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In an era of patient-centred care and growing concern over misconduct in medical settings, why do women still lack the right to choose women consultants for examination and treatment? Equality legislation has resulted in significant improvements in the workplace for women, both in terms of pay and career paths albeit with some way still to go. It is startling, however, just how primitive our society remains in respect of the treatment of women in other areas of their lives. This article from Charles Davey addresses one of these areas – medical care, specifically the right for women to elect examinations and care by women medical practitioners. -
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To mark World Patient Safety Day and the 2026 theme of ‘Safe care for noncommunicable diseases’, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) has produced a series of blogs. Operating as One to Deliver Safe Care for Life Focus on Rare Congenital Conditions Transforming Transition & Lifelong Outcomes Safety Hurdles of the Head and Neck Cancer Pathway - Safe Care Strategy Safe Surveillance is a Systems Issue Patient Safety in Cardiac Surgery is a Team Game Patient Safety in Major Joint Replacement Surgery How Could You Have Forgotten My Catheter Doctor, I Haven't How Metabolic Bariatric Surgery is Changing How We Can Prevent, Repair and Learn -
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The concepts and arguments in this article use multiple sclerosis (MS) as an example (I have had it for 35 years), but they can be applied across many diseases. MS patients are handed detailed, formalised information about the risks of taking a drug and vague, inconsistent, information about the risks of leaving the disease untreated or undertreated. This opinion piece argues that the imbalance distorts decision-making, often in the direction of delay, and that the usual justification (not wanting to frighten people) makes the problem worse. It asks who is actually placed to assemble long-term comparative data on delayed and low-efficacy treatment, names registries and industry as the candidates, and sets out what a patient-facing 'disease risk sheet' would need to contain. Speculation is labelled as such. It ends with a direct challenge to anyone working in MS research, registries, charities or industry to say whether such a dataset already exists. Read it if you work on treatment decision support, risk communication or registry outputs, or if you want the case for why the current comparison is not a fair one. This article was first published on LinkedIn on 14 January 2026. -
Content ArticleAnonymous posted an article in Florence in the Machine
Martha’s Rule gives patients and families a vital way to escalate concerns when they believe a patient’s condition is deteriorating and they are not being heard. However, increased awareness of Martha’s Rule has also led to more calls about complaints, waiting times and other issues outside its intended scope. In an anonymous blog, a critical care outreach nurse in an acute NHS Trust explains why, as the scheme expands, the NHS must preserve its patient-safety focus by setting clear expectations, providing suitable routes for other concerns and supporting staff who handle difficult calls. Yesterday
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C046e242dfb94714a171f951b6b6a36fAn important perspective on the future of patient experience intelligence. From a quality and patient-safety perspective, technology alone is not enough—its value comes from integrating data, patient voice, clinical workflows, and continuous quality improvement. The real opportunity is to move from fragmented feedback to actionable intelligence that helps healthcare teams identify gaps, prioritize improvement, and measure whether changes are actually improving patient experience and outcomes. Good infrastructure enables the journey; good design and strong quality governance create the value.
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Healthcare professionals frequently collect patient safety data, but many lack the knowledge and structured processes needed to interpret these data and translate findings into meaningful improvement actions. This gap results in underutilised opportunities to identify risks, apply evidence-based interventions, engage interdisciplinary teams, and measure impact. Addressing this gap helps the healthcare team more effectively use data to guide patient safety and quality improvement efforts. In this recorded webinar from the Patient Safety Authority, Andrea Atkinson, BSHCA, RRT, director of quality management; Christy Kitta, BSN, RN, quality and patient safety officer; and Ziad Dimachkie, MD, chief medical officer, all from Uniontown Hospital: Describe how patient safety data could be transformed into actionable insights to improve patient safety outcomes. Identify key sources of patient safety data and explained how each contributed to understanding safety gaps. Recognize strategies for engaging interdisciplinary teams and leadership in data‑informed patient safety improvement efforts. -
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The Sick List is a range of practical guides, made by patients, to help hospital stays, treatment days and recovery at home more comfortable and less stressful. The guides covers things from what eye masks help to actually block out hospital lights, to toiletries that will protect your dignity, to the random things no one tells you to pack in your bag but make a huge difference. If you're a patient about to go into hospital, or you know someone who is and would like to support them practically, this resource can really help. -
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Dominic Shadbolt, founder of PatientSignal and an multiple sclerosis (MS) patient of 35 years, has published a number of blogs on his Substack on AI in healthcare. -
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In this blog for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Paula Sussex writes about World Patient Safety Day. She says it is an opportunity to reflect on how we can make healthcare safer for everyone, and the importance of meaningful engagement with patients and families throughout their healthcare journey. -
