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Keep up to date with the latest news, research and activity in patient safety.

New type 2 diabetes jab could slash number of injections to one a week

Hundreds of thousands of people with type 2 diabetes could benefit if the medicines regulator approves a new weekly jab which cuts the number of injections needed by 86 per cent.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended a weekly treatment which reduces the annual number of insulin injections from 365 to 52. However, the treatment is yet to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
NICE approved insulin efsitora alfa in final draft guidance on Thursday.
Health officials said they are awaiting the MHRA’s ruling on the treatment “to understand whether it could be rolled out on the NHS”.
The treatment, also known as Onswik and made by Eli Lilly, is said to work as well as daily injections but only needs to be injected once a week.
Officials said the reduction will particularly benefit people who need help injecting insulin, including frailer people and those with sight loss, limited hand movement, learning disabilities, people who have difficulty following the steps involved or those who struggle to stick to their treatment regimen.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 20 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

NHS breeds leaders who are ‘too insular’, says ex-ICB chief

The NHS has some of the best leaders in the public service, but they often have a mindset that is too insular, according to a former ICB chief and senior civil servant.
Mark Fisher, who retired from Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board in March, also said the health service makes a “fundamental error” by undervaluing partnerships with local government and others.
Before joining the ICB in 2022, Mr Fisher held several senior posts in Whitehall, including director general of the Grenfell Tower inquiry and a director role in the Cabinet Office.
Asked about NHS leadership, he told HSJ he found the service had “some of the best leaders you’d find anywhere in the public service”. 
But he added: “I do think, if the NHS has a fault, it does breed leaders whose focus is largely within the NHS, and it sees itself as being able to solve its own problems. That’s a category error, a fundamental error. Many of the solutions to the NHS’s problems lie outside the NHS.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 20 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Lack of safety compliance means digital transformation risks ‘unprecedented’ patient harm

Lack of compliance with safety standards means the NHS digital transformation agenda risks “unprecedented” patient harm, according to a new warning from researchers.
The government’s 10-year health plan for England risks “propagating patient harm at an unprecedented scale” because of poor compliance with digital safety standards,  according to research published this week.
Shifting the NHS from analogue to digital is a core feature of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England, which was published in July 2025.
But the authors of research published in the journal BMJ Innovations have concluded that the NHS lacks the safety architecture needed to support this digital transformation.
The authors, from University College London, have warned that the digital ambitions of the plan risk placing an “unsustainable burden” on failing safety systems in the NHS.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: Nursing Times, 19 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Young vapers ‘at risk of breathing problems and becoming smokers’

Young people who start vaping risk developing breathing problems and going on to smoke cigarettes, children’s doctors have warned.
Child vaping is consistently linked with poor respiratory health, such as coughing, wheezing, bronchitis symptoms and asthma exacerbations, while vapes have been shown to act as a gateway to smoking cigarettes, according to one of the most comprehensive reviews of the available evidence so far undertaken by the Royal College of Child and Paediatrics Health.
The review’s co-author, Prof Will Carroll, said: “Vaping should not be seen as a harmless part of growing up. The evidence shows clear links with respiratory symptoms, nicotine dependence and subsequent cigarette smoking, while concerns about wider impacts on young people’s health continue to grow.”
He urged the government to quickly implement the new measures announced in July under the Tobacco and Vapes Act, which include plain packaging, moving vapes out of sight in shops, and restrictions on vape flavour names to move away from names inspired by sweets, desserts and alcohol in favour of simpler names such as “apple”.
Read full story
Source: Guardian, 20 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Dozens of maternity units at risk of closure

A national NHS leader has told HSJ he expects more maternity units to close, while analysis suggests dozens face similar problems to a hospital where births were suspended this month.
Ex-Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust boss Matthew Hopkins, now NHS Alliance’s acute and ambulance director, told HSJ “there will be other Barnstaples” following the suspension of births at North Devon District Hospital due to a lack of senior doctors. 
He said problems facing NDDH – which sees fewer than 2,000 births per year – were likely to affect similarly sized units, many of which face the same issues with recruitment and clinical sustainability.
For instance, they typically require similar levels of obstetric cover as larger facilities but find it harder to recruit to these positions as they are often located in rural, harder-to-reach, or coastal areas.
HSJ understands dozens of units could face such challenges nationally, with 26 out of 155 consultant-led units recording fewer than 2,000 annual deliveries last year.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 20 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Patient deaths and harm at under-fire NHS trust ‘could be next major health scandal’

