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‘They thought I had cancer’: painkiller banned in UK linked to Britons’ deaths in Spain

A patients group representing several British victims has launched legal action against the Spanish government over claims it failed to safeguard people against the potentially fatal side effects of one of the country’s most popular painkillers, involved in a series of serious illnesses and deaths.

The drug metamizole, commonly sold in Spain under the brand name Nolotil, is banned in several countries, including Britain, the US, India and Australia. It can cause a condition known as agranulocytosis, which reduces white blood cells, increasing the risk of potentially fatal infection.

The Association of Drug Affected Patients (ADAF) says adverse reactions to the drugs have led to sepsis, organ failure and amputations. It has identified about 350 suspected cases of agranulocytosis between 1996 and 2023, including those of 170 Britons who live in Spain or were on holiday there.

The ADAF is examining more than 40 fatalities in which it considers the drug may have led, or contributed, to death. The patients group says that case reports, including a 2009 study, suggest the British population may be more susceptible to the drug’s side effects, but this has not been confirmed by independent scientific study.

The group is demanding an investigation into the drug and new controls. It filed its action on 14 November in the national court in Madrid. Cristina García del Campo, founder of the organisation, said: “This drug has destroyed people’s lives and it should now be withdrawn. One lady took three tablets and she had part of her feet amputated and several fingers. Even if it doesn’t kill you, once you’ve had sepsis your body is never the same.”

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Source: The Guardian, 26 November 2023

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‘They gave her a bed to die in’: family of woman with Down’s Syndrome denied intensive care seek answers from Covid-19 inquiry

When Susan Sullivan died from Covid-19, her parents’ world fell quiet.

But as John and Ida Sullivan battled the pain of losing their eldest, they were comforted by doctors’ assurance that they had done all they could.

It was not until more than a year later, when they received her medical records, that the family made a crushing discovery. These suggested that, despite Susan being in good health and responding well to initial treatments, doctors at Barnet hospital had concluded she wouldn’t pull through.

When Susan was first admitted on 27 March 2020, a doctor had written in her treatment plan: “ITU (Intensive therapy unit) review if not improving”, indicating he believed she might benefit from a higher level of care.

But as her oxygen levels fell and her condition deteriorated, the 56-year-old was not admitted to the intensive unit. Instead she died in her bed on the ward without access to potentially life-saving treatment others received.

In the hospital records, seen by the Observer, the reason Susan was excluded is spelled out: “ITU declined in view of Down’s syndrome and cardiac comorbidities.” A treatment plan stating she was not to be resuscitated also cites her disability.

For John, 79, a retired builder, that realisation was “like Susan dying all over again”. “The reality is that doctors gave her a bed to die in because she had Down’s syndrome,” he said. “To me it couldn’t be clearer: they didn’t even try.”

Susan is one of thousands of disabled people in Britain killed by Covid-19. Last year, a report by the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Programme found that almost half those who died from Covid-19 did not receive good enough treatment, including problems accessing care. Of those who died from Covid-19, 81% had a do-not-resuscitate decision, compared with 72% of those who died from other causes.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 July 2022

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‘They didn’t believe I was in labour’ says Black mother ‘ignored’ by midwives

The Women and Equalities Committee in a recent report has challenged the government over failures to address inequalities in maternity care which have led to Black women dying at four times the rate of white women.

Tinuke Awe, 31, was left ‘traumatised’ and forced to go without pain relief after midwives didn’t believe she was in labour.

Ms Awe, was induced after experiencing late pre-eclampsia while pregnant with her first child in 2017. She said:  “Pre-eclampsia can be life-threatening for mum and baby, and it could’ve been fatal if I wasn’t treated. I was told I couldn’t leave the hospital and had to be induced".

“They said the hormones could take 24 hours to work, but my labour happened really quickly and when I told the midwife she didn’t even believe I was in labour.”

“I felt so overlooked and it was horrible how nobody listened to me,” she added. “I ended up having to have an assisted delivery which isn’t what I wanted, but it could’ve been avoided if someone had acknowledged I was in labour rather than ignore me. I just felt so unimportant.”

