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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.

A coroner has issued an urgent warning that the failure to implement an emergency cardiac pathway could result in more deaths. Malcolm Budd, aged 65, was admitted to Royal Derby Hospital, part of University Hospitals of Derby and Burton Trust, in February with a suspected aortic dissection. This is a medical emergency in which a tear happens in the inner layer of the aorta, the body’s main artery. For a severe ‘Type A’ dissection – which requires emergency surgery – mortality increases by up to 2 per cent each hour without treatment. However, Mr Budd was not transferred to the specialist cardiac centre at Glenfield Hospital, part of University Hospitals of Leicester Trust, until almost 8.30pm, eight hours after he was first admitted to Royal Derby. NHS England published a Standard Operating Procedure and a toolkit which aimed to standardise and improve aortic dissection pathways in 2022. This has been implemented in other parts of the country but not the East Midlands. Dianne Hocking, assistant coroner for Leicester City and South Leicestershire, has now issued a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) notice in relation to this issue. The PFD was issued before the inquest into Mr Budd’s death begins next month due to the urgency of the coroner’s concerns. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 September 2026

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.

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.

A friendly chat with your GP about your life, health and happiness was once a key part of the UK’s family doctor service. But most GPs no longer have time to have pastoral conversations, because they are too busy dealing with the country’s rising tide of illness, research reveals. Three out of four family doctors are now too time-pressed to talk to patients in depth about how they might stop smoking, lose weight or get more sleep, the Royal College of GPs has found. Intense demands and 10-minute appointment slots mean they also miss opportunities to discuss taking more exercise or review their medications to see if they still need to be on them. An RCGP survey of 2,316 GPs across the UK found that 75% had too little time to offer preventative healthcare, such as offering lifestyle advice and giving advice on vaccinations. The results have raised concern about the government’s drive for the NHS – especially GPs – to do more to prevent people getting ill in the first place. One health expert called them alarming. The college’s president, Prof Victoria Tzortziou Brown, who is a GP in east London, said: “General practice is dealing with enormous demand, so in a busy consultation we inevitably have to prioritise the problems that most need our attention that day. “We will always act on symptoms or findings that need investigation or treatment. What can be squeezed out is the time to step back and look more holistically at how we can help that patient stay well in the long term. “That might mean having a proper conversation with someone who smokes. We will of course advise patients about stopping smoking. But in a busy consultation there may not be enough time to explore in depth whether they want to stop, what has made it difficult in the past, what concerns they have and what support or treatment might work best for them. “It is often the depth of those conversations, rather than simply identifying a risk and giving brief advice, that requires time.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 September 2026

Ten NHS staff have been removed from duty or suspended after a data breach involving the digital medical records of three-year-old Noah Woods. Launching an "urgent" investigation, Dr Martin Mansfield, deputy chief medical officer at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said that any unauthorised access of patient data was "completely unacceptable". The trust has apologised "unreservedly" to Noah's family and said disciplinary action would be taken if needed. A major search for Noah was carried out in the village of Brantham, Suffolk, after the child went missing on 15 September. His body was found the next day in a nearby pond by police divers. A spokesperson for the trust said 10 employees had been "removed from active duty or suspended whilst investigations are concluded". It comes after Sir Jim Mackey, the chief executive of NHS England, wrote to every trust on Friday, ordering stronger measures to tackle data breaches. "We have seen too many cases of people abusing that trust, and enough is enough," said Sir Jim. "Anyone who thinks they can satisfy their curiosity by looking at a patient's record should know this: they will be found out, they may lose their career and could end up with a criminal record." Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 September 2026

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

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.

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.

The BMA has published a series of “disturbing” reports warning that patient safety is being repeatedly put at risk when those patients are looked after by less-qualified advanced practitioners (APs,) rather than doctors. Earlier this year the BMA revealed that nearly three quarters of doctors reported that advanced practitioners, staff who originally trained as nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, midwives or other professional roles, are routinely replacing doctors in their workplaces. In FOI responses to the BMA, half of hospitals in the UK admitted to using advanced practitioners to cover doctor rota gaps and including these staff on doctors’ rotas. The BMA believes this places staff without the necessary medical training in difficult and inappropriate positions with clear risks to patient safety. With concerns rising over the deployment of advanced practitioner roles, the BMA launched a new tool in January for doctors to share their experiences directly. Doctors have since reported hundreds of patient safety incidents. These include a case where an advanced practitioner failed to arrange vital testing and referral for a child with meningitis and another in which advanced practitioners missed a cancer diagnosis, resulting in a patient “losing out on 6 weeks of time to get her affairs in order before dying.” Responding to the accounts now made public, Dr Tom Dolphin, chair of BMA council, said: “These are shocking accounts of patients being let down by the system. Patients are being put at risk of harm or even death because hospital managers are putting advanced practitioners and others into roles that should be filled by doctors, as this report and multiple inquests suggest. "We have made clear, over and over, that there are times when patients must be seen by a doctor and this testimony lays out why in extensive, excruciating detail. Patients with missed diagnoses, patients with severe conditions given nothing but mild pain relief and sent on their way, and patients facing end of life conditions being offered totally substandard care: they all deserved so much better Read full story Source: BMA, 22 September 2026

