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

Corridor care ‘endemic’ in Welsh A&Es as RCEM research reveals shocking reality

Every Emergency Department in Wales is caring for people in corridors new data from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has revealed.
The survey asked clinicians to record various data points including how many patients were in the department, how many were being treated in corridors and in ambulances, and how many were waiting to be admitted.
The findings, published today (24 March 2025), reveal that all 12 EDs in Wales had people being treated in corridors or waiting areas, and on at least one of the three sample days, all had patients being cared for in the back of ambulances.
In total 44% of patients in departments at the time were waiting for an in-patient bed.
The results revealed that:
12 out of 12 Welsh EDs had patients being treated in corridors Of the average total of 619 patients present in EDs at the time, 13.5% were being treated on trolleys in corridors and other inappropriate spaces. A further 10.7% of patients in waiting areas were deemed as needing a clinical space. 43.9% (272) of all patients were waiting for an inpatient bed. Every ED’s cubicles were full, with the average cubicle occupancy being 176%. The highest being 278% in one department where there were 75 patients and just 27 cubicles.
Responding to the findings RCEM Vice President Wales, Dr Rob Perry, said: “Recently the Welsh Government said that compromising the quality of care, privacy, or dignity of patients only happens on ‘occasions when the NHS faces exceptional pressure’.
“Well our research clearly shows that exceptional pressure is now the everyday norm in Wales’ Emergency Departments.
“And this must not be dismissed as just being down to but the annual seasonal upsurge. I am confident the results would be similar which ever time of the year we undertook this survey.
“These findings should shock and shame the Government into action.
“So called ‘corridor care’ is dangerous, degrading, dehumanising and it is now endemic here in Wales. Addressing it and its causes must be a political priority, and it must act now.”
Read full story
Source: Royal College of Emergency Medicine, 24 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

‘Hospices are in retreat’: funding crisis squeezing UK palliative care providers

At the end of 2023, St Catherine’s hospice near Crawley, West Sussex, moved to a new purpose-built, state-of-the art building. Twenty-four private rooms with en suite bathrooms and French doors leading to individual terraces were designed to make the final days of a patient’s life as peaceful as possible. Medical equipment was concealed, beloved pets were welcome to visit, and a drinks trolley came round each evening.
The hospice had cost almost £20m to build and equip, every penny raised by donations, legacies, charity events, trusts and foundations. The land was a gift from a local businessman.
Fifteen months later, half the rooms are mothballed and 40 jobs have been lost. Patients have to meet a higher threshold for admission, and a 24/7 helpline for those caring for dying people at home has been reduced to eight hours a day, Monday to Friday.
The cuts are the result of a funding crisis shared by most in the palliative care sector. “Hospices are in retreat,” said Giles Tomsett, the CEO of St Catherine’s for the past 11 years. This is happening, he pointed out, just as the baby boomer generation is about to need end-of-life care on a significant scale.
According to Hospice UK, a body that represents more than 200 hospices, many have had to make “tough decisions” about the services they provide. Last year, one in five hospices warned of service cuts, and 300 beds have been taken out of commission.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 24 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Don’t get surgery on a Friday

If you have any say, you might want to avoid scheduling your next surgery on a Friday.
The most comprehensive analysis of what happens to patients who have surgery on Fridays versus Mondays, published in JAMA by more than a dozen US and Canadian researchers, is unequivocal: The people who underwent all kinds of procedures before the weekend suffered on average more short-term, medium-term, and long-term complications than people who went under the knife after the weekend was over.
The study was based in Ontario and included more than 450,000 patients who received one of the 25 most common surgeries between 2007 and 2019.
Previous studies have generally found the same effects across different types of health systems: One UK-based study had reported better outcomes for Monday surgeries after 30 days. A paper looking at Dutch patients detected higher mortality rates after one month for patients who had Friday surgeries compared to Monday. This appears to be a phenomenon no matter the country, as prior US-based research also attests.
People who received pre-weekend surgeries — defined as a Friday or a Thursday before a long weekend — were overall about 5% more likely to experience one of those complications within a year of their surgery than people who got post-weekend procedures (on Monday or the Tuesday after a long weekend). The effect was stronger for heart and vascular surgeries; it was negligible for obstetric and plastic surgeries.
Researchers found Friday surgeries were more likely to be performed by junior surgeons when compared to Monday surgeries. “This difference in expertise may play a role in the observed differences in outcomes,” they wrote, based on a statistical analysis that controlled for other factors.
There could also be fewer senior colleagues on the hospital campus for the junior physicians to consult with, the authors said. In addition, the weekend doctors and nurses may be less familiar with the patient’s case, raising the risk that complications will be caught later and therefore lead to worse outcomes.
Read full story
Source: Vox, 21 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Trust reviewing 800 cases over child surgery failures

