Skip to content

News

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

Scientists fear Trump administration cuts to NIH could impact the health of Americans for generations

Earlier this month, a Trump administration plan to cut the National Institutes of Health budget by more than 40% was leaked to the press. 
The preliminary budget sent shockwaves through the nation's health agency but also, the wider scientific community that relies on the NIH to fund research.
Since January, 1,300 NIH employees have been fired and more than $2 billion in research grants cancelled.
It's all part of the administration's effort to shrink the federal government, an effort led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Dr. Francis Collins, the long-time director of the agency who left the NIH said "When you're talking about medical research, when you're talking about people's lives, when you're talking about clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease or cancer that may take 3 or 4 years, you can't just go in and decide, 'I'm going to shut those down and maybe I'll try something else.' Those are people's lives at risk." 
Read full story
Source: CBS News, 27 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Prescription charges frozen in England

Prescription charges in England will be frozen this year – for the first time since 2022.
The charge for a single item will remain at £9.90 in 2025-26, the government has announced.
Three-month and annual prescriptions prepayment certificates will also be frozen and existing exemptions will continue. Charges only apply in England as prescriptions are free in the rest of the UK.
Nearly nine in 10 prescriptions in England are already dispensed free of charge, with children, over 60s, pregnant women, people with certain medical conditions and those on lower incomes exempt from paying.
Rachel Power, chief executive of Patients Association which campaigns for improvements in health and social care, said freezing the charges was a "positive step".
But she warned that it did little to tackle the "deep inequalities" in what she described as an outdated system.
She said the medical exemption criteria had remained virtually unchanged since the late 1960s, with nearly three million people in England living with long-term conditions not eligible for an exemption because they were not recognised 60 years ago or people rarely survived into adulthood.
Conditions which are not currently on the medical exemption list include Parkinson's disease, cystic fibrosis and motor neurone disease.
"We urge the government to go further - to commit to a full review of the medical exemption list and prescription charges," Ms Power added.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 28 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Mental health inquiry chair vows to 'seek out' truth

The chair of England's first public inquiry into mental health deaths vowed to "seek out the truth" - despite difficulties getting documents from the NHS.
The first key evidence sessions in the Lampard Inquiry - examining more than 2,000 deaths at NHS inpatient units in Essex between 2000 and 2023 - have begun in London.
Baroness Lampard said although the hearing was "breaking new ground", 21 legal notices had been issued to NHS organisations to force them to submit evidence.
"We will seek out the truth," she said, adding she would not hesitate to use her legal powers "to the fullest extent necessary to compel the production of evidence where it's not provided".
Counsel to the inquiry, Nicholas Griffin KC, said: "We have been unimpressed with a significant number of requests for deadline extensions... and the number of occasions where providers have not given the material expressly asked for."
He said there were problems with the condition of paper records, "missing documents" and providers, including private ones, sending information late.
Mr Griffin said it was a criminal offence to suppress, conceal, alter, or destroy relevant evidence and said providers should be properly resourced to respond to the inquiry.
He said the inquiry should not be delayed because of it.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 28 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Male workers should be able to carry out mammograms, experts say

Male health workers should be allowed to perform breast screening examinations to help relieve staff shortages, say experts.
X-rays called mammograms are offered to women between the age of 50 and 71 every three years to check for signs of cancer, but can currently only be performed by female staff.
The Society of Radiographers (SoR) has called for a change in policy due to "critical" staff shortages among radiographers who specialise in this area.
Sally Reed, 67, who had two mastectomies after mammograms revealed breast cancer, told the BBC that "if something can save your life you should go for it" - whether it's administered by a woman or man.
But Sally also admits women who already don't want to go for breast screening "would definitely be turned off by a man".
According to radiographers, the vacancy rate among mammographers who specialise in breast exams is 17.5%.
Changes to staffing were being discussed at the annual SoR conference, with discussions also taking place over whether transgender men should be included in the NHS breast screening programme.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 29 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

