Patient safety commissioner: “A relentless focus on NHS finance and productivity is failing patient safety” (BMJ, 10 July 2024)

Summary

When thinking about the difference patients can make in improving care, Patient Safety Commissioner Henrietta Hughes recalls a recent visit to a stroke unit.

“One of the patients said, ‘In the toilets, it would be much better if you had toilet paper on both sides of the cubicle, because if you’ve had a stroke you’ve only got a 50% chance of being able to reach it,’” she says. “Now, the power of that story is that you can have a unit full of experts—clinical nurse specialists, professors, people with PhDs—and they know everything about stroke, but they’ve never been in a cubicle with a patient who’s had a stroke when they’re on the toilet.”

For Hughes, that one moment crystallises the kind of insight that only a patient can bring. However, evidence that NHS patients often aren’t listened to keeps on coming.

“The patient’s anecdote is the canary in the coal mine,” tells Hughes to the BMJ. “It’s the thing that tells us there’s something going wrong. But too often we hear about patients who have raised concerns being gaslighted, dismissed, and fobbed off.”