Ms Aew alongside Clotilde Abe set up the charity Five X More. The organisation helps give advice and empower Black women to make informed choices during pregnancy and after childbirth.

Five X More hope that the testimonials of the women they support can be used to show that better outcomes are possible with their ‘five steps for self-advocacy‘ being used to encourage women to ask for things like a second opinion.

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Source: The Independent, 18 April 2023

Read our interview with Tinuke Awe on the hub: Five X More campaign: Improving maternal mortality rates and health outcomes for black women

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‘There won’t be enough people left’: Africa struggles to stop brain drain of doctors and nurses

The exodus of healthcare workers from Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe continues, despite the WHO red list and a range of laws to keep them at home.

It took nearly three hours of queueing in Ikorodu general hospital in Lagos state, Nigeria, before Hadijat Hassan, a retired civil servant, could see a nurse. The 66-year-old has attended the clinic for health checks since being diagnosed with diabetes nearly 10 years ago. But since May, she says, the delays, often while suffering from excruciating pain in her legs, are worse than ever.

“You can get there [the hospital] and meet about 50 people waiting to be attended to,” Hassan says. “They said all of their nurses and doctors have been leaving for abroad. Just a few are left.”

In Nigeria, there is one doctor for every 5,000 patients, whereas the average in developed countries is one doctor for about every 254 people.

A hospital official said the Ikorodu management get resignation notices from nurses and doctors almost every month.

“Many leave for the US, Canada, UK and, most recently, Australia,” says the official, who asked to remain anonymous.

The National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives has reported there is now a ratio of one nurse to 1,160 patients. Its president, Michael Nnachi, said that more than 75,000 nurses had left Nigeria since 2017.

“If you look at the conditions of service of health workers generally, you’ll see the difficult challenges complicated by the current economic realities,” he said, adding that rising inflation has compounded the problems.

The World Health Organization predicts a worldwide shortage of 10 million health and care workers by 2030 – mostly in low-income countries, where people are leaving for opportunities abroad.

This is despite the WHO’s introduction of a safeguard list to stop rich countries poaching from poorer countries with staff shortages.

The “red list”, launched in 2020 with plans to update it every three years, includes Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and 34 other African countries. Yet the UK’s nursing regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, says more than 7,000 Nigerian nurses relocated to the UK between 2021 and 2022.

Data from the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association shows that nearly 4,000 nurses left the country in 2022. In Zimbabwe, more than 4,000 health workers, including 2,600 nurses, left in 2021 and 2022, the government said.

The WHO has no powers to prohibit recruitment of doctors from countries on the list, but recommends “government-to-government health worker migration agreements be informed by health labour market analysis and the adoption of measures to ensure adequate supply of health workers in the source countries”.

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‘Their whole sky has fallen’: more than 167,000 US children have lost a caregiver to Covid

 More than 167,000 children are believed to have lost parents or caregivers to Covid during the pandemic – roughly one in every 450 young people in the US under age 18.

The count updates the October estimate that 140,000 minors had lost caregiving adults to the virus, and is four times more than a springtime tally that found nearly 40,000 children had experienced such loss. In a report titled Hidden Pain, researchers from the COVID Collaborative and Social Policy Analytics published the new total, which they derived by combining coronavirus death numbers with household-level data from the 2019 American Community Survey.

The death toll further underscores the daunting task facing schools as they seek to help students recover not just academically, but also emotionally, from a pandemic that has already stretched 22 months and claimed more than 800,000 American lives. It’s an issue of such elevated concern that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, on 7 December, used a rare public address to warn Americans of the pandemic’s “devastating” effects on youth mental health. An accompanying 53-page report calls out the particular difficulties experienced by young people who have lost parents or caregivers to the virus.

Bereaved children have higher rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than those who have not lost parents, according to a 2018 study that followed grieving children for multiple years. They are more than twice as likely to show impairments in functioning at school and at home, even seven years later, meaning these children need both immediate and long-term counseling and support to deal with such a traumatic loss.

“For these children, their whole sky has fallen, and supporting them through this trauma must be a top priority.”

