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

Mental health cases at A&E reach crisis level - as waits get longer and specialised beds dwindle

"We've got two," explains Emer Szczygiel, emergency department head of nursing at King George Hospital, as she walks inside a pastel coloured room. 
On one wall, there's floral wallpaper. It is scored through with a graffiti scrawl. The words must have been scratched out with fingernails. There are no other implements in here.
Patients being held in this secure room would have been searched to make sure they are not carrying anything they can use to harm themselves - or others.
"So this is one of two rooms that when we were undergoing our works, we recognised, about three years ago, mental health was causing us more of an issue, so we've had two rooms purpose built," Emer says.
"They're as compliant as we can get them with a mental health room - they're ligature light, as opposed to ligature free. They're under 24-hour CCTV surveillance."
There are two doors, both heavily reinforced. One can be used by staff to make an emergency escape if they are under any threat.
What is unusual about these rooms is that they are built right inside a busy accident and emergency department.
The doors are just feet away from a nurse's station, where medical staff are trying to deal with acute ED (emergency department) attendances.
On a fairly quiet Wednesday morning, the ED team is already managing five mental health patients.
One, a diminutive South Asian woman, is screaming hysterically.
She is clearly very agitated and becoming more distressed by the minute. Despite her size, she is surrounded by at least five security guards.
She has been here for 12 hours and wants to leave, but can't as she's being held under the Mental Capacity Act.
Her frustration boils over as she pushes against the chests of the security guards who encircle her.
"We see about 150 to 200 patients a day through this emergency department, but we're getting on average about 15 to 20 mental health presentations to the department," Emer explains.
"Some of these patients can be really difficult to manage and really complex."
"If a patient's in crisis and wants to harm themselves, there's lots of things in this area that you can harm yourself with," the nurse adds.
"It's trying to balance that risk and make sure every emergency department in the country is deemed a place of safety. But there is a lot of risk that comes with emergency departments, because they're not purposeful for mental health patients."
Read full story
Source: Sky News, 4 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Syphilis and drug-resistant gonorrhoea increasing

New cases of the sexually transmitted infection syphilis have risen again in England, continuing a trend dating back to the early 2000s.
While the overall number of people diagnosed with gonorrhoea has fallen, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases where the infection is drug resistant, new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data, external shows.
Health experts say this is a real concern, although the actual number of drug-resistant cases remains very low.
The NHS recently announced the rollout of the world's first vaccine programme to protect against gonorrhoea, aimed principally at gay and bisexual men.
The World Health Organisation describes antimicrobial resistance as an issue of global concern and one of the biggest threats to global health.
It threatens our ability to treat common infections and to perform life-saving procedures, including chemotherapy for cancer, caesarean sections, hip replacements, organ transplants and other operations.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 3 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

New technology should be paid for ‘like medicines’, says NICE chief executive

The purchase of approved digital products and services used for diagnosing and treating NHS patients should be reimbursed centrally, the chief executive of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence has told HSJ.
Sam Roberts said this was “the minimum a citizen should expect from a digitised health service” and that she was determined “to get that into the [government’s 10-Year Health] plan”.
She described the different financial arrangements for NICE-approved digital products and services as “outrageous”, and said they should instead be treated “like medicines”.
In a wide-ranging interview with HSJ, the NICE CEO also said:
She wanted NICE to “lead the charge” in determining which digital innovations the NHS should adopt
NICE would issue more guidance on which medicines it had previously recommended should no longer be used
A new approach was needed to deal with the impending wave of expensive “preventive medicines” such as the new wave of weight-loss drugs.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 3 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

A ‘war on children’: as US changes Covid vaccine rules, parents of trial volunteers push back

