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East Kent NHS inquiry finds better care might have prevented 45 babies’ deaths

The deaths of at least 45 babies could have been avoided if nationally recognised standards of care had been provided at one of England’s largest NHS trusts, a damning inquiry has found.

Dr Bill Kirkup, the chair of the independent inquiry into maternity at East Kent hospitals university NHS foundation trust, said his panel had heard “harrowing” accounts from families of receiving “suboptimal” care, with mothers ignored by staff and shut out from discussions about their own care.

The inquiry’s report said: “An overriding theme, raised with us time and time again, is the failure of the trust’s staff to take notice of women when they raised concerns, when they questioned their care, and when they challenged the decisions that were made about their care.”

Of 202 cases reviewed by the experts, the outcome could have been different in 97 cases, the inquiry found. In 69 of these 97 cases, it is predicted the outcome should reasonably have been different and it could have been different in a further 28 cases.

Of the 65 babies’ deaths examined, 45 could have had a different outcome if nationally recognised standards of care had been provided.

In nearly half of all cases examined by the panel, good care could have led to a different outcome for the families.

Some of the bereaved parents accused the trust of “victim blaming” mothers for their children’s deaths.

Kelli Rudolph and Dunstan Lowe, whose daughter Celandine died at five days old, said: “Doctors sought to blame Kelli for Celandine’s death. This victim blaming was the first in a long line of interactions with those in the trust who sought to delay, deflect and deny our search for the truth about what happened to our baby.

“In isolation, these tactics traumatised us after the tragedy of our daughter’s death. But when seen in the light of 10 years of failures, they signal a concerted effort to cover up the trust’s responsibility for what happened to Celandine and the many others who lost their lives due to failures in clinical judgment.”

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Source: The Guardian. 19 October 2022

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Ovarian cancer: 1 in 4 patients ‘see GP three times before referral for tests’

More than a quarter of women with ovarian cancer saw their GP three or more times before getting a referral for tests, according to a new study.

Researchers also found that almost a third had waited for longer than three months after first going to see their GP before being given the right diagnosis.

If doctors are able to diagnose ovarian cancer at the earliest stage, nine out of 10 women will go on to live for five years or longer, but only around one in 10 survive if it is not caught until it has progressed to stage 4, the most advanced stage.

The report, by Target Ovarian Cancer, also revealed that 14 per cent of women polled said they were not given their diagnosis in private, meaning others could listen in on the exchange.

“I was told of my stage 4 diagnosis behind the curtain on a busy respiratory ward. The rest of the ward heard the conversation,” one woman said.

Meanwhile, GPs and ovarian cancer patients told researchers that the support available for the disease is insufficient – with almost half of the women polled not having been asked by a doctor, nurse or other individual providing treatment about how the cancer diagnosis was affecting their mental health.

This is despite the fact that 60% of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer said their mental health had been harmed by the disease.

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Source: The Independent. 18 October 2022

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Trusts need hundreds of millions to stop hospitals’ roofs collapsing

Trusts need hundreds of millions of pounds to remediate dangerous roofs.

A series of freedom of information requests submitted by New Civil Engineer has revealed five of the worst affected trusts have applied for £331.9m of additional funding to be spent on fixing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete planks during the next three years.

In response to NCE’s freedom of information investigation, Liberal Democrat deputy leader and health spokesperson Daisy Cooper said “patients are paying the price for years of neglect” by successive governments.

“It is truly shocking that patients are being treated in crumbling buildings that could be at risk of collapse. The NHS is crying out for the funds to fix creaking roofs so that patients can be treated safely. The public needs to know that the funds to fix this are on the way as soon as possible.”

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Source: HSJ, 17 October 2022

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Woman with endometriosis forced to pay £25,000 for private care after condition ‘missed’ for 8 years

A woman says she was forced to pay around £25,000 for private healthcare to treat endometriosis after her symptoms were “overlooked” for eight years.