NHS leaving some patients with rare diseases to ‘fall through the cracks’, damning report finds

The NHS is “not working” for people in the UK with rare diseases as they are left to “fall through the cracks,” a damning new report has claimed.
Nearly three in ten (30%) people with certain uncommon conditions say they are waiting for five years between symptoms starting and being diagnosed with their condition.
Many are still facing “poor care co-ordination” after their diagnoses, the report by the Rare Autoimmune Rheumatic Disease Alliance (RAIRDA) finds, alongside difficulties accessing information and support.
Geographical factors also make too big a difference, the authors add, with where people live making a drastic difference to the level of care they can expect to receive.
The report claims that the UK health system has had an “increasing focus” on major and common conditions, but people with these rare conditions are being left to “fall through the cracks”.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 29 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

We’re ‘fundamental’ to future ICBs, say pharmacists

Medicines management teams should not be targeted by imminent cost cuts and must remain a “fundamental component” of the new model for integrated care boards, NHS England has been told.
An open letter sent on behalf of ICB chief pharmacists to the new NHS England leadership last week stressed the need to keep tight control of the service’s £20bn medicines spend. ICBs have been told they must cut their running costs in half by October, and there is considerable debate at local and national level over where the axe should fall. 
The letter said: “Prescribing is one of the most volatile expenditures in the NHS, and we are collectively keen to work with you to maintain grip on the management of this precious resource.”
The letter’s authors claim ICB medicines management teams made savings worth £500m in 2024-25. Reducing spend on medicines - which is the second-largest area of NHS expenditure after staffing - features prominently in ICB cost improvement plans across the country. 
The letter continues: “We recognise that we need to continue to transform how the system and individual people use medicines effectively (including alternatives to prescribing).” This requires, it suggested, “professional pharmacy leadership in all sectors” to “navigate the conflicting complexities of supporting financial balance”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 25 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Doctors’ leaders criticise GMC advice allowing resident doctors to supervise PAs

The Royal College of Physicians has said it is “disappointing” that new General Medical Council guidance does not state that physician associates (PAs) must be supervised by a senior doctor.
The BMA has also criticised the GMC’s new good practice advice for doctors who supervise and work with PAs and anaesthesia associates (AAs), calling it an “unhelpful contribution.”
Both the RCP and BMA argue that PAs should be supervised only by senior doctors such as consultants, GPs, and autonomously practising specialist or associate specialist doctors and never by doctors in training. But the GMC’s new guidance suggests that other healthcare professionals or resident doctors could take on this responsibility.
Dr Hilary Williams, RCP clinical vice president elect and chair of the RCP PA oversight group (PAOG) said: 
"The RCP published interim guidance for the supervision of physician associates (PAs) in December 2024. In our guidance, we were clear that PAs working in the medical specialties must be supervised by a senior doctor (a consultant, specialist or associate specialist doctor) and never by a resident. 
'It is therefore disappointing that this new resource from the GMC allows for the supervision of PAs by other healthcare professionals and doctors in training – we drew a firm boundary in our guidance to protect the training opportunities and role of resident doctors.
'Patient safety is our priority. This is why we've repeatedly called for a national scope of practice for PAs. They should not work autonomously, prescribe medications, or request ionising radiation. The RCP interim guidance is overall more detailed, structured and explicit about scope of practice, supervision and how PAs should explain their role and responsibilities. We would expect and encourage trusts and health boards to follow this guidance where PAs are being employed to work in medical specialities."
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: BMJ, 28 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

US congressmen propose bill to address patient safety loophole in medical imaging