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

NHS bodies are forcing people with suspected attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism to wait at least two years before they can be assessed as they struggle to meet surging demand for diagnoses of neurodiversity. Four NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) covering large regions of England have adopted the approach because they cannot afford the cost of the number of assessments that people are seeking. Patient groups are warning that the “scandalous” delays such policies involve may damage children’s chances of succeeding at school, deny people the help they need to manage their lives, and increase the risk of suicide. The charity ADHD UK denounced minimum waits as “heartless and dangerous”. In all, 15 ICBs, which between them cover 19 million people, have brought in various ways of rationing assessments for ADHD and autism to try to balance their books. These include limiting the number of assessments the ICBs will pay for in any given year and using “clinical prioritisation” criteria to restrict assessment to those with the most serious signs of neurodiversity. Read full article. Source: The Guardian, 25 September 2026

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.

A final report into the care provided by neurologist Michael Watt finds some patients were misdiagnosed and received inappropriate treatment. Northern Ireland health minister Robbie Butler has apologised for failings in the care of patients treated by consultant neurologist Michael Watt. A final report into the cases has now been published by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA). It found that patients were harmed in some cases by delayed or incorrect diagnoses, inappropriate treatment and failures in communication and support. The report reinforces significant failings identified in an earlier review published in 2022. The RQIA said poor diagnostic practice, inadequate communication, isolated clinical decision-making and weak multidisciplinary oversight meant standards of care “frequently fell below expectations”. Read full article. Source: Healthcare Today, 25 September 2026

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has urged caution over the use of autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) for the assessment and treatment of NHS patients. AI firm Flok Health secured Class IIa Medical Device approval under EU regulations in October 2025, meaning that it can carry out diagnostic decisions without human supervision. The regulatory clearance originally covered care for back pain and sciatica, but was extended to in August to cover all musculoskeletal and pelvic health pathways, including hip and knee problems and urinary incontinence. However the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has warned that AI technologies being approved to perform specific diagnostic or clinical functions should not be confused with the autonomy of a healthcare professional. Read full article. Source: Digital Health, 24 September 2026

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.

Overcrowding in accident and emergency (A&E) departments and corridor care is linked to hundreds of deaths every week in the UK, a new study has found. A review of more than 19,000 adult patients found that, for every 10% increase in emergency department occupancy, the chance of dying in the following 28 days rose by 1%. The work was carried out at 134 A&Es in Wales, Northern Ireland and England last year, and presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in France. For the research, occupancy was calculated by how many spaces, such as cubicles, the A&E department had compared with how many patients were being treated. Results indicated that, on average, emergency departments were operating at 175% occupancy, a marker of overcrowding. Read full article. Source: ITV News, 25 September 2026 Related reading Corridor care and patient safety

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

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.

The chief people officer of a leading hospital trust has been subjected to “racist” abuse by colleagues, HSJ has learned. Frimley Health Foundation Trust chief executive Lance McCarthy sent an all-staff email claiming the provider’s CPO Shajeda Ahmed “was subjected to anonymous comments that became personal and aggressive” during an online briefing. She was also “repeatedly muted while trying to speak”, said Mr McCarthy. The CEO’s email, which was sent on the eve of the trust’s annual inclusion conference and has been seen by HSJ, continued: “Given that Shajeda was the only person from a minority ethnic background speaking on that call, the circumstances raise serious concerns that this was not simply unacceptable behaviour but had a racialised dimension. “It is not the first time Shajeda, or other colleagues from a minority ethnic background, have faced hostility while trying to lead difficult conversations on behalf of this organisation and, ultimately, for the benefit of our patients.” The CEO declared: “This makes me angry. Not concerned. Angry.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 24 September 2026