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Source: The Guardian, 22 December 2021

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‘The wait was agony’: Women with life-threatening breast cancer face weeks of delays

“I was worried it would grow and spread,” Charlotte Park, a breast cancer patient tells The Independent. “What happens if I hadn’t been that really pushy person? Sometimes I still go into a dark place and I think: I am so lucky to be here.”

The 50-year-old, from Richmond in Yorkshire, found a lump in her breast in June 2020 and went straight to see her GP who informed her she would have to wait two weeks to see a specialist. After a fortnight of waiting, she started to panic and rang the clinic who said they were still working through referrals from four to six weeks prior to her referral.

“I was getting frustrated and impatient by this point,” Ms Park recalls. “There was no leeway and they didn’t see if they could squeeze me in. I just felt frustrated. There was nothing I could do. It was all out of my hands. I was feeling teary.”

Ms Park is one of thousands of women with breast cancer in England facing delays of weeks or months to see a specialist or receive treatment. Data, shared exclusively with The Independent, shows delays were substantially worse for those with breast cancer than other forms of cancer.

In the end, Ms Park was forced to wait 25 days to see a specialist. The wait was “agony”, she said. It was difficult to definitively determine if the delays caused her cancer to grow, she noted.

Her comments come in the context of thousands of women with breast cancer being forced to wait longer than the NHS-recommended time of two months to get treatment, in a situation branded “perilous” by healthcare professionals. Exclusive data shows only seven in ten women in England received treatment for breast cancer two months after getting an urgent doctor’s referral between January and November 2022.

This amounts to just more than 16,500 women and is way below the NHS target for 85% of breast cancer patients diagnosed via an urgent GP referral to start their cancer treatment within two months of their GP visit.

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Source: The Independent. 31 January 2023

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‘The system is broken’: Patients told to sit on chairs outside A&E

Sick patients have been forced to wait outside a hospital A&E department on chairs and wrapped only in blankets while being treated by nurses in shocking photographs and videos captured by one worried relative.

The situation, at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, is a regular occurrence, workers have told The Independent.

Footage shared with The Independent by a concerned member of the public shows one patient being cannulated, where a needle and intravenous line is inserted into a vein, while another patient has a monitor attached to track their vital signs.

Patients waiting outside the A&E were said to be extremely sick, with some vomiting and complaining of worsening symptoms.

“It was like something out of a horror movie,” said Maria, who has asked for her surname not to be used. “The system is completely broken from the beginning to the end..."

Addenbrooke’s Hospital has been under severe pressure for months with patients queuing out the door earlier this year and patients waiting over 24 hours for a bed. One mental health patient was detained in the back of an ambulance for over 12 hours.

It is just one symptom of a nationwide summer crisis in the NHS, with the military called in to support ambulance services that have reported their busiest months ever. A&E units are also witnessing record levels of attendance.

Patients are being made to wait so regularly outside Addenbrooke’s A&E that heat lamps have been installed on the walls outside one entrance, used by non-Covid patients. The hospital has also built a marquee as a permanent space for waiting patients.

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Source: The Independent, 28 September 2021

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‘The real thing’: Delta-Omicron hybrid identified for first time

A newly-discovered Covid variant that combines mutations from both Omicron and Delta is “the real thing,” scientists have said.

Earlier in the year, concern was raised after a lab in Cyprus claimed to have found evidence of a Delta-Omicron recombination event – when the two variants co-infect a patient and exchange genetic material to produce a new viral offspring – but experts said the findings were false.

Now, however, virologists from L’Institut Pasteur in Paris have sequenced the genome of a genuine “Deltacron” variant, which has been detected in several regions of France and appears to have been circulating since early January.

“This one is legit,” said Aris Katzourakis, a professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford. “[It is] one to keep an eye on.”

“The French cluster appears to be a validated occurrence where a recombination event has given rise to a virus fit enough to circulate,” said Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds.

In deriving its spike from Omicron, the Deltacron variant could similarly target the upper respiratory pathway, rather than the lungs, Dr Griffin said. “At the same time, there are some parts of Omicron thought to lessen severity that are missing from the recombinant,” he said.

Dr Griffin said: "This is another clear demonstration that we remain in a dynamic situation with respect to Sars-2, and that the maintenance of genetic surveillance and testing is both relevant and prudent."