Three US congressmen have proposed a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing what they say is a patient safety loophole in medical imaging. 
Reps. Don Davis, Morgan Griffith and Ben Cline earlier this month introduced the Nuclear Medicine Clarification Act of 2025. Their concern stems from the issue of radiopharmaceutical extravasations—medical errors that occur when a radioactive drug is accidentally injected into the tissue rather than a vein. 
These incidents can cause tissue damage and compromise the procedure, they note. However, since 1980, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has exempted radiopharmaceutical extravasations from “medical event” reporting requirements, even if they result in dangerous doses.
“Patients deserve to have protections and transparency when undergoing treatment for serious health conditions,” Davis said in a statement. “Improving reporting for accidental radiation exposure is long overdue and we must restore the rights of the patients who place their trust in healthcare providers.”
Those involved say the bill would ensure transparency and simplify federal rules. The NRC in 2022 accepted a petition to close the loophole and published a draft proposed rule to require reporting of extravasations that result in injury. However, Davis and colleagues claim the proposal is “insufficient and uses a subjective standard to determine whether an event is reportable.” 
“It is disturbing that in the year 2025 patients can be extravasated with large doses of radiation that affect their imaging or therapy procedure and may have skin and tissue implications. And it is unconscionable that patients are not told, and the NRC is not informed,” Jackson W. Kiser, a radiologist with the Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virgina, who has published numerous articles on this topic, said in the announcement. “I am pleased that Congress is stepping in to force the NRC to protect patients.”
Read full story
Source: Radiology Business, 25 April 2025
Further reading on the hub:
National campaign aims to reduce patient harm from infiltration and extravasation Infiltration and Extravasation: A toolkit to improve practice (NIVAS, 20 February 2024)
Patient Safety Learning

The United States is witnessing the return of psychiatric imprisonment

Across the USA, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as “modern mental health care”. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.
These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state’s power to surveil, detain and “treat” marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control – particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.
Take Hochul’s proposal, which seeks to lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in New York. Under her plan, individuals could be detained not because they pose an imminent danger, but because they are deemed unable to meet their basic needs due to a perceived “mental illness”. This vague and subjective standard opens the door to sweeping state control over unhoused people, disabled peopleand others struggling to survive amid systemic neglect. Hochul also proposes expanding the authority to initiate forced treatment to a broader range of professionals – including psychiatric nurse practitioners – and would require practitioners to factor in a person’s history, in effect pathologizing prior distress as grounds for future detention.
This new era of psychiatric control is being marketed as a moral imperative. Supporters insist there is a humanitarian duty to intervene – to “help” people who are suffering. But coercion is not care. Decades of research show that involuntary (forced) psychiatric interventions often lead to trauma, mistrust, and poorer health outcomes. Forced hospitalization has been linked to increased suicide risk and long-term disengagement from mental health care. Most critically, it diverts attention from the actual drivers of distress: poverty, housing instability, criminalization, systemic racism and a broken healthcare system.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 27 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

My son took his life. Why did the NHS ignore the warning signs?

Chris Nichols was one of 2,000 mental health inpatients who died in Essex between 2000 and 2023. The Lampard Inquiry is tasked with finding out why
In one of his final conversations with his mother, Chris Nichols was upbeat and hopeful despite a period of turbulence and poor mental health.
He had phoned Linda Lindsay from Colchester Hospital, in Essex, where he had sought help after the latest in a series of suicide attempts. Despite complaining of voices in his head and acknowledging he had hurt himself, there was a note of optimism as he told her things were going to change.
“He told me ‘it’s all right, Mum, you don’t need to worry. I’m going to get help’,” says Lindsay, 70, recounting the phone call in May 2022. “If only that happened.”
Shortly afterwards, in the early hours of May 30, Nichols was discharged and took a cab home, his right wrist bandaged from the self-inflicted wounds. On June 3 he took his own life at his home in Clacton-on-Sea, aged 44.
Nichols’s mother and stepfather Iain Lindsay, 72, believe his suicide was preventable. He had a long history of mental health issues and alcohol dependency, and had been at A&E on May 24 after overdosing on the anxiety drug Clonazepam.
His relatives cannot understand why, given his risk factors, he was released so quickly, discharged to his GP and advised to self-refer to alcohol related services. They say he was not given a clear care plan or proper support.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 25 April 2025
Related reading on the hub:
What is the Lampard Inquiry and what could it change?
Patient Safety Learning

What is the Lampard Inquiry and what could it change?