Patients have died or have been harmed because of care failures at an under-fire NHS trust which staff fear could become the next major health scandal, whistleblowers have claimed.
An investigation by The Independent and Channel 4 into Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which treats more than a million patients across Greater Manchester, has uncovered allegations that patients have died in surgery without adequate investigation, while others had their cancer diagnosis delayed.
Some patients are alleged to have been left dying or in pain in overcrowded A&E corridors or have been forced to undergo invasive treatments that might have been avoided if their care had not been delayed.
And some staff claim they have been encouraged not to submit reports to managers when safety issues arise, while others say their accounts of serious harm and death are shut down or not investigated properly.
Retired consultant, Dr Glyn Smurthwaite, who blew the whistle over rogue spinal surgeon John Bradley Williamson, found to have harmed dozens of patients at the trust between 2009 and 2014, including some who had misplaced screws causing chronic pain, warned that the deterioration in patient care and the trust’s attitude to harm was not a recent development.
“I believe this is potentially bigger than the Mid Staffs scandal in terms of the magnitude of harm. For decades, Salford Royal [before the creation of the NCA] had seemingly executive-led and failing governance processes,” he said.
“The organisation has a malevolent intent to defocus from the true problem and just tick a box. We’ll do an investigation because the system forces us to generate an investigation… but they’ll close it, investigate it, file it, and no one will ever see it, and there’s probably no meaningful outcome from it.”
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Source: The Independent, 19 August 2026
Further reading on the hub:
Ensuring patients feel informed, listened to and supported long after the headlines disappear
Sam

Coroner warns of staff shortage after inpatient death

A coroner has warned that more people could die because of a shortage of dietitians for psychiatric inpatients, after the death of a woman whose nutritional needs went unmet.
Rachel Redman, assistant coroner for East Sussex, issued a Prevention of Future Deaths report to NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care after the death of 69-year-old Neeshat Dalal in December 2022. It was published this month with both responses.
Ms Dalal was sectioned under section 2 of the Mental Health Act for severe depression and struggling to eat and drink. She was admitted to Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust’s Heathfield Ward at Eastbourne District General Hospital. She collapsed during her third round of electroconvulsive therapy and died the following day of a heart attack.
A jury inquest found staff had given inadequate consideration to whether she was physically unable to eat and drink, rather than refusing food as a means of ending her life. Her nutritional needs “were not appropriately met”, it found, and she needed a dietitian and a more timely gastroenterology referral. The jury also criticised East Sussex Healthcare Trust over vasopressor use and a delay in moving her to high dependency care.
Ms Redman’s single matter of concern was funding for “appropriately qualified dieticians” to meet the nutritional needs of psychiatric inpatients at the trust and “in other trusts where such support does not already exist”.
She said she had heard evidence from the trust’s clinical director that “SPFT’s lack of funding for a dietetic resource extends to trusts nationwide and that this is not a local problem experienced by this trust alone”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 19 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Deaf patient given wrong jab due to sign language error, report says

A deaf woman was given the wrong vaccine because she was not provided with a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter at her doctor's surgery, a report says.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said disabled people were being let down by inaccessible communications.
It said the patient, Samantha, had booked a flu jab but was instead given a Covid vaccine after staff failed to show her a BSL video which would have highlighted the error. She said the experience had had a "profound impact" on her.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the "deeply upsetting stories" were "completely unacceptable" and NHS and social care organisations had a duty to make services accessible.
PHSO said public services were legally required to support people with their accessible communication needs, which might be due to a disability, neurodivergence or English not being their first language.
Samantha had booked her flu and Covid jabs for separate weeks and showed a nurse a note on her phone which said she was there for the "flu jab only", the PHSO said.
Despite that, the practice said it believed it had correctly established Samantha wanted the Covid vaccine and had got her consent through her grandmother, even though she had early-stage dementia and was not in the treatment room.
Following an investigation, the PHSO recommended the surgery should apologise and pay Samantha £450. It has also since signed a contract with a sign language interpreting company.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 19 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Senior staff told to improve behaviour after bullying and racism findings

A trust has called for “tangible improvements” in behaviour from some of its senior clinicians, after an external review reported bullying, harassment, and racism.
East Sussex Healthcare Trust commissioned an external review earlier this year following concerns being raised.
The full review has not been released, but a summary found that women, non-consultant doctors, and staff from ethnic minorities reported harm.
Some staff reported “shouting and abuse” of non-white medical consultants in meetings, and that trainees were “manipulated and coerced” to raise complaints about staff with minority ethnic backgrounds. The findings were first reported by the BBC.
In a statement to HSJ on Monday, chief medical officer Simon Merritt said he expected “tangible improvements in psychological safety, fairness, and leadership behaviours”.
“Bullying, harassment, racism, sexism or any other form of discrimination has no place in our trust. Our values of kindness, inclusivity, and integrity are not optional,” he said.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 18 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Watchdog links patient deaths to controversial NHSE policy