Aneka Hindocha, 34, started voicing her concerns about painful periods when she was aged 25 but says she was initially told by doctors this was normal.

Ms Hindocha, who described the pain of endometriosis as “someone ripping your insides out”, says the condition should have been diagnosed sooner but argued women’s pain often gets overlooked and ignored.

Endometriosis is a very common chronic inflammatory condition, impacting an estimated 1.5 million women in the UK. An inquiry by the All-Party Political Group found that like Ms Hindocha, it takes an average of eight years to get a diagnosis.

The condition sees tissue comparable to womb-lining grow in other places in the body - with symptoms often debilitating and spanning from infertility to painful periods, tiredness, pain while having sex, as well as depression and anxiety.

“I was told painful periods were normal, which they are not, but I believed that at the time,” Ms Hindocha told The Independent. “I thought the issue was me. I thought I was being a hypochondriac.”

Her health massively deteriorated in the summer of 2020 and she became bedbound for three days.

“I needed someone to find out what was wrong with me,“ Ms Hindocha added. “I was crying I was in so much pain.”

She says that two years later she still had not received her laparoscopy despite the fact her pain was getting more severe and so she ended up paying for a private scan. She finally got diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis a week later.

“By the time of having my surgery at the end of February 2022, it had been nearly two years on the NHS waiting list and I was still being told to wait.”

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Source: The Independent, 18 October 2022

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End rules stopping thousands of doctors working in GP surgeries, says GMC chief

Thousands of doctors are being prevented from working in overstretched GP surgeries across the UK because of unnecessary “red tape”, leaving NHS patients experiencing “unprecedented” waits for care, the head of the doctors’ regulator in the UK has said.

Charlie Massey, the chief executive of the General Medical Council, said barriers that stopped medics from being deployed to meet areas of high demand, such as in primary care, must be removed urgently if the NHS workforce crisis was to be resolved and access to care improved.

“Red tape is stopping the UK from making the most of many of its skilled and experienced doctors,” he said. “Without action, patients will suffer.”

The regulator will on Tuesday call for a relaxation of rules so the fastest-growing part of the medical workforce – skilled doctors in non-training roles – can undertake a wider range of work beyond hospitals, such as in GP surgeries.

“There are no easy answers to the challenges facing the NHS. There is no army of new doctors coming over the horizon, so part of the solution must be to make sure that we have more doctors in the places that patients need them,” Massey said.

“The government should make a start immediately by changing the performers list criteria so more doctors are allowed to work alongside GPs. That needs to be done urgently.

“But beyond technical changes there is also a need for fresh thinking in the way our health services are structured and in how teams of health professionals work together. We can’t keep doing things the same way they have always been done, or nothing will change."

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Source: BBC News, 18 October 2022

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‘Irresponsible’: Alarm over Coffey’s ‘plans to let patients get antibiotics without seeing GP’

Doctors have criticised new health secretary Therese Coffey over reports that pharmacists will be allowed to prescribe antibiotics without the approval of a doctor.

According to The Times, Ms Coffey’s “Plan for Patients” will give pharmacists the power to prescribe certain drugs, such as contraception, without a prescription in an effort to reduce the need for GP appointments and tackle waiting lists.

Responding to reports of the plans, Rachel Clarke, an NHS palliative care doctor and writer, wrote on Twitter: “This is staggeringly irresponsible of Therese Coffey and will cause so much more harm than good.

“Doctors do not – unlike Coffey – dish out spare antibiotics to our family and friends because we’re painfully aware of the harms of antibiotic resistance. Utter recklessness.”

Stephen Baker, a professor at Cambridge University and an expert in molecular microbiology and antimicrobial resistance, branded the health secretary’s plans “moronic”.

He told the newspaper that the more antibiotics were used “the more likely we are to get drug-resistant organisms”.

He added that it was “nuts” to consider widening access to drugs, adding that resistance against antibiotics is “clearly one of the biggest problems humanity is facing in respect of infectious disease at the moment”.