A large teaching trust has launched reviews of surgery on nearly 800 patients operated on by a children’s orthopaedic surgeon – and whether concerns raised 10 years ago could have prevented harm.
Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust said concerns were first raised about the surgeon’s work in 2015 and an external clinical review was carried out.
A new review by Verita will look at whether the 2015 recommendations “was acted upon appropriately and, if not, why”.
The surgeon, who has not been named, had their work restricted last year while a smaller external review was carried out into new concerns. They were suspended when this identified outcomes below expected standards in nine cases.
The BBC has reported that these involved complex hip surgery cases and found some of the children’s quality of life had been affected, including their mobility.
The trust announced that, following further findings, it has asked barrister Andrew Kennedy to chair a panel of expert clinicians reviewing the care of almost 700 patients who had planned surgery. It will also review an initial 100 adult and paediatric orthopaedic trauma cases.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 24 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

CEO: Staff suffering ‘moral injury’ from poor estates

Staff are suffering “moral injury” as deteriorating estates disrupt their ability to provide care, a chief executive whose hospital rebuild has been delayed has warned.
Thom Lafferty said Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust needed around £120m to fix its basic infrastructure – far outstripping normal capital allocations.
The CEO, who joined in November, said: “Our staff cannot provide the level of care that they wish to because of the deteriorating estate which causes moral injury.” 
He said: “If something is mission critical safety, then we would have access to other resources to fix it. What we don’t have is the ability to guard against that level of operational disruption, which ends up providing a poor service for our patients and also causes moral injury to staff.”
Moral injury is persistent psychological distress from acting against your ethical code, according to NHS Confederation.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 24 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

'Full and prompt access': Trump orders entry to sensitive government data systems

President Donald Trump signed an executive order 20 March to give more latitude to federal agency heads seeking access to government data systems.
The order, titled 'Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos, is written to promote “inter-agency data sharing” to root out inefficiencies.
The Department of Health and Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of the Treasury and other federal agencies will be required to rescind or modify guidance that restricts access to unclassified records, data, software systems and information technology systems.
It is the latest red flag for privacy experts concerned over the Trump administration’s seeming disregard for privacy norms and personal data.
“This is the loudest signal yet to federal agencies that they’re expected to ignore privacy and security safeguards and give the Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] full control over the data they hold,” said John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Nominally limiting DOGE access to what is ‘consistent with law’ is meaningless when the administration is already systematically violating federal privacy laws.”
Musk and the DOGE have previously accessed sensitive systems at the Treasury and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Media reports indicate they have been interested in contracting data at the CMS Acquisition Lifecycle Management system, as well as data at the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS), which contains personally identifiable information on health program beneficiaries.
Read full story
Source: Fierce Healthcare, 21 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