A watchdog has called for a pause in the rollout of NHS England’s “advice and guidance” policy to protect safety, and linked it to two patient deaths, HSJ can reveal.
The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) ordered a rapid review of the initiative, whose expansion is under way and forms a key part of NHSE’s waiting list reduction plan.
It said: “HSSIB recommends that NHS England/Department of Health and Social Care undertakes a rapid evaluation of [A&G] processes…
“Completing this evaluation and addressing findings before further expansion of advice and guidance processes, including as part of single point of access, would ensure risks to patient safety have been identified, assessed, and managed.”
A&G encourages GPs to seek specialist advice from secondary care clinicians, either before or instead of referring a patient.
HSSIB’s findings, from a review it has carried out in recent months and shared exclusively with HSJ, include strong support for A&G where it is working well. But its report says poorly designed or badly monitored implementation elsewhere is contributing to harm. 
This includes delayed and missed diagnoses, including in cancer care.
In one case it cites, a GP’s A&G request about a patient with a history of epilepsy went unanswered by a neurology team for over a month; a subsequent urgent referral then went unanswered for a further six weeks. While waiting to be triaged, the patient had a seizure at home and died of a cardiac arrest.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 18 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

‘It was barbaric. I was crying my eyes out’: why are so many women left in agony by routine womb examinations?

In February this year, Beth Harris sat in the day surgery waiting room of her local hospital and tried to steady her nerves.
She was there for a hysteroscopy, in this case to remove a fibroid. A thin surgical instrument with a lens, a light, a blade and an irrigation system for pumping saline solution would be inserted through her vagina and cervix, into her womb. The saline solution would widen the womb and the fibroid would be shaved away. Her hospital had advised taking paracetamol or ibuprofen an hour before the appointment, which Harris had done. However, the appointment was for 1pm, and by 4pm, she was still waiting in her hospital gown, surrounded by other patients.
Hysteroscopies are common procedures – classed by the NHS as “high volume low complexity”. In 2021, 71,000 took place in England alone. This was Harris’s third. “I’d been shocked by how painful the first two were,” she says. They had been “diagnostic” only – examinations of the inside of the womb – because years of breast cancer medication had led her womb lining to thicken. When she learned that she had a fibroid that needed removing, Harris’s first question was: “Will it be painful?” Her gynaecologist assured her that she would be given local anaesthetic and “wouldn’t feel anything”. He compared it to “going to the dentist”.
When Harris was finally called in, there were several people in the theatre. “There was the gynaecologist, nurses, an anaesthetist behind me, although he didn’t do anything. They were talking to each other throughout – no one was sitting with me. It was very casual.” The gynaecologist administered local anaesthetic – a small injection near the cervix – but there was no pause to see if it had worked. “There was no gap, no questions,” she says. “The injection itself was painful, but the procedure, with this spinning blade inside you, was unbelievable. The pressure, the pushing of the machine, the manipulation – it was barbaric. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. I felt as if I’d been assaulted. By the end, I was crying my eyes out.” A nurse led her, sobbing, to the recovery room. “There was no dignity, no privacy,” says Harris. “I said to her: ‘There must be a better way of doing this.’”
Katharine Tylko, a founder member of the campaign group Hysteroscopy Action (HA), has been saying the same thing for 16 years. HA was formed in 2010 to demand that all hysteroscopy patients are fully informed about the procedure, including the risk of severe pain, and given a full range of pain relief choices – local anaesthesia, gas and air, conscious sedation, epidural, and, for those who need it, general anaesthetic. “In short, we want parity with colonoscopy patients, half of whom are men,” says Tylko. In April, the renewed Women’s Health Strategy set out by the then health secretary Wes Streeting seemed a major breakthrough. Action 7 of the strategy called for informed consent and a choice of pain relief for hysteroscopies. “We were thrilled,” says Tylko, “but there’s been nothing since. Just silence.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 16 August 2026
Further reading on the hub:
Painful hysteroscopy community thread From pain gaslighting to gender biases in women’s accounts of hysteroscopy: A qualitative reflexive thematic analysis (20 April 2026) My experience of an outpatient hysteroscopy procedure
Patient Safety Learning