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Is integrated patient experience intelligence finally possible in the NHS? Or will infrastructure without design leave us with expensive technology and limited value? For years, patient feedback has existed in frustrating fragmentation. Complaints sit in one system, surveys in another, Friends and Family Test (FFT) scores somewhere else entirely. All sit in a different system. None connected. No one recognises the patterns until harm has occurred. The infrastructure pieces needed to solve this are forming. The NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) is operational. The NHS App is expanding. Patient Reported Experience Measures (PROMS) are being designed and validated. Large language models (LLMs) are proving capable of analysing unstructured feedback at scale. However, having these pieces available does not deliver integrated patient experience intelligence. That requires deliberate strategic design: decisions about what capabilities to build, data architecture purpose-fit for those outcomes, governance frameworks enabling appropriate uses, sophisticated analytical infrastructure, organisational change and sustained commitment. Ben Kenyon examines it all in this three-part series: Part 1 examines where we are today: the fragmentation challenge, why feedback sources don't connect and the safety signals we're losing as a result. Part 2 explores the infrastructure pieces now coming together: the FDP, NHS App and LLMs, and why deployment alone won't deliver integration. Part 3 shows -
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This guide from Taluvu looks at how to prepare for a GP appointment when there is a lot to explain. It covers: choosing the three things you would hate to forget gathering what you already know writing it down before you go rather than in the waiting room what to say in the first minute what to do if the words go and what to ask before you leave the room. Last week
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People living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) often require continuous, long-term care. However, in humanitarian contexts, conflict, displacement and other obstacles can disrupt access to healthcare. This complicates chronic disease management and compromises patient safety. In 2025, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) conducted 264,711 medical consultations for people with hypertension and 219,982 consultations for people with diabetes. In this blog we hear more about this work. -
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Is integrated patient experience intelligence finally possible in the NHS? Or will infrastructure without design leave us with expensive technology and limited value? The jigsaw pieces needed for integrated patient experience intelligence are finally starting to come together across the NHS, but the question is whether anyone is going to bother assembling them. In part one of a three-part series, Ben Kenyon examined the fragmentation of the current system. In this blog, Ben explores the infrastructure pieces now forming. But forming isn't the same as working. Here's what's actually available, what it could enable and what still needs to be designed. -
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A Pre-Inquest Review Hearing took place on the 21 July 2026 which heard that Mr Budd died on the 24 February 2026 aged 65 years. He was admitted to the Royal Derby Hospital on the 24 February 2026 at 12:26. He presented with sudden onset left sided jaw pain which radiated to the occipital region and thoracic spine. Suspecting aortic dissection or subarachnoid haemorrhage a CT scan was requested along with a D Dimer at 15:55. He was diagnosed with an aortic dissection following CT scan at 17:45 (reported at 18:03). There was discussion between the Year Two Foundation doctor and the on call cardiac surgeon in Derby. University of Hospital Nottingham cardiac team were contacted who confirmed that they were unable to deal with this type of surgery and Derby was advised to contact Glenfield who agreed to have Mr B admitted for surgery. Adult Critical Care Co-Ordination and Transfer Service (ACCOTS) was contacted and transferred Mr B to Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, arriving at 20:26 in ventricular fibrillation from which he could not be recovered and died at 20:45 despite resuscitation attempts. -
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This report explores the experiences of Black women who experienced mental health difficulties during pregnancy and after birth, and what happened when they needed support. These findings come from the mental health questions included in the 2025 Five X More Black Maternity Experiences Survey. It looked specifically at the experiences of 527 Black women who reported experiencing mental health difficulties, to better understand their experiences of accessing support and receiving care. Free registration required to access this report. -
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Angela Hayes is a Nurse Fellow and Project lead at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, she is also a hub Topic leader. In this 2-minute video Angela explains what climate change has to do with patient safety and how it is putting pressure on healthcare systems around the world. Read the transcript -
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The General Optical Council (GOC) commissioned Shift Insight to carry out research to explore how commercial practices in primary eye care may affect patient safety, patient experience and the working lives of individual registrants. This work forms part of the GOC’s wider thematic review of commercial practices and patient safety. The research focused on four areas identified by earlier GOC work: booking practices (including overbooking, rolling clinics and ‘ghost clinics’) short sight test times sales targets and incentives price transparency. Fieldwork involved in-depth interviews with four stakeholder groups: Individual registrants – optometrists and dispensing opticians Business registrants – owners, directors and practice managers of GOC-registered optical businesses Non-registered eye care staff – for example, optical assistants Patient representative organisations – Healthwatch, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), Thomas Pocklington Trust, SeeAbility and Glaucoma UK. -
