Summary
This is the report of the Health and Social Care Select Committee endorsing the appointment of Dr Henrietta Hughes as the first Patient Safety Commissioner for England. The publication of this report follows a formal meeting (oral evidence session) of the Committee which took place Tuesday 5 July 2022.
Content
The post of Patient Safety Commissioner for England was created in response to a recommendation of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (also known as the Cumberlege Review), which examined the response of the healthcare system to the harmful side effects of three medical interventions: hormone pregnancy tests, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh implants. These interventions had resulted in a truly shocking degree of avoidable harm to patients over a period of decades.
A key recommendation of this Review was the creation of a Patient Safety Commissioner to represent the views and interests of patients in relation to the safety of medicines and medical devices. In this meeting, members of the Select Committee were asked to consider the candidate’s prior experience, suitability for the role and their priorities. A video recording of this session can be found here.
In the report, the Select Committee states:
“Dr Hughes told us of her motivation to make patients’ and service users’ lives better and safer. She said that the “harrowing and traumatic” experiences described in the First Do No Harm report, and the campaigning by patients to be heard, were her reasons for applying for the role.
Dr Hughes told us how she would draw on her experience of quality assurance, improvement and management of quality failure from her previous role as a Medical Director for NHS England. Additionally, she described her role championing the voices of NHS staff as National Guardian for the NHS. She wrote that, if appointed, she would be able to bring learning from previous roles to “amplify the voices of patients”.
The hearing addressed the definition and remit of the role of Patient Safety Commissioner. The title of Patient Safety Commissioner means that they will be approached by many NHS patients with broader patient safety issues that go much beyond medication and medical device errors. We are concerned about the lack of definition in both the role and what success will look like in the coming years. Dr Hughes spoke of fulfilling a signposting role for broader patient safety concerns. If that is to be the case, she would need the resources to do that, something which the Committee would welcome. In the absence of a clear definition of the role, clear metrics to define success and adequate resources, there is a serious risk that this new post will fail. We urge the Department of Health and Social Care to address this urgently.
Notwithstanding such concerns, Dr Hughes is an excellent candidate who showed a high degree of empathy for patients and their needs, and her background as National Guardian makes her extremely well qualified to take on an important new role in patient safety. We therefore approve the appointment and wish Dr Hughes the very best in the role.”
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