finds

The latest annual report into the deaths of people with learning disabilities has criticised the “insufficient” national response to past recommendations and called for “urgent” policy changes.

The national learning disabilities mortality review programme has criticised the response from national health bodies to its previous recommendations.

To date, just over 7,000 deaths have been notified to the programme and reviews have been completed for just 45%.

There have been four annual reports for programme to date, and in the latest published today, the authors warned: “The response to these recommendations has been insufficient and we have not seen the sea change required to reassure [families] that early deaths are being prevented."

“It is long over-due that we should now have concerted national-level policy change in response to the issues raised in this report and previous others. A commitment to take forward the recommendations in a meaningful and determined way is urgently required.”

The latest report also warns that black, Asian and ethnic minority children with learning disabilities die “disproportionately” younger compared to other ethnicities.

It also found system problems and gaps in service provision were more likely to contribute to deaths in BAME people with learning disabilities. 

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Source: HSJ, 16 July 2020

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RCOG launches Race Equality Taskforce

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists ( (RCOG) has today launched a Race Equality Taskforce to better understand and tackle racial disparities in women’s healthcare and racism within the obstetric and gynaecology workforce.

Addressing health inequalities is a key priority area for RCOG President Dr Edward Morris, who is co-chairing the Taskforce alongside Dr Ranee Thakar, Vice President of the RCOG, and Dr Christine Ekechi, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist and RCOG Spokesperson for Racial Equality.

Statistics show, for example, that black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or in the six-month postpartum period compared with White women and the risk for Asian women is twice as high.

During the pandemic, 55% of pregnant women admitted to hospital with coronavirus were from a Black, Asian or other minority ethnic background despite the fact 13% of the UK population identify themselves as BAME.

It is also clear that there is a significant gap in understanding the factors that result in a higher risk of morbidity and mortality for Black, Asian and other ethnic minority women in the UK.

The Taskforce will collaborate with groups across healthcare and government as well as individual women to address these concerning trends and will ensure that the work of the RCOG is reflective of its anti-racist agenda.

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Source: RCOG, 15 July 2020

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Shrewsbury Hospital: Care watchdog demands NHS action over ‘escalating’ harm at scandal-hit trust

A hospital trust at the centre of Britain’s largest ever maternity scandal has widespread failings across departments and is getting worse, the care regulator has warned as it calls for NHS bosses to take urgent action.

Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals, urged NHS England to intervene over the “worsening picture” at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, which is already facing a criminal investigation.

There are as many as 1,500 cases being examined after mothers and babies died and were left with serious disabilities due to poor care going back decades in the trust’s maternity units.

Now, in a leaked letter seen by The Independent, Prof Baker has warned national health chiefs that issues are still present today across wards at the trust – with inspectors uncovering poor care in recent visits that led to “continued and unnecessary harm” for patients.

He raised the prospect that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) could recommend the trust be placed into special administration for safety reasons, which has only been done once in the history of the NHS – at the former Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, where a public inquiry found hundreds of patients suffered avoidable harm and neglect because of widespread systemic poor care.

In a rarely seen intervention, Prof Baker’s letter to NHS England’s chief operating officer, Amanda Pritchard, warned there were “ongoing and escalating concerns regarding patient safety” and that poor care was becoming “normalised” at the trust, which serves half a million people with its two hospitals – the Royal Shrewsbury and Telford’s Princess Royal.

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Source: The Independent, 16 July 2020

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Oxford vaccine results ‘promising’ as initial data set for release in days

The initial data on a trial of the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University will be released in the coming week, The Lancet medical journal has announced amid reports its findings have been promising.

The development of a vaccine to fight against the virus has been touted as pivotal in returning the world to life as it was before the pandemic by protecting vulnerable people and building up immunity among populations.

Now Oxford University’s contribution - one of the world’s leading candidates for a viable vaccine – is understood to have made promising results in initial testing.