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Source: The Independent, 17 October 2022

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'Speaking about the 22 babies I lost is seen as taboo'

Imtiaz Fazil has been pregnant 24 times, but she only has two living children.

She first fell pregnant in 1999 and, over the subsequent 23 years, has had 17 miscarriages and five babies die before their first birthdays due to a rare genetic condition.

The 49-year-old, from Levenshulme in Manchester, told BBC North West Tonight her losses were not easy to talk about, but she was determined to do so, in part because such things remained a taboo subject among South Asian groups.

She said she wanted to change that and break down the stigma surrounding baby loss.

She said her own family "don't talk to me very much about the things" as they think "I might get hurt [by] bringing up memories".

"It's too much sadness; that's why nobody approaches these sort of things," she said.

Sarina Kaur Dosanjh and her husband Vik also have the hope of breaking the silence surrounding baby loss.

The 29-year-olds, from Walsall in the West Midlands, have set up the Himmat Collective, a charity which offers a virtual space for South Asian women and men to share their experiences.

The couple, who have had two miscarriages in the past two years, said the heartache was still not something that people easily speak about.

"I think it's hidden," Sarina said.

"It's really brushed under the carpet."

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Source: BBC News, 13 October 2022

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Slow cancer diagnosis twice as likely for ethnic minority patients, survey shows

New patient data shows significant regional differences in the effectiveness of primary care in getting cancer sufferers diagnosed – with an even more alarming picture when the data is broken down by ethnicity.

A survey of cancer patients asked how many times they had “spoken to a healthcare professional at [their] GP practice about health problems caused by cancer” before they were diagnosed, with a range between one and more than five times.

The overall figure for five times or more in England was 7% – but all four cancer alliances in London scored significantly above this.

Cancer Research UK said this could reflect the greater concentration of ethnic minority patients in the capital, and the data bore this out.

Nationally, 6.6% of white cancer patients had seen five or more primary care staff before getting a diagnosis. This compared to 11.7% for Asian cancer patients and 12.9% for Black cancer patients.

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Source: HSJ, 18 October 2022

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Family hit a 'brick wall' seeking justice for baby

The grandfather of a baby who died at a hospital that was fined over failings in the delivery has spoken of his five-year fight for justice.

Derek Richford was speaking as an independent report into baby deaths at the East Kent Hospitals Trust will be released this week.

He said he "came up against a brick wall" while searching for answers over the death of grandson Harry Richford.

An inquest into Harry's death at Margate's Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in 2017 found it was wholly avoidable and contributed to by neglect.

Coroner Christopher Sutton-Mattocks said the inquest, which was finally held in 2020, was only ordered due to the family's persistence.

The following year the trust was fined £733,000 after admitting failing to provide safe care and treatment for mother Sarah Richford and her son following a prosecution by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Mr Richford said: "To start with we felt fairly alone and we felt like we were coming up against a brick wall.

"The trust were refusing at that time to call the coroner. They were reporting Harry's death as 'expected'.

"We didn't contact anyone other than the CQC just to say 'look there's been a problem here'."

He said at a meeting with the trust, more than five months later, "we suddenly realised that there were a huge [number] of errors".

Mr Richford told the BBC: "It took me about a year to come up with all the detail I needed and to speak to all the right people."

He said the family then spoke to the Health Safety Investigation Branch who found there were issues.

Mr Richford also tracked down a "damming" report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

"In the end it was like peeling back the layers of an onion, and the more you took off, the more you found," he said.

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Source: BBC News, 18 October 2022

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Eating disorders: Toolkit to help schools cope developed

Mental health professionals have unveiled a "toolkit" to help school nurses support pupils with eating disorders.

Bath-based campaigner Hope Virgo developed the strategy with the School and Public Health Nurses Association (Saphna) after a rise in cases.