More US states report measles cases amid vaccine misinformation

More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.
The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. 
“I never thought in 2025, we would be looking at this resurgence of measles,” said Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health. “And I didn’t know it’d be in my backyard, either.”
On Thursday, several other states reported updates on measles. Ohio reported its first case of 2025 and Maryland announced two new cases. Both states have linked the cases to international travel. Alabama also announced that an unvaccinated child with measles travelled through the state, while Kansas has confirmed eight cases of measles among children this month.
Health departments in cities like Lubbock, where the hospitalised children with measles are being treated, have created mass vaccination clinics where anyone can get the MMR vaccine free of charge.
“We’re trying to remove every single barrier to get vaccinated,” Wells says. “And then we’re working more with messaging from trusted leaders about the importance of vaccination.”
But so far, the Lubbock clinic has only given out about 300 more vaccines than they usually would over the past few weeks.
Without widespread vaccination, the outbreak could continue for another year, she says. Other recent outbreaks have been in densely populated areas, but these cases are spread over 11 counties in Texas, plus New Mexico and Oklahoma.
“We have a large, spread-out population where we’re going to keep seeing measles pop up,” Wells says. “It’s going to take a lot of time to change the perception of vaccines, get people vaccinated, and then get to a point where there won’t be any vulnerable people left for measles to find.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 23 March 2025
 
Patient Safety Learning

Brexit a key factor in worst UK medicine shortages in four years, report says

Drug shortages in the UK have risen to their worst level for four years, official figures show, with Brexit considered a key reason so many medications are scarce.
Drug companies notified the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) about disruptions to supply 1,938 times during last year – the highest number since the 1,967 seen in 2021.
Medications to treat epilepsy and cystic fibrosis are among those that pharmacists are finding it hard or impossible to get hold of, creating risks for patients’ health.
The figures have emerged in a new report by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank, which obtained them under freedom of information laws from the DHSC, which oversees the availability of drugs UK-wide.
Mark Dayan, a policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust and its Brexit programme lead, said: “This wave of medicine shortages has already meant people struggle to find the drugs their doctors told them were needed for conditions like epilepsy and cystic fibrosis. It’s very worrying that it appears to be rolling on at full force into a third year.”
The report says that while drug shortages have become a problem globally in recent years, the UK is facing “a worsening situation” compared with the rest of Europe because of Brexit.
“Elevated and troubling levels of medicine shortages are continuing, with no consistent sign of improvement. The UK has had the lowest import growth in medicines of any G7 country, driven by a reduction in EU imports,” the thinktank adds.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 22 March 2025
Related reading on the hub:
Medicines shortages: minimising the impact on patients (a blog by Catherine Picton) Medication supply issues: A pharmacist’s perspective Medication supply issues: Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) Share on the hub your experiences of medication shortages: Medication supply issues: have you been affected?
Patient Safety Learning

NHS maternity care failures: A lack of 'skills, finances or drive to change,' says expert

By the entrance to Furness General Hospital in Barrow-in-Furness sits a sculpture of a moon with 11 stars. It is a memorial to the mother and babies who died unnecessarily due to poor care at the hospital between 2004 and 2013.
When the memorial was unveiled in 2019, Aaron Cummins who is chief executive at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: "We will never forget what happened. We owe it to those who died to continually improve in everything that we do."
Barely a month later, Sarah Robinson stepped into a birthing pool at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, a hospital run by the same NHS trust. She was about to give birth to her second child.
Within an hour, Ida Lock was born; within a week, she was dead.
The inquest into Ida Lock's death, which concluded last week, exposed over five weeks why maternity services across England have long struggled to improve - and this one case holds a mirror to issues that appear to be prevalent across a number of trusts.
'That investigation, carried out by Dr Bill Kirkup and published in March 2015, found there had been a dysfunctional culture at Furness General, substandard clinical skills, poor risk assessments and a grossly deficient response to adverse incidents with a repeated failure to properly investigate cases and learn lessons.
Morecambe Bay became a byword for poor maternity care and the trust promised to enact all 18 recommendations from the Kirkup review. And yet that never happened.
Ida Lock's inquest began last month, more than five years after she died - the delay was down to several reasons, including its particular complexity.
What emerged was just how profoundly many of those lessons had not been learned. Particularly egregious, says Ms Robinson, was a suggestion from a midwife – shortly after the birth - that Ida's poor condition was linked to her smoking, something Sarah had never done in her life.
As the coroner found on Friday, Ida's death was wholly avoidable, caused by a failure to recognise that she was in distress prior to her birth, and then a botched resuscitation attempt after she was born.
By the time she was transferred to a higher dependency unit, at the Royal Preston hospital, she had suffered a brain injury from which she could not recover.
Having failed to deliver their daughter safely, Ida's parents would have expected that the trust would properly and openly investigate her death. Instead, they pursued an investigation that Carey Galbraith, the midwife who completed it, would later describe as "not worth the paper it was written on".
They didn't take responsibility for their failings despite having an independent report from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB).
Clearly, the Morecambe Bay report was not, as was hoped, a line in the sand for maternity services across England, or a rallying cry for widespread improvements. As the inquest has shown, it did not even lead to sustained improvement at Morecambe Bay.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 24 March 2025
Further reading:
Ida Lock: Baby girl died from brain injury because midwives failed to provide basic care, coroner rules
Patient Safety Learning