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Source: The Independent, 11 March 2022

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‘The pain was worse than giving birth’: why are so many women separated from their babies in prison?

One by one, 29 women sat before Dr Laura Abbott in similarly small, nondescript rooms across five UK prisons, and described losing their babies. They were not bereaved in the conventional sense – although they were clearly holding in grief, as once the guards had left, they let rare public tears fall. Prisoners who had given birth in custody, they had been separated from their newborn children. In some cases this had happened within four or five days of becoming mothers.

“It was worse than giving birth,” said one woman. “That was the hardest pain of my life. I’ve never felt pain like it … It was in my chest, in my heart. Even in my belly.”

“It was as if my whole body craved him,” said another woman. “It’s like losing a limb, losing your sight,” a third explained. “It’s like losing any hope.”

Some of the mothers were still producing milk when Abbott and her assistants spoke to them. One said she was so reluctant to raise this in the prison that she was expressing manually into her cell sink.

Abbott, 54, a former midwife and senior lecturer in midwifery at the University of Hertfordshire, spoke to the women last year for the Lost Mothers Project, which will be launching at the British Museum in London on 8 May.

A collaboration between the university, the charity Birth Companions and an advisory team of women with lived experience, the report, which is the result of three years of research, examines the experiences and needs of an invisible cohort.

Anna (not her real name), 38, has endured this. She was six months pregnant when she was sent to prison nine years ago for her first offence. She was at full term when she finally stood before an MBU board. She is vocal about the horrors of giving birth in custody. She had to press her call bell “four or five times for an hour” when she felt labour pains. She says she was taken to hospital in handcuffs: “[The guard] told me to be grateful that she put me in long cuffs.” They were taken off before she was taken to the delivery suite – since 2022, it is mandated that restraints must not be used on pregnant women taken to appointments unless they are deemed essential.

But it is when she talks about her subsequent separation from her son that Anna momentarily loses her words. She was initially granted an MBU place, but when bailed before sentencing she had to go back to the beginning, and needed to reapply when she returned to prison. This bureaucratic delay resulted in a five-week separation.

Anna began to feel suicidal, and even stopped her mum bringing her son to visit. “It was just getting harder. Sometimes my legs felt heavy, as if they didn’t want to walk away,” she says. “Sorry, I’m getting upset …” She continues: “It was as if somebody was tearing my heart out.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 May 2025

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‘Test drugs on pregnant women to stop another thalidomide scandal’

Pregnant women must be routinely included in clinical trials to help them access medicines and “prevent another thalidomide scandal”, doctors have said.

At present, 99% cent of clinical trials exclude women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, according to experts at the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). Women are in the dark about the safety of thousands of common medications and many choose to “stop all their medication” immediately after becoming pregnant.

The BPS gave the example of antidepressants, which are taken by eight million people in Britain but have not been trialled in pregnant women. As a result some people stop the drugs, which puts them at risk of postnatal depression and suicide, one of the leading causes of death in new mothers.

The BPS is urging health officials to require pharmaceutical companies to “routinely include pregnant women, where safe and appropriate, in clinical research”. It said that companies should also monitor safety data for pregnant women taking approved drugs, and that doctors should balance the risk of potential harm to unborn babies with the danger to mothers of stopping or switching certain medications. 

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Source: The Times, 18 March 2026

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‘Terrorist activity’ concerns trump patient confidentiality, NHS staff told

Health professionals should not let fears about sharing personal data “stand in the way” of reporting patients at risk of ”being groomed into terrorist activity”, new government guidance has stressed.

New guidance has been developed in response to concerns raised by clinicians about information sharing without consent for the purposes of the anti-terror Prevent and Channel programmes.

It stresses that “fears about sharing personal data should not be allowed to stand in the way of the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and adults at risk of abuse or exploitation”.

However, despite the need for clarity it describes how the decision for making a referral without someone’s informed consent should be subject to a “case-by-case” basis assessment, which considers whether the informed consent of the individual can be obtained, and if the proposed data sharing is legitimate, necessary, proportionate and lawful.