The toolkit aims to equip school nurses with techniques to discuss eating disorders, and also "what not to say".

Ms Virgo has called on the government to deal with the backlog those waiting for treatment, which totalled 1,946 at the beginning of March, data from eating disorder charity Beat shows.

Sharon White, Saphna's chair, said the organisation had been promoting the toolkit among its members.

"We can't solve the huge waiting lists and reduced services, but what we can do is inform ourselves better," she said.

The toolkit provides "the hints, the tips, the language, the stock phrases, and importantly, what not to say", Ms White added.

The Department of Health and Social Care has been supportive of the scheme, Ms White said, adding it may adopt it as part of its own guidance in future.

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Source: BBC News, 17 October 2022

Read a recent blog Hope Virgo wrote for the hub: People with eating disorders should not face stigma in the health system and barriers to accessing support in 2022

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Paramedics in ‘Mexican standoff’ with A&E staff after ‘unprecedented’ rule change

Angry exchanges between paramedics and A&E staff in Liverpool have broken out after new measures were deployed to hold and treat patients in the back of ambulances.

Sources said there have been “Mexican standoff” situations at Aintree Hospital in recent days, after hospital staff insisted patients who had been brought inside should be returned to ambulance vehicles.

Staff at North West Ambulance Service told HSJ they were informed of a new protocol last week, which said patients should be kept in the back of ambulances if the corridor of the emergency department is full with patients.

There have been repeated orders from NHS England and the Care Quality Commission over the past year for hospitals to ensure patients can be offloaded by ambulance crews, even if they fear they do not have adequate staffing or beds to accept them.

One senior source at NWAS said: “To see a new protocol like this is absolutely unprecedented. I very much doubt the execs had approved it.

“We’ve had Mexican standoff situations over the weekend with crews who have brought patients into ED being told to take them back out to their vehicles, but they’ve refused to do this as it means they cannot cohort.

“We completely accept that taking extra patients means the ED and hospital staff have to deal with additional and unacceptable risk, but holding ambulances is not the solution because the risks to patients out in the community are even greater. Despite repeated instructions from NHS England and the CQC this still doesn’t seem to be understood.”

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Source: HSJ, 17 October 2022

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Hunt: Tax will need to rise to fund health and care

Jeremy Hunt believes spending on the NHS will have to rise and that the increase should be funded through higher taxation.

Mr Hunt was speaking at an event less than 48 hours before the prime minister asked him to replace Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor.

In a discussion last Wednesday evening with HSJ editor Alastair McLellan and the audience at an event held as part of the Shoreham Literary Festival event, Mr Hunt also rejected the introduction of a social insurance model to fund the NHS and re-iterated the pressing need for the NHS to have a long-term workforce plan.

Asked by HSJ if the voices in the Conservative Party calling for a change from the NHS to a social insurance model had gained ascendancy, Mr Hunt said: “The game is not up for the NHS – absolutely not.

“We are all going to spend more on our health and care – if you’re in America you’re going to spend more through your insurance premiums – which are going to go up. If you’re in Holland and Germany you’re going to spend more through social insurance premiums. If you’re in Britain, Ireland or New Zealand you’re going to spend more through your taxes.”

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Source: HSJ, 17 October 2022

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Bottoms up: Surgeons say no to BBL (Brazilian Butt Lift) but yes to SGL (Superficial Gluteal Lipofilling)

In 2018 the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (www.baaps.org.uk)  dissuaded all its members from performing Brazilian Buttock Lift (BBL) surgery, until more data could be collated. The decision was taken due to the high death rate associated with the procedure. Now, following an extensive four-year review of clinical data, new technology and techniques, BAAPS has published its Gluteal Fat Grafting (GFG) guidelines.

Gluteal fat grafting is currently the procedure with the biggest growth rate in plastic surgery worldwide, with an increase of around 20% year-on-year). It has become the most popular means of buttock volume augmentation, overtaking gluteal augmentation with implants.  In 2020, The Aesthetic Society statistics recorded 40,320 buttock augmentation procedures, which included both fat grafting and buttock implants.

