One in five recent inspections of maternity services have raised concerns over “essential” breathing equipment for newborn babies, HSJ has found.
Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors have flagged fears over shortages and overdue maintenance of resuscitaire, a device commonly used by midwives if babies require additional support with breathing. Experts say the equipment should be immediately available to ensure safe resuscitation.
The CQC itself said the lack of such equipment was impacting patient safety at some hospitals.
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Source: HSJ, 31 May 2024
IT system failures have been linked to the deaths of three patients and more than 100 instances of serious harm at NHS hospital trusts in England, BBC News has found.
A Freedom of Information request also found 200,000 medical letters had gone unsent due to widespread problems with NHS computer systems.
Nearly half of hospital trusts with electronic patient systems reported issues that could affect patients. NHS England says it has invested £900m over the past two years to help introduce new and improved systems. Some hospital trusts have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on new electronic patient record (EPR) systems, but BBC News has discovered many are experiencing major problems with how they work.
Quoted in this article, Clive Flashman, Chief Digital Officer of Patient Safety Learning, said, “If you look at the sorts of serious issues that are coming out around the country where patients are being harmed, in some cases dying, as a result of these systems not working properly, I would imagine there are tens of thousands of these that are happening that probably never get discussed”.
Read the full story.
Source: BBC News, 30 May 2024
Read more about Patient Safety Learning's reflections on these issues and the importance of patient safety being at the heart of the development and implementation of EPRs here.
A mental health trust and a band seven ward manager it employed have denied manslaughter charges over a death on an inpatient ward.
North East London Foundation Trust and Benjamin Aninakwa entered not guilty pleas to manslaughter by gross negligence at the Old Bailey on Friday (24 May).
It is believed to be the first time a named NHS manager at a trust has faced corporate manslaughter charges, alongside the organisation that employed them.
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Source: HSJ, 29 May 2024
A man discovered a medical specimen bag had been left inside his abdominal cavity after his hernia surgery, the BBC has found.
The surgeon who carried out the procedure, at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in 2016, also left behind part of Tom Hadrys's bowel that had been cut out during the operation.
According to a hospital incident report seen by BBC Newsnight, the surgeon realised his mistakes while driving home from work.
Sussex Police are investigating at least 105 cases of alleged medical negligence by two surgery teams at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.
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Source: BBC News, 24 May 2024
A nine-year-old boy died from sepsis after doctors and nurses missed a "significant" GP note, an inquest heard.
Dylan Cope, from Newport was taken to the Grange Hospital in Cwmbran, Torfaen, on 6 December 2022 after his GP wrote “query appendicitis”, but this note was not read.
The senior doctor on shift that night said GP referrals were not being printed off and put into patients' notes because of how busy the department was.
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Source: BBC News 23 May 2024
Across the world, medical tests are being adjusted according to patients’ skin colour – with shocking consequences. One science writer tells how she helped overturn one of the pernicious assumptions of race-based healthcare.
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Source: Guardian, 25 May 2024
The NHS has spent £4.1bn over the last 11 years settling lawsuits involving babies who suffered brain damage when being born, amid claims that maternity units are not learning from mistakes.
It paid out just under £3.6bn in damages in 1,307 cases in which parents were left to care for a baby with cerebral palsy or other forms of brain injury, NHS figures reveal.
NHS Resolution, which defends hospitals in England accused of medical negligence, spent another £490m on legal fees, taking the total cost of dealing with the legal actions to £4.1bn.
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Source: Guardian, 26 May 2024
The rising number of people waiting for physiotherapy treatment is causing problems in other parts of the NHS and harming the UK’s economy, leading clinicians have warned.
Waiting lists for treatment for musculoskeletal (MSK) problems such as back, neck and knee pain have grown by 27% since January last year. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) said the number of physiotherapy posts in the NHS was not keeping pace with demand from Britain’s ageing and increasingly obese population.
The CSP said the UK needed a 7% increase in NHS physiotherapy positions every year to meet rising demand. Musculoskeletal conditions that are left untreated can become more complex and lead to mental health problems or the need for surgery, as well as time off work.
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Source: Guardian, 26 May 2024
The NHS has today announced the 143 hospital sites that will test and roll out Martha’s Rule in its first year.
Confirmation of the first sites to test implementation of Martha’s Rule is the next step in a major patient safety initiative, following the announcement in February of NHS England funding for this financial year.
The purpose of Martha’s Rule is to provide a consistent and understandable way for patients and families to seek an urgent review if their or their loved one’s condition deteriorates and they are concerned this is not being responded to.
Read full press release
Source: NHS England
The number of coroner warnings issued last year which were linked to a lack of capacity in emergency care was around four times that seen before covid.
HSJ analysis of “prevention of future deaths” reports – also known as Regulation 28 reports – show a steep rise since 2021 in deaths linked to long delays in ambulance responses, hospital handovers, and emergency department waits.
There were 52 in this category in 2023. The largest number pre-covid was 13 in 2018, although the rate also appeared to be slowly rising in the years running up to 2020.
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Source: HSJ, 28 May 2024
Trainee midwives at a struggling trust have raised serious concerns about bullying and feeling afraid to speak up, an NHS England report has revealed.
Experiences of pre-registration midwifery trainees at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital and Good Hope Hospital, part of University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust, are detailed in a recent NHS England workforce, education and training report following a visit in January.
The report said learners at BHH reported a “concerning culture of bullying and undermining”, with some midwives displaying hostility and rudeness, and one student constantly feeling like they were in “fight or flight mode”.
At GHH, students were aware how to raise concerns but described it as a “waste of time”, telling NHSE qualified midwives had informed them they frequently raised concerns about staffing levels without these being resolved.