It said: “This assessment should be based on your professional opinion that there is tangible public interest or best interest considerations involved.”

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Source: HSJ, 29 September 2022

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‘Tension’ and ‘poor behaviours’ uncovered on trust’s board

The board of a mental health trust grappling with serious culture and safety concerns is “not functioning well”, an NHS England investigation has found, amid the early departure of its chair.

Black Country Healthcare Foundation Trust has faced several challenges this year with poor staff survey results, a long-running dispute between the provider and its medical consultant group, and NHS England’s Midlands team being sent several letters by anonymous groups of staff on a range of serious issues.

The NHS England investigation found staff across the organisation “consider that the board is not functioning well, and that it is not able to resolve conflicts constructively.”

A report of the findings, published this week, added: “There has been a tolerance of poor behaviours at board and a hesitancy previously to tackle them.

“There is a need to refresh and reset relationships built on trust and respect, to create an environment where people feel comfortable to raise concerns in board meetings, not outside, [and] to enable resolution.”

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Source: HSJ, 5 November 2024

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‘Tearful’ staff raise patient safety concerns to CQC

An inspection of a hospital has found all wards were understaffed, while ‘tearful [and] exhausted’ clinicians raised patient safety concerns to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The CQC’s visit to Colchester hospital, run by East Suffolk and North East Essex Foundation Trust, also found patients going unfed because of low staffing ratios and patient confidentiality concerns.

The concerns were raised in a letter sent by the CQC to the trust, which also runs Ipswich hospital, ahead of publication of an inspection report for older people’s medical services, which is due later this month.

The CQC’s letter, published in board papers for a meeting on Thursday, said: “All wards’ actual staffing levels and skill mix meant staff were often overstretched. All staff we spoke with expressed concern about the impact on patient care and personal wellbeing. Some staff we spoke with were tearful, reported feeling exhausted and concerned that they were unable to care for patients well enough to keep them safe.”

The letter also said significant positives were found. Inspectors “found staff to be welcoming, hardworking and supportive of each other… We found staff at all levels working together with the aim of putting the patients first and providing a safe and effective service”.

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Source: HSJ, 11 January 2023

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‘Systemic’ failings resulted in avoidable cancer harm

A decade-long pattern of “systemic” leadership and governance failures led to avoidable patient harm in a trust’s breast cancer service, a highly critical review has found.

The review of the service at County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust found “sustained weakness” in the north east provider’s senior leadership and management team between 2012 and 2025.

It was commissioned after concerns were raised about unnecessary mastectomies, excessive surgery, late diagnosis and missed opportunities for treatment, predominantly at the University Hospital of North Durham.

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Source: HSJ, 25 November 2025

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‘Substandard care’ for over-70s with ovarian cancer as 1 in 5 patients ‘gets no treatment’

Women aged 70 or over are receiving substandard care to tackle ovarian cancer with one in five patients in their seventies getting no treatment whatsoever, a new study has found.

A report from Ovarian Cancer Action revealed almost half of patients in their 70s do not undergo surgery to treat the disease, even though it provides the best long-term prognosis for one of the most common types of cancer in women.

In total, around one in five (22%) of ovarian cancer patients aged 70 to 79  and three in five women with ovarian cancer who were over 80 years old were given no treatment for the disease.

The inadequate healthcare given to older ovarian cancer patients causes a disproportionately high short term death rate for them, the study found.

The study found older patients are substantially less likely to be referred by their GP for diagnostic tests such as ultrasounds when ovarian cancer symptoms surface.

Dr Susana Banerjee, a consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden, said: “With an ageing population, many more patients with ovarian cancer are over the age of 70, so there is an urgent need to understand the best way to effectively treat older women."

“Optimising patients for treatment through frailty assessments and interventions, sharing best practice across cancer centres and representing older patients in clinical trials are important steps towards ensuring equal access to effective and tolerable treatment that could help more women live beyond their diagnosis, with a good quality of life, no matter their age.”

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‘Strained’ estate threatens national workforce plan, NHSE leak reveals

NHS England has found that one in five GP surgeries – and more than two-fifths in some regions – were built more than 75 years ago, and is concerned a lack of space will stop it meeting targets to train more GPs, HSJ has learned. 