In 2015, there were reports of intraoperative mortality related to pulmonary fat emboli associated with BBL surgery and in 2018 with growing concern about the high mortality rate associated with this procedure BAAPS recommended it was not performed by its members.

The development of the present guidelines and recommendations has been stimulated by the evidence that has emerged since 2018, based on scientific review and analysis. BAAPS guidelines now recommend that Gluteal Fat Grafting is safe to perform under two key conditions:

  1. Injection into the subcutaneous plane only - there is a plethora of evidence to suggest this significantly reduces mortality related to the procedure perhaps this needs to be changed to – the evidence shows that the only deaths from the procedure have been when fat has been injected into the deeper muscle layer.
  2. Intraoperative ultrasound must be used during the placement of fat in the gluteal area to ensure that the cannula remains in the subcutaneous plane – this is the only way that surgeons can be confident they are not in the muscle layer.

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Source: BAAPS, 17 October 2022

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Covid: Time running out to protect vulnerable, campaigners warn

Time is running out for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people who are facing another winter shielding from Covid, campaigners have said.

They are calling on the government to buy a drug called Evusheld to provide some protection against the virus.

The government says it is not clear how long that protection will last when up against the Omicron variant. But patients, charities and health experts argue the protection offered is better than nothing.

There are around 500,000 people in the UK with suppressed immune systems. That means their bodies struggle to produce antibodies, so the existing vaccines offer them little or no protection, leaving them very vulnerable to Covid.

Blanche Hampton has lupus, a condition where her immune system has turned against her.

The drugs she takes to control the lupus also suppress her immune system, meaning her body has no defences against Covid.

Blanche has been shielding for two and a half years, but she believes Evusheld offers a chance for at least some kind of existence outside of her small flat in Inverkip, west of Glasgow.

"Evusheld would give me a layer of protection, that is better than nothing. Because that's what I have currently - nothing."

And Blanche, like many people who find themselves in the same situation, says she feels abandoned.

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Source: BBC News, 17 October 2022

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Sudden unexplained death in childhood: Charity hails new NHS efforts

NHS England has "never shown so much support" to stop children dying without explanation, a charity which works to prevent unexplained deaths has said.

Sudden unexplained death in childhood (SUDC) is a rare category of death in which the cause remains unknown even after thorough investigation. Currently there is very little awareness or research into its causes.

NHS England has said it will now begin a series of measures to change this, a move welcomed by the charity SUDC UK, including:

  • Piloting systems to improve education of health professionals and gather data to help identify modifiable factors which will go on to establish processes to help manage the deterioration of children.
  • Improve information given to families and professionals about SUDC.
  • Separately, data from every child whose death has been put down as SUDC since 2019 will being reviewed by the National Child Mortality Database.

Dr Nikki Speed, from the charity SUDC UK, described the plans as revolutionary.

"This is such positive historic progress, a landmark moment. Never has the NHS shown such support to stop sudden unexplained death in childhood," she said.

"Never has there been such a clear statement to review public information on SUDC, optimise data collection and learn how we could prevent future tragedies.

"We finally have confidence that things will progress in our fight to stop SUDC."

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Source: BBC News, 15 October 2022

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Scotland's A&E crisis: Waits of 12 hours now a daily occurrence amid winter fears

Staff at accident and emergency departments across Scotland have expressed “deep concern” at the daily “excessively long waiting times” that are forcing a record number of patients to wait more than 12 hours, according to a leading NHS consultant.

Dr John-Paul Loughrey, vice-chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland national board, warned that while such long waits were once regarded as “never events,” they are now daily occurrences.

Amid fears the delays will spike significantly over the winter months, especially with another wave of Covid-19 expected, Dr Loughrey said staff were already “burned out,” “exhausted,” and “overwhelmed with a system facing increasing strain.”