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Source: The Independent, 16 July 2020

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Scotland's children need post-COVID-19 mental health care, says report

Every child in Scotland will need additional mental health support as a consequence of measures taken to tackle the coronavirus crisis, according to the country’s children and young people’s commissioner.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian as he publishes Scotland’s comprehensive assessment of the impact of the pandemic on children’s rights – the first such review undertaken anywhere in the world – Bruce Adamson said the pandemic had sent a “very negative” message about how decision-makers value young people’s voices.

He said Scotland has been viewed as a children’s rights champion but that efforts to involve young people in the dramatic changes being made to their education and support “went out the window as soon as lockdown came along”.

There have been escalating concerns across the UK about children’s mental health after support structures were stripped away at the start of lockdown. Earlier this week, the Guardian revealed that five children with special educational needs have killed themselves in the space of five months in Kent, amidst warnings over the impact of school closures on pupils.

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Source: The Guardian, 16 July 2020

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Data show 5000 fewer hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome during pandemic

Around 5000 fewer people were admitted to hospitals in England for acute coronary syndrome than expected from January to the end of May this year, an analysis has shown. The results, published in the Lancet, indicate that many patients have missed out on lifesaving treatments during the COVID-19 outbreak.

This decline started before the UK lockdown began on 23 March and “was qualitatively similar throughout the country, with only minor variations … in different demographic groups,” the authors wrote.

Among patients admitted to hospital with acute myocardial infarction there was a “sustained increase in the proportion ... receiving [a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for acute myocardial infarction] on the day of admission and a continued reduction in the median length of stay,” they added.

“The reduced number of admissions … is likely to have resulted in increases in out-of-hospital deaths and long-term complications of myocardial infarction and missed opportunities to offer secondary prevention treatment for patients with coronary heart disease,” they concluded.

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Source: BMJ, 15 July 2020

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National roll-out of ‘call before you walk’ A&Es set for winter

Trials of new systems to prevent overcrowding in emergency departments ahead of a potential second wave of COVID-19 in the winter are taking place at hospitals in Portsmouth and Cornwall and are due to shortly be expanded to other areas, with Dorset and Newcastle likely sites, HSJ can reveal.

London is also experimenting with introducing the system, having pulled back from an earlier proposal to roll it out it rapidly, shortly after the COVID-19 peak.

In the trials, NHS 111 has acted as a “triage point” enabling patients not facing medical emergencies but needing urgent treatment to book access to primary care, urgent treatment centres or same-day emergency “hot clinics” staffed by specialists. 

Patients are discouraged from attending without an appointment, but they are able to do so; and sources said performance targets would continue to apply to them, although these were already subject to review pre-covid.

Both the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and NHSE are now hopeful a new triage system for emergency care can be in place by the winter.

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Source: 15 July 2020

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NHS staff taking 3.5 million sick days for mental health problems

The NHS is losing more than 3.5 million days of work because of staff sickness linked to mental health problems, it has emerged.

New data from NHS England shows the problem is getting worse with an increasing number of days and proportion of staff off sick for mental health reasons.

The data runs from March 2019 to February 2020, before the coronavirus crisis. It is feared the pandemic could lead to lasting mental health issues for some NHS workers.

Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat MP who obtained the data through a parliamentary question, said: “These incredibly worrying figures show the mental health of NHS workers was already at a tipping point before the pandemic struck."

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Source: The Independent, 14 July 2020

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Coronavirus: Matt Hancock 'worried' about 'debilitating' long-term impact of COVID-19

Health Secretary Matt Hancock admits he is "worried" about the long-term impacts of coronavirus on those who have been infected.

Mr Hancock said a "significant minority" of people had suffered "quite debilitating" conditions after contracting COVID-19.

It comes after Sky News reported on how psychosis, insomnia, kidney disease, spinal infections, strokes, chronic tiredness and mobility issues are being identified in former coronavirus patients in northern Italy.