An internal NHSE document seen by HSJ reveals a major audit it commissioned in 2019 – but has not made public – found 20 per cent of 8,900 buildings examined were built before 1948. The figure rises to more than 40 per cent of practices in London, HSJ understands.

These practices are likely to be in converted houses, normally owned by GP partners, with very limited space and little scope for expansion.

The NHSE slides which include the figure warn the “limited [GP] estate” means there is “strain on existing capacity and meeting current training needs is challenging”.

HSJ understands officials are concerned poor estates and lack of space will restrict the big expansion of GP training planned under the NHS long-term workforce plan. Other fears relate to poor tech and the shortage of experienced staff to supervise trainees.

NHSE said in a statement: “NHS England has asked every ICS to review their infrastructure  to assess which buildings they need to expand and reconfigure to manage additional workforce over the next 10 years.”

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Source: HSJ, 9 May 2024

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‘Stark disparities’: why black mothers are more at risk of perinatal mental illness in England

Perinatal mental illness affects more than a quarter (27%) of new and expectant mothers across England and covers a range of conditions including postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. A Guardian analysis of NHS figures has shown that for instances of perinatal mental illness that result in hospital admissions, black patients are more than twice as likely to be admitted than their white counterparts.

Part of the reason why black mothers are more at risk of perinatal mental illness is because black people are more at risk of experiencing mental illness in general.

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Source: Guardian, 6 May 2024

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‘Staggering’ rise in restraint of black people in mental healthcare

The rate of people from black backgrounds being restrained in mental healthcare has more than doubled in the past six years, widening the gap with other racial groups, according to official NHS data.

Standardised rates of black and black British people subject to restrictive interventions – including physical, chemical and mechanical restraints – have leapt from 52.1 per 100,000 people in 2016-17 to 106.2 in 2021-22.

That is compared to a much smaller increase of 30% in the same period for people from white backgrounds, from 15.8 per 100,000 to 20.5.

NHS race and health observatory director Habib Naqvi told HSJ he was “very concerned” at the rise.

He said a “range of complex causes are likely to be presented to account for this pattern”, including disparities in care pathways, late presentation and lack of timely diagnosis, and general overuse of restrictive practice on people from minority ethnic backgrounds.

He added: “It is critical we also focus on ‘causes of the causes’ of these disparities, including the impact of discrimination and bias on access, experience and therefore outcomes of mental health services.”

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Source: HSJ, 24 November 2022

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‘Staggering’ paper use revealed as NHS told electronic records safer

The NHS still relies heavily on paper notes, with experts warning they are not as safe or efficient as electronic records.

It comes after a survey by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found the majority of NHS trusts are still using paper, despite 88% of all trusts in England being equipped with electronic patient record (EPR) systems.

Of 182 trusts, 4% said they only use paper notes, while 25% are fully electronic. Some 71% use both paper and an EPR system.

Of the 172 trusts that responded to questions on prescriptions, 9% said they only use paper drug charts, 27% are fully electronic, and 64% use a mixture.

Writing for the BMJ, freelance journalist and doctor Jo Best argued that the continued reliance on paper is less safe and efficient, while difficulties around sharing electronic records could be preventing even the most advanced trusts from realising their full potential.

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Source: The Independent, 14 September 2023

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‘Staff holidays’ delay death review by up to nine months

A coroner has expressed ‘serious concern’ after a trust-wide safety review – prompted by the death of a young mother – was delayed by up to nine months due to ‘staff holidays’.

An inquest heard that 25-year-old Natasha Adams, who died by suicide in August 2021, had had her level of care downgraded by Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust a month earlier, in July, something her family suggested had a “dramatic impact”.

She was moved from a “care programme approach” (known as CPA, which involves enhanced care for people with complex needs and/or safety concerns) to “care support” (a non-clinical programme for people with lower-level concerns and complexities).

An earlier investigation into her death by the trust, finalised in December, said the trust should audit other cases to check whether the trust’s 2019 “care management and CPA/care support policy” was being complied with.