As the Trump administration contemplates new clinical trials for Covid boosters and moves to restrict Covid vaccines for children and others, parents whose children participated in the clinical trials expressed anger and dismay.
“It’s really devastating to see this evidence base officially ignored and discarded,” said Sophia Bessias, a parent in North Carolina whose two- and four-year-old kids were part of the Pfizer paediatric vaccine trial.
“As a parent and also a paediatrician, I think it’s devastating that we might no longer have the option to protect kids against Covid,” said Katherine Matthias, a paediatrician in South Carolina and a cofounder of Protect Their Future, a children’s health organization.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, head of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has called for new trials using saline placebos for each of the routine childhood vaccines recommended by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even though these vaccines have already been tested against placebos or against vaccines that were themselves tested against placebos.
Marty Makary, the head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s vaccines chief, outlined a plan in a recent editorial to restrict Covid boosters for anyone under the age of 65 without certain health conditions.
For everyone else between the ages of six months and 64 years old, each updated Covid vaccine would need to undergo another randomized controlled clinical trial, Makary and Prasad said.
It’s not clear when, how or whether this plan will be implemented officially.
On Tuesday, top US health officials said on the social media site X that they would remove the recommendation for Covid vaccination from the childhood immunization schedule, and would also cease recommending it for pregnant people, who have much higher risks of illness, death and pregnancy complications with Covid.
On Friday, the CDC appeared to contradict that announcement by keeping Covid vaccines as a routine immunization for children – though the agency now says health providers “may” recommend the vaccine, instead of saying they “should” recommend it.
Changing recommendations could affect doctors’ and parents’ understanding of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Cancer patients are dying after choosing fad social media ‘cures’

Cancer patients are dying due to misinformation on social media, turning down life-saving treatment in favour of “radical diets” and natural “cures”, oncologists have said.
Doctors gathered in Chicago for the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) general meeting said that some patients are delaying the start of their treatment until their cancer becomes metastatic, or incurable.
Some patients are choosing alternative treatments such as diets and essential oils instead of life-saving medicines, the doctors said, with patients falling victim to those who “deliberately push unproven treatments or ideas”.
The oncologists said that the field was “losing the battle for communication” in the age of misinformation.
England’s chief doctor added that the rates of misinformation around cancer seen by the NHS had become “alarmingly high” recently.
Richard Simcock, the chief medical officer at the charity Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “I have recently seen two young women who have declined all proven medical treatments for cancer and are instead pursuing unproven and radical diets promoted on social media.
“As a doctor, I want to be able to use the best available therapies to help people with cancer. A person is perfectly entitled to decline that therapy but when they do that on the basis of information which is frankly untrue or badly interpreted it makes me very sad. It’s clear that we have work to do to build back trust in evidence-based medicine.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 2 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

People 'dying in pain due to end-of-life care gaps'

Marie Curie said one in five hospital beds in Wales were occupied by people in the last year of their lives and "bold, radical" action was needed for services which were at "breaking point".
One family said they had to fight to ensure their 85-year-old father could die peacefully at home rather than in a hospital ward.
The Welsh government said it provided more than £16m a year to ensure people had access to the best possible end-of-life care. 
Marie Curie said gaps in care meant "too many people are spending their final days isolated, in pain, and struggling to make ends meet".
"End-of-life care in Wales is at breaking point," said Senior Policy Manager Natasha Davies.
"Services and staff are struggling to deliver the care people need, when and where they need it. There is an urgent need for change."
The charity recognised while hospital was the best place for many palliative care patients, better community and out-of-hours care would allow people to be cared for in their homes.
"It also means having meaningful conversations with dying people about their care preferences, so their wishes are heard and respected," added Ms Davies.
The Welsh government said good palliative and end-of-life care could make a "huge difference" to helping people die with dignity.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 2 June 2025
 
Patient Safety Learning

UK cancer survival rate doubles since 1970s amid ‘golden age’