Asked about the long-term impact of the disease on patients, the health secretary told Sky News: "I am concerned there's increasing evidence a minority of people - but a significant minority - have long-term impacts and it can be quite debilitating. "So we've set up an NHS service to support those with long-term impacts of COVID-19 and, also, we've put almost £10m into research into these long-term effects."

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Source: Sky News, 15 July 2020

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The NHS’ approach to waiting list management needs urgent reform

Waiting lists for treatment in 2019 were at record levels, with the proportion of patients waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment at its lowest level in a decade.

Cancer waiting times were the worst on record, with 73% of trusts not meeting the 62-day cancer target. Waiting for diagnostic tests was at the highest level since 2008: 4.2% of patients were waiting over six weeks against a target of less than 1%.

On 17 March 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement asked trusts to postpone all non-urgent elective operations to free up as much inpatient and critical care capacity as possible. At this point, there were 4.43 million people on waiting lists for consultant-led elective treatment.

It is imperative that we open a national debate on what the NHS can deliver in a resource-constrained environment. To translate into action, this must involve patients, clinicians, system and regional leaders, the public and politicians. Such a debate is long overdue: current methods for prioritising elective care, such as referral to treatment or the 62-day cancer standard, are no longer fit for purpose.

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Source: HSJ, 14 July 2020

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Women are duped into believing the most common mesh operation is safe, campaigners say

The NHS have duped thousands of women into believing the most common incontinence mesh operation is safe, by not adding loss of sex life into its risk figures, campaigners say.

The move keeps figures low so surgeons can reassure women that it is a safe day case operation.

The discovery is buried in a report from five years ago, and when questioned on it, the MHRA, tasked with making sure implants are safe for patients, passed the buck and blamed the report authors.

The revelation comes after a debate in Westminster, where health minister Jackie Doyle Price said there was not enough evidence to suspend the plastic implants and quoted a risk of 1-3%.

However, those figures were blown out of the water just weeks before the debate in a landmark study using the NHS’s own hospital re-admission figures which show TVT mesh tape risk is at least 10%.

Campaigners say even that is not a reflection of the true scale of the mesh disaster because it does not take into account women going to doctors for pain medication or those suffering in silence.

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Source: Cambs Times, 31 October 201t

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Coronavirus: People told to phone ahead before going to A&E in Wales

People with non-life threatening illnesses will be told to call before going to Wales' biggest A&E department. Patients will be assessed remotely and given a time slot for the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff if needed.

Hospital bosses feel returning to over-crowded waiting rooms would provide an "unacceptable" risk to patients due to coronavirus.

The system is set to start at the end of July, but will not apply to people with serious illnesses or injuries.

Details are still being discussed by Cardiff and Vale health board, but patients with less serious illnesses or injuries will be told to phone ahead, most likely on the 24-hour number used to contact the local GP out-of-hours service. They will be assessed by a doctor or a nurse and, depending on the severity of the condition, will either be given a time window to go to A&E or be directed to other services.

This system was introduced in Denmark several years ago.

"This is all about being safe and ensuring that emergency medicine and emergency care is safe and not about putting barriers in place to those more vulnerable people," says the department's lead-doctor Dr Katja Empson.

"What we really think is that by using this system, we'll be able to focus our attention on those vulnerable groups when they do present."

If successful, the system could become a long-term answer to reducing pressures on emergency medicine, she added.

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Source: BBC News, 14 July 2020

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‘No one ever tried to contact me’: Former police chief’s anger over ‘do not resuscitate’ order for his sister

Across the country there have been reports of “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders being imposed on patients with no consultation, as is their legal right, or after a few minutes on the phone as part of a blanket process.

Laurence Carr, a former detective chief superintendent for Merseyside Police, is still angry over the actions of doctors at Warrington Hospital who imposed an unlawful “do not resuscitate” order on his sister, Maria, aged 64.