Mental health patients are among the most vulnerable in society, but services in England have been under huge strain for at least a decade, with sometimes fatal consequences. A public inquiry backed by the government is focusing on deaths in Essex as a starting point, but what is it and what does it hope to achieve?
Solicitors representing a growing number of families who have lost loved ones say the Lampard Inquiry, which resumes on 28 April, is as important as those surrounding the Post Office and infected blood scandals.
The chair of the inquiry says it is looking at significantly more than 2,000 deaths and the inquiry team says the alleged failings are "on a scale that is deeply shocking".
The failures reported in Essex over 24 years could be an indication of what is going on elsewhere. By examining those failures in detail, it is hoped mental healthcare will be improved across England.
The Lampard Inquiry is the first public inquiry specifically looking into mental health deaths.
It will aim to understand what happened to patients who died at children and adult inpatient units, under the care of the NHS in Essex, between the years 2000 and the end of 2023.
The inquiry will focus on Essex Partnership University Foundation NHS Trust , external(EPUT) and the North East London Foundation Trust, external (NELFT), along with organisations that existed previously.
Calls for an inquiry were first made by the mothers of two 20-year-old men who died at the Linden Centre - a mental health unit in Chelmsford.
In 2008, Ben Morris, the son of Lisa Morris, was found dead after calling her to say he wanted to leave.
Four years later, in 2012, staff said they found Melanie Leahy's son Matthew unresponsive, and he was pronounced dead in hospital. He reported being raped days before he died.
Essex Police investigated and no arrests were made but the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), which followed up Ms Leahy's complaints, found the mental health trust failed to follow its own rape allegation procedures.
His care plan was also falsified.
Since then, repeated failures have been raised in the county.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 9 September 2025
Patient Safety Learning

‘Immobile’ patient dies after discharge with no care package

An “immobile” patient was found dead after a trust discharged him home with no support and no means of calling for help, a coroner has found.
Samuel Brookes, who lived alone, was taken home from Russells Hall Hospital, run by The Dudley Group Foundation Trust, and left in his bed without access to his alarm or mobile phone.
John Ellery, the coroner for Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, said in a Prevention of Future Deaths report sent to the hospital: “Mr Brookes was left unattended for two weeks until on the 22 April 2024 his grandson attended and found him unresponsive, wedged between his bed and the bedroom wall… When Mr. Brookes got into difficulty he could not raise the alarm or call for help.”
The coroner found the hospital had sent Mr Brookes home “without rearranging his required care” and there was “no record or documentation or process to show or demonstrate that the care had been rearranged”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 28 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

CEO tells staff ‘silence is complicity’ after record sexual misconduct reports

An ambulance trust has dismissed “multiple staff” for sexual misconduct offences this year following its “highest year ever for reported sexual safety incidents” in 2024, HSJ has learned.
East of England Ambulance Service Trust’s chief executive Neill Moloney wrote to staff to warn them they all have a “moral obligation” to “step up when [they] see inappropriate behaviour”.
In the letter, seen by HSJ, Mr Moloney said: “Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity. We all have a moral obligation to support those that experience this behaviour… If you witness or experience inappropriate sexualised behaviour, I am encouraging you to report it.”
He added: “Last year alone, 44 sexual safety incidents were reported — our highest year ever for reported sexual misconduct — figures driven in part by higher reporting of incidents.
“Already in 2025, we have dismissed multiple staff for sexual misconduct. This includes sexualised conversation and language in ambulances and crew rooms. This is considered sexual misconduct and we need your support to continue to eradicate this.”
The trust told HSJ that four people were dismissed for sexual misconduct in 2024, and to date in 2025, a further four people have been dismissed.
The concerns follow the results of the NHS Staff Survey published last month, which highlighted the depth of the sexual misconduct problems across the whole ambulance sector, with the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives calling for a “cultural reset”.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 28 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

The Aids crisis was set to end by 2030 – now Trump’s cuts will mean 4 million more deaths