The proportion of people surviving cancer in the UK has doubled since the 1970s amid a “golden age” of progress in diagnosis and treatment, a report says.
Half of those diagnosed will now survive for 10 years or more, up from 24%, according to the first study of 50 years of data on cancer mortality and cases. The rate of people dying from cancer has fallen by 23% since the 1970s, from 328 in every 100,000 people to 252.
But cancer remains the UK’s biggest killer, the report by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) says.
Progress has not been equal across all cancers, and women have not reaped as many benefits as men. There have been greater improvements in survival for men since the 1970s but survival remains higher in women.
Sustained pressure in the NHS means patients wait too long to get diagnosed and start treatment. In England, only about half of cancers are diagnosed at an early stage, and this proportion has not improved for almost a decade.
The CRUK chief executive, Michelle Mitchell, said: “Over the last 50 years, the proportion of the population dying from cancer has fallen by more than a fifth because of life-saving research into new ways to prevent people developing the disease, detect it earlier when they do and develop new cutting-edge treatments.
“Yet cancer remains the UK’s biggest killer, causing around one in four deaths in the UK – far more than other disease groups. For people affected by cancer, this means lost time and fewer precious moments with loved ones.
“As this report sets out, it is a time of both optimism and realism. We’re in a golden age for cancer research, with advances in digital, genomics, data science and AI reimagining what’s possible and bringing promise for current and future generations.
“However, despite the best efforts of NHS staff, patients are waiting too long for diagnosis and treatment, and cancer survival is improving at its slowest rate in the last 50 years. This is not acceptable.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 3 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

NHSE warns that AI translation apps could impact patient safety

NHS England has raised concerns that the inappropriate use of AI translation apps in healthcare could cause risks to patient safety. 
The ‘Improvement framework: community language translation and interpreting services’, published by NHSE on 27 May 2025, warns that digital exclusion can prevent the one million people in the UK who do not speak good English from accessing NHS services.
It also highlights “concerns about the appropriate use of AI translation apps that are currently widely used across the NHS” to communicate with patients with limited English.
“While translation apps provide a convenient, familiar and timely means of translation, they can also carry risks, particularly regarding accuracy and the potential impact on patient safety,” the framework says.
NHSE calls on national programme teams to develop a national policy briefing on the ethical and appropriate use of AI in healthcare for translation and interpreting services.
This would include measures to ensure the clinical safety and accuracy of AI outputs, outline when AI tools are suitable and when alternative methods should be prioritised, and specify the appropriate and safe use of AI tools for translation and interpreting.
The framework also recommends that clear guidance is developed across all care settings for recording patients’ language needs in electronic patient records.
Read full story
Source: Digital Health, 3 June 2025
Related reading on the hub:
AI in healthcare translation: balancing risk with opportunity
Patient Safety Learning

NHS gets £750m boost to fix crumbling buildings

The government has allocated £750 million to the NHS in England for tackling long-term maintenance problems. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the money could be used by hospitals, mental health units, and ambulance services to mend leaky pipes, improve ventilation, and solve electrical issues. 
The investment aims to prevent operations and appointments being cancelled because of crumbling infrastructure. However, healthcare leaders said the cash injection is a “drop in the ocean” and just a fraction of the estimated £14 billion maintenance backlog across the health service estate.
More than £100 million will be put aside for maternity units to replace outdated ventilation systems in neonatal intensive care units and create better environmental conditions for vulnerable babies and their families.
Hospital services were disrupted more than 4000 times in 2023-2024 due to poor quality buildings, according to England’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting. 
Streeting highlighted the severity of the problem, noting that burst pipes had flooded emergency departments, faulty electrical systems had shut down operating theatres, and mothers had been forced to give birth in substandard facilities.
A recent UNISON survey revealed NHS hospitals were plagued by rats, cockroaches, and sewage leaks. The survey also flagged problems with leaky roofs and out-of-order toilets.
Simon Corben, director for NHS estates and facilities at NHS England, said repairs were overdue. “Fixing the backlog of maintenance at NHS hospitals will help prevent cancellations,” he stated.
Read full story
Source: Medscape UK, 30 May 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Digital triage system ‘making it easier to contact GPs’