The latest weekly data on A&E treatment shows that in the week ending 2 October, the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours had soared by 45% week-on-week.

“There is deep concern among staff around the excessively long waiting times,” Dr Loughrey said. “The weekly data that show significant increases in long waits translates to real patients on the ground or in the community who are seeking urgent and emergency care.

“The system is failing them. We know that long waiting times are associated with patient harm and even death. Staff face moral injury daily, but they are working incredibly hard and doing all they can to minimise this harm to patients.”

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Source: The Scotsman, 16 October 2022

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Whistleblower Peter Duffy calls for oversight of NHS records to prevent evidence tampering

Peter Duffy warned that there is a growing risk of electronic patient records and NHS staff communications being exposed to tampering efforts in disputes with managers and executives.

The surgeon, who now practices on the Isle of Man, made the comments during talks given in September – to the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) and at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) in Dublin. He told audiences that “there is increasing potential for electronic tampering” of NHS IT records, holding serious implications for patient safety reporting and disputes with government and health service bodies.

The consultant medic, who says he was driven out of UHMBT in 2016 after blowing the whistle on dangerous practices and uninvestigated cases of harm within the trust’s urology services, won a constructive dismissal claim against his ex-employer in 2018.

Duffy now alleges that emails concerning the care of a patient at the centre of his whistleblowing were forged and backdated by senior UHMBT staff, several years after his employment claim against the trust had ended.

The emails were not disclosed during the tribunal – despite a court order having been issued to release all communications concerning the care of the patient in question, the late Peter Read, who died in early 2015 – and are understood to have surfaced during the course of an external review into UHMBT’s urology services carried out between late 2019 and 2021.

Niche Consult, a private firm commissioned by NHS England/Improvement (NHSE/I) to investigate Duffy’s patient safety disclosures alongside broader concerns regarding the trust’s urology department, determined that the emails in question were not fakes.

Duffy told the AfPP and RCSI audiences that, during the Niche review of UHMBT’s urology services in 2020, he was “abruptly told that two entirely new, never-seen-before emails had suddenly, unexpectedly appeared”. The emails appear to partly implicate him in the series of clinical errors and missed care opportunities that contributed to Read’s death.

Duffy described the allegedly falsified emails as being part of “an executive vendetta” waged against him in retaliation for his whistleblowing activity and negative publicity surrounding it, as UHMBT was seeking to cultivate the image of a “turnaround” trust in the years following a major maternity scandal between 2004 and 2013.

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Source: Computer Weekly, 28 September 2022

 

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NHS boss Amanda Pritchard vows that victims of falls won’t wait hours in agony

Elderly people who call for help after a fall at home will no longer be left waiting for hours on the floor, the head of the NHS has said, as she bids to keep patients out of hospital and stop the service being overwhelmed this winter.

Amanda Pritchard said she would start a new national service within weeks under which community teams would offer immediate help to people who had had an accident but had avoided serious injury.

Pritchard, who took over as chief executive of NHS England last year, said a quarter of less severe 999 calls in January involved falls. The new teams could stop 55,000 elderly people a year being taken to hospital, she said.

All NHS areas will be told this week to establish the service before a “very, very, very challenging winter” for the health service.

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Source: The Times, 16 October 2022

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Staff at Kent NHS trust warned of 'harrowing report' into preventable baby deaths

The chief executive of an NHS trust at the centre of a maternity scandal where there were at least seven preventable baby deaths has warned staff to prepare for a "harrowing report" into what happened.

In an email seen by Sky News, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Tracey Fletcher told her staff to expect a "harrowing report which will have a profound and significant impact on families and colleagues, particularly those working in maternity services".

An independent investigation into the trust, stretching back over a decade, will be published this week and is expected to expose a catalogue of serious failings.

It is also expected to say the avoidable baby deaths happened because recommendations that were made following reports into other NHS maternity scandals were not implemented.