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This HSJ article argues that the key lesson from the Thirlwall Inquiry is not simply about accountability for individuals, but about the NHS's repeated failure to properly investigate patient harm when warning signs emerge. The Thirlwall Inquiry exposes a fatal failure to investigate harm. Rebuilding patient safety requires truth, not scapegoating. -
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Advanced Practitioners (APs) are healthcare professionals deployed in a variety of heterogeneous roles around the NHS; they bring skills and knowledge from their various background professions to their work, and patients can benefit from that experience in the right role. The healthcare team benefits from different perspectives and skill sets being present. However, around the NHS there is wide variation in how AP roles are designed and deployed, what the staff in those roles are expected to do, and who regulates them. The medical profession is increasingly concerned that some APs are being asked to do things that only doctors should be doing. This blurring of roles is often driven by understaffing of medical rotas or misunderstanding of what different professions are for. It leads to risks to patients where critical decisions and interventions that should be made by a doctor are made by others. In response to growing concerns within the medical profession about how NHS employers are utilising and deploying advanced practitioners, the BMA launched a new reporting system in January 2026 to understand its depth and breadth. In April a series of Freedom of Information requests by the BMA revealed that half of hospitals in the UK deployed advanced practitioners to cover doctor rota gaps and included these staff on medical rotas. Those who admitted to directly replacing doctors with differently qualified staff told the BMA, in a series of admissions, that this practice should no -
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A report commissioned by the Royal College of Nursing warns that England is at risk of repeating a damaging cycle of nursing workforce shortages because of poor long-term planning, stagnant domestic training numbers and a sharp fall in international recruitment. While NHS nurse numbers grew strongly between 2015 and 2025, much of that increase was driven by overseas recruitment, which has now dropped significantly, raising concerns about future staffing levels. Nick Kituno argues that achieving the government's ambition to reduce reliance on international recruits will require sustained investment in nurse education, improved retention, better career progression and a realistic approach to workforce supply. -
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Ten years after Scan4Safety was launched, a new independent report brings together evidence of how barcode scanning and GS1 standards are supporting patient safety across healthcare. The findings show how scanning can provide an additional check before medicines or medical devices are used. They also demonstrate how better information and inventory management can reduce manual work and return valuable time to clinical care. In this blog, Georgina Lawton, head of healthcare at GS1 UK, reflects on what she has learned from working with healthcare organisations on Scan4Safety. She explains why successful implementation starts with a patient safety problem, rather than the technology, and why clinical involvement, senior leadership, reliable data and dedicated capacity all matter. -
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In this Guardian article, George Monbiot argues that people with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) have been systematically neglected, disbelieved and harmed by healthcare systems despite the severe, life-limiting nature of the condition. In the UK, an estimated 400,000 people live with the condition. It affects women far more than men, by a ratio of about 4:1, according to a study in England. The number of people with long Covid, some of whom meet the diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS, was estimated in 2024 at 2 million in England and Scotland. Drawing on hundreds of patient testimonies, he describes experiences of being dismissed and denied support: “I’ve just been completely abandoned”; “a 10-year waiting list for treatment”; “we’ve given up seeking medical support”; “stuck in limbo”; “I just felt utterly unheard, invalidated”. Further reading on the hub: Exploring the barriers that impact access to NHS care for people with ME and Long Covid Improving healthcare services for people with ME and Long Covid: Patients share their challenges, and the actions needed -
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Each year, World Patient Safety Day focuses on a critical area of healthcare safety. This year's theme is ‘Safe care for non-communicable diseases'. In this context, pathology plays a central role in timely, accurate diagnoses and appropriate interventions across the 17 specialties. Pathologists and laboratory staff play a critical, often behind-the-scenes role in managing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, which are responsible for the majority of deaths in the UK. This September, the Royal College of Pathologists hosted a series of webinars. -
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Falls contribute significantly to injury and mortality among community-dwelling older adults, with societal costs expected to rise. In the Netherlands, a nationwide falls prevention pathway, aligned with World Falls Guidelines was introduced. This includes case finding, multifactorial falls risk assessments, evidence-based interventions and sustained exercise programs. This study explores its implementation, focusing on barriers and facilitators. -
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The National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes 2025-2026 impact report highlights the NHS's commitment to continuous improvement in patient safety. The report details the progress made in implementing various safety initiatives, such as Martha's Rule, which allows patients and families to request rapid reviews of deteriorating conditions. It also discusses the implementation of a new early warning system for staff treating children and the rollout of tools for early identification of deterioration in maternity and neonatal care.