Replacing GP receptionists with a “digital triage” system has made it easier for patients to see their family doctors, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The NHS said that 99% of GP surgeries in England had now adopted an e-consultation system, meaning patients fill out an online form as their first point of contact.
After detailing symptoms, they receive a call or message back that day, offering a face-to-face appointment, a phone consultation, or directing patients elsewhere, such as to a pharmacy.
It means people are spared the hassle of having to call up their GP reception in an “8am scramble” for appointments, and NHS leaders reported that access had improved over the past year. New ONS figures show that 72% of people said it was easy or very easy to contact their GP, up from 60 per cent in July 2024.
However, access to GP appointments is still significantly below pre-pandemic levels, with surgeries struggling to cope with increased demand. There were 29.3 million GP appointments in April 2025 — a rise of almost five million on the same period pre-pandemic.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 2 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Pennsylvania’s patient safety database tops 300,000 reports, a first in 2024

With more than 300,000 patient safety incidents and serious events reported, Pennsylvania’s patient safety database reached a new milestone in 2024. Analysis by the state’s Patient Safety Authority (PSA) shows that reports increased 9.5% from 2023 to 2024, with serious events up by 7.3% and high-harm events up by 1.1%.  
PSA Executive Director Regina M. Hoffman, M.B.A., R.N., says, “It is gratifying to see the increase in reporting; healthy reporting is associated with a culture that supports and prioritizes safety.” 
Pennsylvania requires all hospitals, ambulatory surgical facilities and birthing centers to report events that cause or could cause patient harm. The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) is the largest patient safety data repository of its kind in the United States and is managed by PSA. Like the Betsy Lehman Center in Massachusetts, PSA uses data, education and collaboration to improve patient safety in Pennsylvania. PA-PSRS contains more than 5 million reports submitted since 2004, when the reporting requirement went into effect. 
Based on trends seen in the data, PSA is currently addressing a sharp rise in serious neonatal complications. Together with healthcare facilities and partner organisation ECRI, PSA analysed all serious event reports of neonatal injury or death in a single year and developed new recommendations to be released this summer.  
Read full story
Source: Betsy Lehman Center, 28 May 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Manslaughter case launched into Nottingham baby deaths

A corporate manslaughter investigation has been opened into failings that led to hundreds of babies dying or being injured at maternity units in Nottingham.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was examining whether maternity care provided by the Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS trust had been grossly negligent.
The trust is at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in the history of the NHS, with about 2,500 cases of neonatal deaths, stillbirths and harm to mothers and babies being examined by independent midwife Donna Ockenden.
The police investigation will centre on two maternity units overseen by the trust, which runs the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital.
NUH said it was "deeply sorry for the pain and suffering caused", and it was "absolutely right" that accountability was taken.
In a statement on the force's website, Det Supt Matthew Croome, from the investigation team, said corporate manslaughter was a "serious criminal offence".
He said: "The offence relates to circumstances where an organisation has been grossly negligent in the management of its activities, which has then led to a person's death.
"In such an investigation we are looking to see if the overall responsibility lies with the organisation rather than specific individuals and my investigation will look to ascertain if there is evidence that the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has committed this offence."
The force said its investigation into deaths and serious injuries related to NUH's maternity care - called Operation Perth - had seen more than 200 family cases referred to it so far.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 2 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

‘Difficult choices’: aid cuts threaten effort to reduce maternal deaths in Nigeria