People ‘reaching for pliers’ amid dental appointment difficulties

More than a quarter of Britons unable to secure NHS dental appointments in the past two years have resorted to self-treatment, a new poll reveals, highlighting a deepening crisis in NHS dentistry.
Almost one in five sought treatment abroad, underscoring the lengths people are going to for dental care.
Experts have urged the Government to “pick up pace and keep its promises” on dentistry, to avoid patients “reaching for pliers or cheap flights”.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos for the PA news agency, surveyed 1,091 British adults. It found that fewer than half (48%) had successfully booked an NHS dental appointment within the last two years.
While over a third (36%) hadn't attempted to make an appointment, a significant 18 per cent reported being unable to secure one, painting a stark picture of access challenges.
Among those who could not get an appointment, more than a quarter (26%) said they had treated themselves, while 19% said they went abroad for treatment.
Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association, said: “Desperate people are reaching for pliers or cheap flights because for many NHS dentistry has effectively ceased to exist.
“This service can have a future, but only if government is willing to pick up pace and keep its promises.”
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 21 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Patients being harmed due to repeated mistakes in reading scans

Repeated failings in the way scans are read are leading to delays in cancer diagnosis, unnecessary operations and avoidable deaths, England’s Health Ombudsman has warned.
Since publishing a report four years ago which highlighted mistakes in the way digital images are read and used as a diagnostic tool, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has upheld or partly upheld more than 40 cases in which similar failings were found.
The most common issues are doctors failing to identify an abnormality, scans not being carried out or delayed, and results not being properly followed up.
Examples of the impact of these failings include a 10-month delay in cancer being diagnosed which significantly harmed the person’s chance of survival. In another case, serious pelvic sepsis was not identified which led to an avoidable death, and in a separate case, a missed ankle fracture led to an avoidable operation.
The Ombudsman is calling for greater learning when things have gone wrong to prevent the same mistake being made.
Read full story
Source: PHSO, 20 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

USA: The effects of funding cuts on academic medical centres

Academic medical centres in the US are reacting to the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to medical research grants that cap reimbursements for indirect costs at 15%.
Although the cuts were temporarily blocked on 5 March by a judge in Massachusetts, institutions are already reeling from the proposed cuts.
Reimbursements for overhead costs on medical research projects average about 27%. The Trump administration wants to cut reimbursement to 15%, or more than $4 billion annually, but lawsuits from 22 states and organisations argued the change would limit research activity and endanger patients.
The effects of the cuts could be far-reaching, The New York Times reported. In 2024, the National Institute of Health spent around $32 billion on nearly 60,000 grants that included medical research areas such as cancer, genetics and infectious disease. Of that, $23 billion went to direct research costs, such as researchers’ salaries, and the other $9 billion went to indirect costs which can include laboratory upkeep, utility bills, administrative staff and access to hazardous materials disposal. These indirect costs are essential to making research happen. The 15% cut in overhead costs would reduce funding by at least $5 billion. 
The White House said those savings would be reinvested in more research. Advocates of the policy also told the Times that the cuts would reduce the chances of those funds being put towards programmes that taxpayers do not see, such as diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. Organisations would have to fill the funding gap via other grants or private donations. Advocates for the policy also pointed to other perks many institutions have such as tax exceptions. 
Many research institutions told the Times that if the cuts are finalised, they would simply do less medical research because they would not be able to afford their current programmes without government help. 
Read full story
Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 18 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Probe into claims people allowed in to watch hospital surgeries