Meanwhile, at BHH trainees said lack of action taken when they tried to raise concerns had created an environment where learners were reluctant to voice fears about patients or seek guidance on patient care.
The NHSE report said students provided multiple instances of trying to raise concerns which were either not acted on or they experienced repercussions for having attempted to speak up.
One person expressed concerns about a woman who had experienced severe bleeding following birth but their supervising midwife dismissed their concern.
They then escalated the matter to another staff member and was taken more seriously, but as a result, the student said their supervising midwife “made my life hell” for the rest of the shift.
NHSE said it heard examples where midwives made derogatory comments about students in public, including about one person’s weight, which caused them to leave the building in tears.
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Source: HSJ, 24 May 2024
A nine-year-old boy died of sepsis eight days after he was discharged from hospital with influenza and sent home with painkillers, an inquest has been told.
Dylan Cope was admitted to Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, South Wales, with abdominal pain but was discharged after a medic “dismissed any concern” about his appendix.
Days later the boy had a ruptured appendix and sepsis diagnosed, and he died at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff on December 14, 2022.
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Source: The Times, 21 May 2024
Jersey politicians have voted to approve plans to allow assisted dying for those with a terminal illness "causing unbearable suffering".
The States Assembly has been debating two routes through which people who have lived in Jersey for longer than a year, are 18 or over and have decision-making capacity could apply for assisted dying. A total of 32 members voted in favour while 14 voted against route one.
The second route, for those who are not terminally ill but who have an incurable medical condition causing unbearable suffering, was rejected by a majority of 27 to 19.
Plans for legalising assisted dying were voted on in principle by the assembly in 2021, but the aim of the vote was to decide how it could work in practice.
With a decision now made, the process for drafting a law could take about 18 months, with a debate then taking place by the end of 2025.
If a law is approved, it is expected a further 18-month implementation period would then begin, meaning the earliest for it to come into effect would be summer 2027.
Speaking after the debate, Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham said "robust safeguards" would be "enshrined in law." He thanked the assembly for a "thoughtful, respectful and considered" debate.
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Source: BBC News, 22 May 2024
The number of people sent out of their home area for a mental health bed – in some cases hundreds of miles away – has increased to a five-year high, despite national ambitions to eliminate the practice.
A 2021 date to stop “inappropriate out of area placements” was initially set by government and NHS England in 2016 but, despite initial reductions, the target was missed, with hundreds of patients still affected each month.
Demand and bed pressures in the wake of covid appeared to make it more difficult and numbers have been rising.
Analysis of the latest NHS Digital data this month shows 825 active inappropriate placements in February 2024 following a steady rise from December 2023, when there were 700 (see chart).
The year on year increase from February last year is 15 per cent, but there has been a 46 per cent rise since a low of 565 just 14 months previously, in December 2022.
Being sent out of area can disrupt the patient’s care, make it less likely patients will be visited, harder for them to return home and to community support, and is also often very expensive as places are bought at short notice from independent providers.
NHSE acknowledged pressures on OAPs in 2024-25 planning guidance but asked systems to “work towards” eliminating them, saying they are “detrimental to patient safety, experience and outcomes.” National mental health director Claire Murdoch last month told HSJ they represented “poor care at relatively high costs.”
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Source: HSJ, 23 May 2024
Patients taking antidepressants are being warned to beware of side-effects that could leave them 'asexual' even after they stop using them - a problem that could affect millions of Brits.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most common class of antidepressant drug in the UK, are relied upon by one in eight Brits - 8.6million in all - who are dealing with mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
Common SSRIs prescribed in the UK include citalopram, fluoxetine and sertraline, sometimes known by brand names Cipramil, Prozac and Lustral - but their use has been linked to long-term and even permanent sexual dysfunction by researchers.
The NHS has warned that side effects such as a loss of libido and achieving orgasm, lower sperm count and erectile dysfunction 'can persist' after taking them - and patients have described feeling 'carved out', relationships wrecked, from their use.
Men and women say SSRI side-effects have hampered their sex lives, even after coming off of the medications - a condition known as Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), which is not officially recognised by UK health authorities.
For millions, antidepressants can be a life-saving drug - but the authors of a US petition urging more warnings to be applied to the drugs say it can be 'impossible... to weigh the benefits of treatment against the harms'.
Read full story
Source: Daily Mail, 23 May 2024
Read this opinion piece on the hub by someone who suffers from post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) after he was prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The author calls for widespread recognition, improved risk communication and better support for sufferers.
If you have experience of PSSD, you can also share your insights in our community discussion.
Having an epidural during labour can reduce the risk of serious childbirth complications by 35%, according to research that suggests expanding access to the treatment may improve maternal health.
An epidural is an injection in the back to stop someone feeling pain in part of their body. Making them more widely available and providing more information to those who would benefit from one was even more important than previously thought, researchers said.
The study by the University of Glasgow and the University of Bristol involved 567,216 women who were in labour in Scottish NHS hospitals from 2007 and 2019, and went on to give birth vaginally or by an unplanned caesarean section. Of the total, 125,024 of the women had an epidural.
Researchers analysed the rate of serious complications, including heart attacks, eclampsia, and hysterectomies during childbirth. Having an epidural cut the risk of these events by 35%, the study found.
The lead author, Prof Rachel Kearns, of the University of Glasgow, said: “This finding underscores the need to ensure access to epidurals, particularly for those who are most vulnerable – women facing higher medical risks or delivering prematurely. “By broadening access and improving awareness, we can significantly reduce the risk of serious health outcomes and ensure safer childbirth experiences.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 22 May 2024
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