The East Kent review is led by obstetrician Dr Bill Kirkup, who also chaired the investigation into mother and baby deaths in Morecambe in 2015.

Dawn Powell's newborn son Archie died in February 2019 aged four days.

In an emotional interview, Mrs Powell told Sky News she will never get over the loss of her son, who would be alive today if she or Archie had been given a routine antibiotic.

"For families like us, where your child has been taken away, you have forever got that hole in your life that you will never heal," Mrs Powell said.

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Source: Sky News, 16 October 2022

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MRI blunders: Hundreds of patients with metallic implants narrowly avoid death or serious injury after being wrongly referred for scans

Hundreds of patients with metallic implants narrowly avoided death or serious injury after being wrongly referred for MRI scans, an investigation revealed yesterday.

The powerful magnets used in the machines can displace and damage metallic items such as pacemakers, ear implants and aneurysm clips.

Doctors should question patients and check medical records before requesting a scan because of the risk of injury. But hospitals in England recorded 315 near-misses from April 2020 to March 2022 involving patients sent for an MRI.

An MRI scan at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust was ditched after staff confirmed the skin over the patient’s pacemaker had begun heating up. Another patient – at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Trust – told staff about a metal plug implanted in their nose only after the scan had begun. Many of the incidents involved forms being filled out incorrectly on behalf of elderly and disoriented patients.

At East Kent Hospitals University Trust, a patient described as ‘not compos mentis’ was given the all-clear by a care home nurse and again by a clinician for MRI – only for staff to realise at the last moment that metal clips were implanted in their chest. Information about the incidents was obtained using freedom of information requests.

Helen Hughes of Patient Safety Learning, said: "It is vital that near-misses are regularly reported, their causes understood, and that this learning is acted on to prevent future avoidable harm."

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Source: MailOnline, 15 October 2022

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NHS logging baby deaths as stillbirths ‘to avoid scrutiny’

NHS hospitals have claimed that babies born alive were stillborn, a Telegraph investigation has found, prompting accusations they were trying to avoid scrutiny.

Six children who died before they left hospital were wrongly described as stillborn. Several of the children lived for minutes and one lived for five days.

Coroners are not able to carry out inquests into stillbirths, leaving some families unable to get answers until the error was corrected. In one case, an obstetrician told a coroner in Stockport that he had been pressured by an NHS manager to say a baby he had delivered had definitely been stillborn, in order to be “loyal” to the trust. 

His comments are likely to raise fears that some NHS trusts in England have used the stillbirth label to avoid having coroners examine any errors that may have been made by staff. 

The revelations raise questions over transparency at some NHS trusts.

The babies identified by The Telegraph should have been recorded as neonatal deaths, but staff claimed they were stillbirths – babies that never had any signs of life outside the mother’s body, even for a single moment. 

All the NHS trusts that wrongly classified neonatal deaths as stillbirths have apologised to the babies’ parents, and say they have changed their practices. 

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Source: The Telegraph, 16 October 2022

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Over £800 million to boost innovation, growth and improve patient safety

Patients up and down the country are set to benefit from innovative new treatments and improved delivery of health and care services following significant funding to support ground-breaking experimental medicine research and advance the UK’s response to patient safety challenges.

  • £790 million to support breakthroughs in new treatments, diagnostics and medical technology to improve patients’ lives and bolster the economy.
  • £25 million for research on patient safety to improve the safe delivery of health and care and better address health challenges, such as cancer treatment and reducing medication error.
  • Exceeds funding commitments to boost research across all areas of the country, levelling up innovation and addressing health inequalities.

The government has announced that over £800 million of funding, to be allocated by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), will go to support specialist research facilities bringing together scientists to create an environment where experimental medicine and patient safety research can thrive.

This boost to the country’s research infrastructure will see further investment in scientific expertise which supports access to innovative technology and novel research projects. As well as this, it will improve regional economic growth through employment opportunities, giving private sector organisations confidence to continue to invest in research across the country.