At a UN-run antenatal clinic in a camp for people displaced by Boko Haram, the colours stand out like the bellies of the pregnant women. Abayas in neon green, dark brown and shades of yellow graze against the purple and white uniforms of nurses attending to them in the beige-orange halls of the maternal healthcare facility.
Within the clinic in Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria, midwives and nurses are handing out free emergency home delivery kits, “dignity kits” for sexual abuse survivors and reusable sanitary pads to curb exploitation of young girls who cannot afford them.
A dozen women sit on a mat in the corridor, awaiting the start of a session on reproductive health and doing their best to stay focused in the unwavering 42C heat. Among them is Yangana Mohammed, a smiling 32-year-old mother of seven who knits bama caps for a living.
“I like that the services are free,” she said, holding a yellow medical card while waiting to change her birth control implant. “I’m really glad for this clinic.”
Experts say more resources are needed to sustain these services in a region struggling with high maternal mortality, child marriage and female genital mutilation rates. UN global data for 2023, the most recent available, shows that Nigeria recorded 75,000 maternal deaths that year – nearly a third of the total worldwide.
Many of those cases are among north-east Nigeria’s estimated 45 million people. Ritgak Tilley-Gyado, an Abuja-based senior health specialist at the World Bank, said disparities were fuelled by inequities in health systems and socioeconomic and sociocultural status across the country.
“As a result, a woman in the north-east of the country is 10 times more likely to die from childbirth than her counterpart in the south-west … [with] a systems approach that tugs on the right levers, we can turn these abysmal numbers around and improve the wellbeing of mothers,” she said.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 21 May 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Obese patients denied knee and hip replacements to slash NHS costs

Obese patients are being denied life-changing hip and knee replacements and left in pain in a bid to slash spiralling NHS costs, The Independent can reveal.
One-third of NHS areas in England and multiple health boards in Wales are blocking patient access based on their body mass index (BMI).
The move, deemed “unfair” and “discriminatory”, goes against guidance from the National Institute for Care Excellence (NICE), which states BMI shouldn’t be used to restrict patients’ access to joint replacement surgery.
Patients are instead being told they must lose weight before they are eligible but waiting lists for NHS weight loss programmes have ballooned, with some people waiting up to three years to be seen while other services have shut, unable to cope with demand.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England criticised the policy, saying that denying patients care could cost them their mobility and cause their health to deteriorate, while Tory peer and former health minister James Bethell called on the government to do more to tackle the obesity crisis and end the “misery for millions”.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 31 May 2025
Patient Safety Learning

'Deeply dangerous' assisted dying bill should be scrapped, says leading care consultant

A leading British palliative care consultant has described the assisted dying bill as "not fit for purpose" and is urging MPs to stop the bill from progressing any further.
Rejecting assurances from supporters of assisted dying who claim the proposed British version would be based on the scheme used in the American state of Oregon - widely regarded as the model with the most safeguards - Dr Amy Proffitt said "it's far from a safe system".
"The majority, 80% of the people that have assisted death have government insurance with Medicaid or Medicare suggesting that the vulnerable in society are not worth it," she said.
"Put that into our NHS and what does it say about us as a society... those with disability, those with learning disabilities, those with social deprivation?"
Dr Proffitt added: "I think it's deeply dangerous for the bill that has been proposed and it needs to be scrapped and we go back and look again."
She and other leading palliative care doctors have expressed concern about the erosion of end of life care if the bill passes. It is a fear expressed by Britain's hospice sector.
Read full story
Source: Sky News, 1 June 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Pharmacists warn drug shortage affecting cancer patients

Pharmacists have warned that "one of the worst" examples of medicine shortages is affecting cancer patients.
Creon, a pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (Pert), helps digestion and is required by patients with pancreatic cancer, cystic fibrosis, and chronic pancreatitis. It is thought more than 61,000 patients in the UK need the medicine.
Some patients are said to be "skipping meals" to ration their medication due to a shortage of it, according to the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there were "European-wide supply issues" and it was "working closely with industry and the NHS" to mitigate the impact on patients.
Without the drug, patients lose weight and strength, which means their ability to cope with treatment such as chemotherapy is reduced.
Some experts have predicted shortages continuing until next year.
The Department of Health and Social Care has extended a serious shortage protocol for Creon which has already been in place for a year.
This indicates concern about shortages of a medicine and allows pharmacists to give patients an alternative - though they argue other drugs are also in short supply.
A spokesperson for the department said the "European-wide supply issues" were caused by manufacturing supply constraints.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 2 June 2025
Related reading on the hub:
Medication supply issues: A pharmacist’s perspective Medicines shortages: minimising the impact on patients
Patient Safety Learning
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