She has mental health problems and lacks the capacity to be consulted or make decisions and has been living in a care home for 20 years. As her main relative, Mr Carr found out about the notice on her records only when she was discharged to a different hospital a week later.

Maria had been admitted for a urinary tract infection at the end of March. Although she has diabetes and an infection on her leg her condition was not life threatening.

Mr Carr said: “My sister has no capacity to effectively be consulted due to her mental illness and would not understand if they did try to explain, so I was furious that I had not been consulted."

He later learnt that the reason given by the hospital for imposing the DNR was "multiple comorbitidies".

In a statement, Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust said it was fully aware of the law, which was reflected in its policies and regular training.

It said: “We did not follow our own policy in this case and have the requisite discussions with the family. The template form which was completed in this case indicates that discussion with the family was ‘awaiting’. Regretfully due to human error this did not occur."

Mr Carr and his sister are not alone. National charity Turning Point said it had learnt of 19 inappropriate DNARs from families, while Learning Disability England said almost one-fifth of its members had reported DNARs placed in people’s medical records without consultation during March and April.

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Source: The Independent, 14 July 2020

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Coroner orders closer working between five trusts after prisoner’s death

Five NHS trusts in the South West have been ordered to make immediate improvements after the death of a 20-year-old prisoner who needed healthcare.

Lewis Francis was arrested in Wells, Somerset, in 2017 after stabbing his mother while “acutely psychotic” and taken into custody. Although his condition mandated a transfer to a medium secure mental health hospital, there was “no mechanism” in place to move Mr Francis and he was taken to prison, where he died by suicide two days later, according to a coroner.

Contributory factors to his death included “insufficient collaboration, communication and ownership between and within organisations… together with insufficient knowledge of… the Mental Health Act,” according to Nicholas Rheinberg, the assistant coroner for Exeter and Greater Devon.

In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, Mr Rheinberg said a memorandum of understanding was in place for the transfer of “mentally ill prisoners direct from police custody” in the West Midlands, and he called on the South West Provider Collaborative to agree a similar deal with “relevant organisations and agencies”.

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Source: HSJ, 14 July 2020

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Trust failed to complete 21 instructions from safety review

Only two out of 23 recommendations from a royal college review into a trust’s troubled maternity services can be shown to be fully implemented, a new investigation has revealed.

A learning and review committee, set up by East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, found that 11 more of the recommendations from a 2016 review by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) were “partially” implemented.

But it said there was either no evidence the remaining 10 had been delivered, or there was evidence they were not implemented.

The original RCOG review looked at a number of cases where babies had died as well as broader issues within the maternity service at the trust.

The committee was set up after an inquest into the death of Harry Richford, who died a week after his birth in 2017 at the trust’s Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Hospital in Thanet. Many of the issues which came to light at his inquest echoed those from the RCOG report.

Committee chair Des Holden, medical director of Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network, highlighted the difficulties in tracking evidence and action plans during a time when the trust had significant changes in leadership. But he said the committee felt cases where evidence could not be found or the standard of evidence gave concern, the recommendations could not be said to be met.

Derek Richford, Harry’s grandfather, said on behalf of the family: “We are saddened and shocked to find that over four years after the RCOG found fundamental systemic failings and made 23 recommendations, only two have been completed. It is not good enough for them to now say ‘leadership has changed’. The main board must take responsibility and be held to account.”

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Source: HSJ, 13 July 2020

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NHS data reveals 'huge variation' in COVID-19 death rates across England

A wide disparity in coronavirus mortality rates has emerged in English hospitals, with data seen by the Guardian showing that one hospital trust in south-west England had a death rate from the disease of 80% while in one London trust it was just 12.5%.

The figures, which NHS England has compiled but never published, show the age-standardised mortality rates that all of the country’s 135 acute hospital trusts have recorded during the pandemic. Doctors regard age as the single biggest predictor or risk factor for dying from COVID-19.

They cover the period from the start of the coronavirus crisis in March, through its peak in late March and April, up until 15 May, by which time 42,850 (85%) of the 50,219 deaths so far in all settings had occurred in England and Wales.