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Source: GOV.UK, 14 October 2022

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University of Leicester team finds more stillbirths in deprived areas

Research suggests there are higher rates of stillbirth and neonatal death for those living in deprived areas and minority ethnic groups.

A report from a team at the University of Leicester shows that while overall stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates have reduced, inequalities persist.

MBRRACE-UK, the team that carried out the research, said it had looked at outcomes for specific ethnic groups. The report showed the stillbirth rate in the UK had reduced by 21% over the period 2013 to 2020 to 3.33 per 1,000 total births. Over the same period the neonatal mortality rate has reduced by 17% to 1.53 per 1,000 births.

However despite these improvements, the authors found inequalities persisted, with those living in the most deprived areas, minority ethnic groups and twin pregnancies all experiencing higher rates of stillbirth.

Elizabeth Draper, professor of perinatal and paediatric epidemiology at the university, said: "In this report we have carried out a deeper dive into the impact of deprivation and ethnicity on stillbirth and neonatal death rates.

"For the first time, we report on outcomes for babies of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and Black African, rather than reporting on broader Asian and black ethnic groups, who have diverse backgrounds, culture and experiences.

"This additional information will help in the targeting of intervention and support programmes to try to reduce stillbirth and neonatal death."

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Source: BBC News, 14 October 2022

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Government’s obesity campaign called out for being 'ineffective' and 'irresponsible'

The Government’s national obesity campaign risked turning fat-shaming into "wilful political strategy", said two humanities researchers in a new paper published in Sociology of Health and Illness. The Tackling Obesity campaign, launched by the Government "to improve health and protect the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic", was "unproductive", "ineffective", "irresponsible", and could have led to "fat-shaming", they said. Moreover, the Government "perpetuated the neoliberal view that good health is essentially a matter of individual achievement earned through lifestyle choices and behaviour" - ignoring "the multiple structural and socioeconomic factors that contribute to obesity".

Co-authors Dr Tanisha Spratt, lecturer in sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Greenwich, London, and Luna Dolezal, associate professor in philosophy and medical humanities at the University of Exeter, said they were using the Tackling Obesity campaign "as an illustration" to explore "the dynamics between fat shaming, neoliberalism, ideological constructions of health and the 'obesity epidemic' within the UK".

They said that fat shaming was a practice that "encourages open disdain for those living with excess weight [and] operates as a moralising tool to regulate and manage those who are viewed as 'bad' citizens". They regarded this as an example of "how the ideological underpinnings of 'health' have been transformed under neoliberalism". Fat shaming discourses that are often used as tools to promote 'healthy' lifestyle choices are "problematic", they said.

Prof Dolezal, a principal investigator on the Wellcome-funded Shame and Medicine project, also co-authored a paper published earlier this month saying that the health and care system "should be more sensitive to people's 'shame'".

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Source: Medscape, 13 October 2022

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Public responds to NHS amber alert over donor blood stocks

The blood-donation service has been inundated with offers of help after putting out an alert, on Wednesday, warning NHS stocks were running critically low in England.

More than 10,000 appointments to donate blood over the next few weeks have been booked in the past 24 hours.

The NHS usually has six days' worth of blood to use for operations and transfusions but levels are currently due to fall below two.

Type-O blood is in particular demand. O positive is the most common and anyone can receive O negative in an emergency or if their blood type is unknown.

Blood supplies have been challenging since the Covid pandemic, because of staff shortages and sickness, and a change in people's behaviour means they are less likely to visit donation centres in towns and cities, according to NHSBT.

Individual hospitals must decide how to manage the shortage - for example, by postponing some non-urgent operations.

"This is an amazing response from the public and we have been reminded in the last 24 hours of the incredible goodwill and spirit of the public towards helping patients in times of great difficulty," an NHSBT official said.

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Source: BBC News, 13 October 2022

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