Donald Trump’s slashing of foreign aid has derailed the projected end of the Aids pandemic and could lead to four million extra deaths by 2030, The Independent can reveal.
New figures show the number of Aids-related deaths could jump from six million to 10 million in the next five years unless funding is reinstated, according to forecasts from the UN Aids agency (UNAIDS).
The unprecedented disruption to global HIV programmes by the US is also projected to lead to more than three million more Aids orphans than previously expected by the end of the decade.
Only last year, the UN said a goal to end the Aids pandemic by the end of the decade was in reach, equating to a 90% reduction in new infections and deaths.
According to the UN figures, there will be 3.4 million more orphans, defined as children who have lost at least one parent to Aids. In addition, 600,000 more newborns could be infected with HIV by 2030 – more than double the number originally feared. That will bring the total number of infant infections to a million by the end of the decade, analysis of the figures by The Independent shows.
Responding to the grim statistics, Professor Francois Venter, a leading HIV doctor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says: “All the gains that we’ve seen over the last 20 years will start being steadily reversed.
“Our hospitals when I was training 25 years ago were absolutely, absolutely overwhelmed. People were dying on the floor and at the moment hospitals are full, but they will be easily overwhelmed with what’s coming.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 18 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Oliver McGowan training 'lifted scales from my eyes'

A senior doctor says he is shocked at how many deaths of people with learning disabilities and autism are "potentially preventable by really basic things".
Dr Andrew Kelso is a consultant neurologist and the executive medical director at the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (SNEE ICB).
The ICB, which commissions all health services, has rolled out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism, external to its health and social care professionals.
"That's the thing that keeps me awake at night," Dr Kelso told the BBC. "How little I knew before I went and how much I knew afterwards, and what a missed opportunity that might have been for me."
The mandatory training - for all NHS staff who work with the public - is named after Oliver McGowan, an 18-year-old from Bristol who died in 2016 after he was given an anti-psychotic drug he was allergic to, despite repeated warnings from his parents.
His mother Paula had lobbied for mandatory training to potentially "save lives".
Dr Kelso, a consultant specialising in epilepsy, said: "I thought I knew quite a lot about learning disability.
"But the scales fell off my eyes when I was in the training and realised how much I didn't know - and that's in a career where I see people with learning disability all the time.
"How many gaps are there in the knowledge of people that don't spend their entire career with learning disability and may just come across them every now and then?"
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 25 April 2025
Related reading on the hub:
Video: The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism How can GP practices help improve health outcomes for people with learning disabilities? Interview with a Community Learning Disability Nurse Top picks: Breaking down the barriers faced by people with learning disabilities
Patient Safety Learning

Violence and abuse against ambulance staff in UK at highest level on record

The number of violent assaults, acts of aggression and incidents of abuse against ambulance staff in the UK has risen to the highest on record, according to data health leaders described as “horrendous” and “truly shocking”.
There were 22,536 incidents of violence, aggression and abuse directed at paramedics and other ambulance workers in 2024-25, up 15% on the 19,633 in 2023-24, figures from the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) show.
It means that each week on average those responding to 999 calls are the victims of 433 attacks, include kicking, punching, slapping, head-butting, spitting, sexual assault and verbal abuse.
Senior ambulance officials said they believed the true toll was even higher, with many incidents not reported or recorded. Female paramedics and ambulance workers are the most likely to be targeted by the public.
Jason Killens, the AACE chair, said: “These figures are truly shocking and reflect a pattern of increased violence, aggression and abuse directed at hard-working ambulance people who are there to help people in their times of greatest need.
“Frontline staff as well as call handlers are affected by this horrendous abuse, and this unacceptable behaviour has a major long-term impact on the health and wellbeing of ambulance people who are simply trying to do their jobs and help save lives.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 24 April 2025
Patient Safety Learning
Registered address: Patient Safety Learning, China Works SB203, 100 Black Prince Road Vauxhall, London, SE1 7SJ

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications
Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.