It is the first such data to emerge about how many people have lived or died in each trust after being treated there because they had been left critically ill by the disease. They are based on patients who were treated in an intensive care or high-dependency unit or on a ward.

Senior doctors said the dramatic gap in death rates of 67.5 percentage points between the trusts with the highest and lowest rates was notable and may mean that some hospitals needed to learn lessons from others.

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Source: Guardian, 14 June 2020

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COVID-19: Many trusts have not done risk assessments for ethnic minority staff

Some NHS trusts in England are yet to complete /cOVID-19 risk assessments for their staff from ethnic minority groups more than two months after the NHS first told them to do so, an investigation by The BMJ has found.

On 29 April NHS England’s chief executive, Simon Stevens, wrote to all NHS leaders telling them to carry out risk assessments and make “appropriate arrangements” to protect ethnic minority staff, amid growing evidence that they were at greater risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.

However, The BMJ asked England’s 140 acute care trusts for details of risk assessments they had carried out and what subsequent actions they had put in place. Seventy trusts responded. Of these, 27 (39%) said that assessments were yet to be completed for all ethnic minority staff, and 43 (61%) indicated that assessments had been completed. But the other 70 trusts were unable to provide a response within the 20 day deadline, citing “unprecedented challenges” posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is not known what stage they are at in risk assessing staff.

Commenting on The BMJ’s findings, Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA’s chair of council, said, “Clearly, we know that a significant number of doctors have not been risk assessed. It is a shame that it has taken so long, because the risk assessments and mitigations would have been most useful and impactful during the peak of the virus.”

Doctors’ leaders have suggested that systemic race inequalities in the workplace may have exacerbated delays in risk assessing staff. Nagpaul said, “The BMA survey found that doctors from a BAME [black, Asian, and minority ethnic] background felt under more pressure to see patients without adequate protection. So it does beg the question of whether there’s also been this added factor of BAME healthcare staff feeling unable to demand their right to being assessed and protected."

“This is something the NHS needs to tackle. This is an issue that predates covid. It’s vital that we have an NHS where anyone is able to voice their concerns. No one should have to suffer or have fear in silence.”

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Source: The BMJ, 10 July 2020

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Man plans to sue NHS after cancer surgery delayed due to coronavirus

A former senior NHS official plans to sue the organisation after he had to pay a private hospital £20,000 for potentially life-saving cancer surgery because NHS care was suspended due to COVID-19.

Rob McMahon, 68, decided to seek private treatment after Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS trust told him that he would have to wait much longer than usual for a biopsy. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer after an MRI scan on 19 March, four days before the lockdown began.

McMahon was due to see a consultant urologist on 27 March but that was changed to a telephone consultation and then did not take place for almost two weeks.

“At that appointment, the consultant said: ‘Don’t worry, these things are slow-growing. You’ll have a biopsy but not for two or three months.’ I thought, ‘that’s a long time’, so decided to see another consultant privately for a second opinion.”

A PET-CT scan confirmed that he had a large tumour on both lobes of the prostate and a biopsy showed the cancer was at risk of breaking out of the prostate capsule and spreading into his body. He then paid to undergo a radical prostatectomy at a private Spire hospital.

“This is care that I should have had on the NHS, not something that I should have had to pay for myself. I had an aggressive cancer. I needed urgent treatment – there was no time to waste,”, he said. “With the pandemic, he added, “it was almost like a veil came down over the NHS. He worked for the NHS for 17 years as a manager in hospitals in London, Birmingham and Redditch, Worcestershire, and was the chief executive of an NHS primary care trust in Leicester.”

Mary Smith of Novum Law, McMahon’s solicitors, said: “Unfortunately, Rob’s story is one of many we are hearing about from cancer patients who have been seriously affected by the disruption to oncology services as a result of COVID-19."

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Source: The Guardian, 11 July 2020

 

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