An investigation has been launched into allegations that unauthorised people were allowed to watch procedures being carried out in hospital operating theatres.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said it was undertaking an internal review following the "deeply concerning" allegations.
An internal staff survey found that previous concerns regarding unauthorised people in theatres had been raised but not thoroughly investigated, the health board said.
"We want to reassure patients and their families that we are committed to providing safe and high-quality care, and patient safety and confidentiality is always of utmost importance to us," it said in a statement.
It is not clear how the individuals gained access to the operating theatres or who gave them permission to watch surgeons at work.
BBC Wales asked the health board to clarify whether the unauthorised people were friends and families of staff, but it said it was "unable to go into any further detail" and pointed out that the investigations was an "internal and confidential".
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 20 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Secret files reveal 1 in 3 hospitals in England missing 10% of nurses

After a ten-month battle, Channel 4 News’ FactCheck team has obtained NHS data revealing 1 in 3 of England’s hospitals are missing at least 10% of their planned-for nurses across their wards.
After the Mid-Staffordshire scandal, the government at the time promised to shine a light on the nursing understaffing that had contributed to putting patients at risk, sometimes even costing their lives.
For several years, crucial data was publicly available from NHS England. But in 2018, it was quietly shelved, and it hasn’t been possible to see it nationally since.
The situation is even more serious in critical care where 20% of nurses were missing from 1 in 5 units. While in neonatal care that increases to 1 in 3 wards.
Watch the full news story
Source: Channel 4 News, 20 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Post-Brexit reliance on NHS staff from ‘red list’ countries is unethical, Streeting says

Brexit has left the NHS increasingly dependent on doctors and nurses from poor “red list” countries, from which the World Health Organization says it is wrong to recruit.
The health service in England has hired tens of thousands of health staff from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe since the UK left the EU single market at the end of 2020.
A post-Brexit surge in the number of health professionals from red list countries working in England has sparked criticism that hiring so many is “unethical” and “immoral”, and will damage those countries’ health systems.
The big jump means the NHS now employs 65,610 staff from the WHO’s 55 red list countries in its 1.5 million-strong workforce. It has taken on 32,935 of those since the start of 2021, including 20,665 who joined in the 20 months between March 2023 and November 2024 alone, according to NHS figures obtained by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank.
Mark Dayan, a policy analyst at the thinktank and Brexit programme lead, said: “Recruiting on this scale, from countries the World Health Organization believe have troublingly few staff, is difficult to justify ethically for a still much wealthier country.
“Yet again, British failure to train enough healthcare staff has been bailed out by those trained overseas.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 21 March 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Breaking down health barriers - new app to help immigrant women deal with these challenges

Navigating health systems in a foreign country can add another layer of anxiety to situations that often already stressful. Cultural differences, language barriers and a lack of confidence can all present obstacles to getting the right medical care. A new app has been designed to help immigrant women deal with these challenges by providing them with AI-powered support they can use during health appointments.
It aims to make medical treatment more accessible and “empower women to manage their health with confidence”. And as well as offering help on understanding their health insurance, it also includes an online community where women can share experiences and support.
The WE app concept was created by QIMU Design in the US and recently won a UX Design Award. The award judges said: “Enabling healthcare access for everyone should be a goal for both society and healthcare providers.
“WE tackled this challenge with an app, reducing barriers for non-native speaking women to access healthcare. Its simple, user-friendly design suits its target audience, enabling effective navigation through complex healthcare systems. A wide range of functions including translation, insurance guidance, articles, chat and advice offer holistic support. The relevance and thoughtful design make WE a compelling and impactful concept.”
Read full story
Source: CIEHF, 20 March 2025
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