Now Birmingham and Solihull coroner James Bennett has criticised a delay in carrying out the trust-wide audit – writing in a prevention of future deaths report that, as of last month, four months after the report investigating Ms Adams’ care was completed, “no action has been taken”.

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Source: HSJ, 5 May 2022

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‘Staff have been treated like cannon fodder’: NHS bosses issue stark warning on future of health service

Hundreds of senior NHS managers have voiced their fears for the future of the health service amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis without a significant pay rise to help retain staff on the frontline.

A survey of more than 800 senior NHS managers has revealed the extreme pressure some have been working under, with many working 20 or more hours of unpaid extra hours each week.

More than 90 per cent backed a significant pay rise for NHS staff to try and head off a feared exodus of nurses, doctors and other staff leaving the NHS after the pandemic. This would help shore up the service as it faces the daunting task of tackling record waiting lists now totalling 4.7 million patients.

Some managers said that the government’s planned 1 per cent pay rise was an “insult” and made them feel “worthless”, in responses to the survey, run by the Managers in Partnership union.

Another described NHS staff as being treated like “cannon fodder” during the crisis.

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Source: The Independent, 16 April 2021

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‘Squashed’ breathing tube may have caused teenager’s death, inquest hears

A teenager died after a breathing tube was possibly squashed by a wheel of her hospital trolley during emergency surgery, an inquest has heard.

Jasmine Hill, 19, had a cardiac arrest shortly after undergoing a procedure on her neck at Gloucestershire royal hospital in Gloucester.

The inquest heard that a report commissioned by lawyers acting for Hill’s family referred to the tube being “squashed by the wheel of a trolley”.

Hill, from Cirencester, had been readmitted to the hospital after her neck became swollen five days after a thyroidectomy – the removal of all or part of the thyroid gland – in September 2020.

Doctors thought the site of the surgery in Hill’s neck, which was red and swollen, may have become infected and it was decided the wound should be cleaned under general anaesthetic.

The procedure took less than an hour and the teenager went into cardiac arrest shortly after she was moved by staff from the operating table to a bed.

Gloucestershire coroner’s court heard an endotracheal tube, which supports breathing, was positioned behind Hill’s head and away from her neck, fixed to a holder and connected to the ventilator.

The assistant Gloucestershire coroner Roland Wooderson asked Dr Hiro Ishii, who carried out the procedure, whether he was aware that the anaesthetist had checked the position of the endotracheal tube. Ishii replied: “I didn’t make a formal inquiry at that stage.”

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Source: The Guardian, 7 November 2022

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‘Spat at, pushed, punched’: medics tell of soaring levels of violence in hospitals

A Guardian call-out to NHS staff in England to share their experiences of violence in hospitals has revealed that doctors, nurses, paramedics and managers are being overwhelmed by a torrent of physical assaults and sexual abuse by patients.

Most respondents said they had little faith in the NHS to tackle the scale and severity of this abuse, which included being attacked with weapons, including knives and chairs. Many staff felt there was no point in reporting physical or sexual harm because perpetrators faced no real comeback from the NHS or the police.

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Source: Guardian, 10 January 2026

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‘Smart socks’ to keep dementia carers on their toes by tracking patients’ stress levels

“Smart socks” that track sweat levels, heart rate and motion are being given to dementia patients to alert carers if they are becoming distressed.

The unintrusive technology was developed by Dr Zeke Steer, of Bristol Universit. Dr Steer wanted to find a way to spot the early warning signs of distress, so carers or relatives could intervene with calming techniques to de-escalate the situation. 

The hi-tech hosiery - which look and feel like normal socks - use e-textiles to transmit data in real time to an app, which alerts carers when stress levels are rising.

The socks are now being trialled among mid to late stage dementia patients. Researchers think they will also help people with autism and other conditions that affect communication. 

Fran Ashby, manager from Garden House Care Home, in Bristol, said: “We were really impressed at the potential of assisted technology to predict impending agitation and help alert staff to intervene before it can escalate into distressed behaviours. 

“Using modern assistive technology examples, like smart socks, can help enable people living with dementia to retain their dignity and have better quality outcomes for their day to day life.”

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Source: The Telegraph, 9 May 2022

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