Hospital concerns ignored for 15 years, scientist tells inquiry

A scientist involved in the development of Scotland's super-hospital has claimed his concerns over patient safety were repeatedly ignored.
Dr Michael Bradnam told the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry he had spent 15 years raising issues with ventilation systems, electrical safety and humidity control at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus in Glasgow.
In a late submission to the probe, launched in the wake of a series of patient deaths, Bradnam said there had been no "formal responses" to his complaints.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) said it was reviewing the evidence, but that patient safety remained its "utmost concern".
The inquiry was launched in 2019 to examine mistakes made in the planning, design and construction of the QEUH campus, which includes the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC), following concerns about unusual infections and the deaths of four patients.
Scotland's independent public prosecution and death investigation authority is looking into seven deaths for potential links to the environment at the hospital.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 16 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

CQC ratings gap triples over a decade

The proportion of acute trusts with an overall Care Quality Commission rating that disagrees with at least one of their main hospital sites has tripled over the past decade, analysis reveals.
HSJ looked at instances where an acute trust’s “overall” or “well-led” rating disagreed with the overall rating of at least one of its main hospital sites – either higher or lower.
The gap – which rose from 9.2% in 2016 to 29.8% in 2026 – is a result of big delays in the CQC issuing new trust overall ratings.
It poses a risk that patients or others looking at the trust rating, which is often displayed on providers’ websites and premises, will misinterpret the care quality on offer. It is also frustrating some leaders who feel their trust’s ageing rating is out of kilter with improvements they have made.  
Penny Dash highlighted the problem in her 2024 review of CQC’s effectiveness, naming Manchester University Foundation Trust as an example of a trust rated “good” since 2019, despite its hospitals being downgraded in 2023. 
MUFT’s trust-level rating remains “good” now, two years on from the review. 
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 17 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Virtual ward referral could have prevented teenager’s death

Poor understanding and a failure in a trust’s virtual ward process contributed to the death of a 19-year-old man, a coroner has found.
The failure to refer to the virtual ward team, and misunderstanding about the team’s suitability, caused or contributed to the death of Isaac Arrowsmith, who was treated by East Cheshire Trust earlier this year.
According to a Prevention of Future Deaths notice, Mr Arrowsmith had haemoglobin Rainier disease – a condition that increases the risk of blood clots.
He attended hospital four times between 19 December 2025 and 1 January 2026 with chest pain and after coughing up blood, and was discharged each time, with clinicians concluding he had a chest infection or pneumonia.
On his third attendance on 31 December, a doctor decided to send Mr Arrowsmith home. He decided he should be under the care of the respiratory virtual ward team, for follow-up in 48 hours.
However, no referral was made to the virtual ward team that day.
The coroner found that, had the referral been made and the VW team considered it, the team would have rejected it and advised that Mr Arrowsmith should remain in hospital, because it was not appropriate for the virtual ward.
Instead, the patient deteriorated at home on 2 January and could not be resuscitated by paramedics.
The coroner concluded that, had he been admitted to hospital, “he would have been in hospital at the time of his deterioration on 2 January and would have been successfully resuscitated”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 17 August 2026
Patient Safety Learning

US cancer patients are facing longer waits for surgery - and the consequences are dire

American cancer patients are facing longer surgery wait times today than over the past few decades - with dangerous consequences.
Wait times have increased from weeks to over a month for six types of common cancer, a new study of more than 2.7 million patients found.
Those cancers include breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric and esophageal cancer, medical researchers said this week. The patients had stage 1 to 3 cancers - the only stages considered eligible for surgery at diagnosis.
For people with breast cancer, wait times increase from 34 days to 45 days, gastric cancer waits rose from 35 to 49 days and those with colon cancer waited for between 20 to 31 days.
Read full article.
Source: The Independent, 13 August 2026
Mark Hughes

Republic of Ireland: Number on children’s spinal surgery waiting list falls below 200, figures show

The number of children waiting for spinal surgery reduced to 199 patients last month, according to figures from Children’s Health Ireland (CHI).
At the end of July last year, 231 children were waiting for spinal surgery. The average wait time for an outpatient department (OPD) appointment is 3.9 months, down from 7.4 months at the same time in 2025.
Some 104 patients are on the active spinal surgery waiting list, meaning they are completing preoperative assessments and will be scheduled for an admission date in the future.
Seven patients have been waiting between 12 and 15 months for their procedure, two have been waiting for 18 to 24 months, and one child has been waiting between 24 and 36 months.
Since January, 229 procedures have been added to the surgical waiting list, while 279 spinal surgeries have been carried out during the same time frame.
Read full article.
Source: The Irish Times, 14 August 2026
Mark Hughes
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