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

Judge blocks RFK Jr's changes to US childhood vaccine schedule

A federal judge on Monday blocked the US government from making sweeping changes to childhood immunisations, in a blow to Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's agenda.
Since taking office a year ago, Kennedy has sought to change and loosen vaccine regulations, including slashing the number of recommended shots for children from 17 to 11.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other large medical groups had sued, saying Kennedy's changes violated federal law.
Judge Brian Murphy also suspended Kennedy's appointments to an advisory vaccine panel, many of whom were vaccine-sceptics. Kennedy was a longtime antivaccine activist before joining President Donald Trump's administration.
The ruling means a scheduled Wednesday meeting for the vaccine panel, called the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (Acip) will be postponed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.
In a statement, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency "looks forward to this judge's decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing".
Medical groups who brought the suit, meanwhile, lauded the decision, including the American Medical Association, the largest US professional organization for doctors, which called it "an important step toward protecting the health of Americans, particularly children".
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 17 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

'I'm still haunted that he died alone': The last voices of the Covid inquiry

Rivka Gottlieb said she still felt "haunted" by the fact that her father, Michael, died alone.
He was a fit and active 73-year-old, she said, working part-time in a golf shop and teaching children at his local synagogue.
Her story was one of the last to be told at the Covid inquiry, which heard its final evidence this week.
In March 2020, Michael and Rivka's mother, Mili, were admitted to different wards of the Royal Free hospital, in north London, with Covid symptoms - just as the first lockdown was announced.
"We were just expecting him to be given a bit of oxygen and then he'd be sent home," Rivka said.
Michael deteriorated in hospital. His cough became so severe he had to send a WhatsApp message to tell her he was being put on a ventilator.
Two weeks later, the family was told he would never recover and that doctors were going to reduce his life support.
"It was a dark and terrifying time and difficult to get updates from the hospital. I feared the worst every time the phone rang," recalled Rivka.
In the last week, the inquiry has heard more than eight hours of emotional testimony from bereaved relatives.
The inquiry heard how families were "torn apart" by social distancing rules, which prevented them from being with their loved ones at the end of their lives.
Others spoke about huge difficulties accessing information from care homes and hospitals. Families said they were often unable to ask questions about their relatives or felt the true situation was not properly explained to them.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 6 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Health experts rubbish Wes Streeting’s claim ADHD is overdiagnosed in the UK

Experts have disputed Wes Streeting’s claim that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is overdiagnosed in the UK, saying that if anything, the condition is actually likely to be underdiagnosed.
In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, 32 experts including clinicians, academics, and patients warned the main challenge surrounding ADHD is that services “cannot adequately support”.
“Alarmist” rhetoric around a fear of overdiagnosis of ADHD could work to “deny” people the care they need, the team said.
It comes after health secretary Wes Streeting ordered a review into the diagnosis of mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions including ADHD.
Mr Streeting reportedly tasked leading experts with investigating whether common human emotions have become “over-pathologised”.
Professor Chris Hollis, co-author of the study from the University of Nottingham, said: “While the incidence of ADHD diagnosis has increased significantly since 2020—particularly in women and young adults—NHS administrative data in England shows no evidence of overdiagnosis with the rate of ADHD diagnosis remaining below the expected levels of ADHD in the population."
He described the recent rise in ADHD diagnosis as a “catch-up” of “many years of under recognition and under diagnosis”.
“Hence, rather than ‘overdiagnosis’ the real concern should be the unacceptably long waiting times, sometimes over years, that people experience in the NHS for diagnosis, support and treatment,” he continued.
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 6 March 2026
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Circumcision classed as potentially harmful practice in new CPS guidance

Circumcision has been classed as a potentially harmful practice in new official guidance for criminal prosecutors in England and Wales, but controversial plans to class it as possible child abuse have been dropped.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided against including circumcision alongside dowry abuse, witchcraft and female genital mutilation in its new guidance on honour-based abuse, after objections from Jewish and Muslim groups when the plans were revealed by the Guardian.
Instead it has included a similar section on circumcision in updated guidance on offences against the person. It says: “In certain circumstances, such as the procedure being carried out by those falsely claiming to be suitably qualified practitioners or carried out in non-sterile conditions, it can cross the line into a harmful practice.”
Romain, the convener of Reform Beit Din, Progressive Judaism’s religious court, said he approved of the altered wording. “I very much welcome the change of attitude by the CPS not to castigate circumcision, as it is an important practice for so many people of different faiths and cultures,” he told the Guardian.
He added: “Circumcision can be safe and meaningful if done by experts, but rogue operators can both bring it into disrepute and endanger children.”
Since 2001, circumcision has been a factor in the deaths of seven boys, including three babies who bled to death. Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS trust admitted 29 babies between 2022 and 2024 with serious complications from circumcision, including sepsis and haemorrhage, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws.
Last December, a coroner issued warnings about insufficient regulation over who can perform a circumcision, after the death of a six-month-old boy, Mohamed Abdisamad, from a streptococcus infection in 2023.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 5 March 2026
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Mackey delays two more EPR launches

NHS England has intervened to delay the roll-out of electronic patient record systems at two trusts, due to major concerns over the operational impact.
A major go-live of a Nervecentre EPR at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals, due last week, was suspended.
And roll-out of elements of Nervecentre systems at Sherwood Forest Hospitals has also been delayed, HSJ understands.
Several sources said the delays were ordered by NHSE due to the likely disruption to elective activity and emergency care. National leaders are trying to hit annual recovery targets for the end of this month.
Concerns about accident and emergency disruption heightened when Nottingham University Hospitals Trust had to declare a critical incident after it went live with Nervecentre in November. 
In the autumn, NHSE chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told trust bosses he would be making the final call on whether EPR launches would go ahead, adding a further layer of scrutiny.
At the time, a national source told HSJ: “While electronic records can have huge benefits, the reality is we as a system need to pull our fingers out, invest in the training, job planning and process re-engineering, and make sure we’re really seeing and feeling the benefit, not a productivity loss. And suppliers need to help make that true.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 6 March 2026
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NHS has ‘hollowed out’ community care, says government adviser

The NHS has “hollowed out” community and primary care and become a “national hospital service”, according to the influential lead of a government review of social care.
Baroness Louise Casey, who is chairing an independent commission on reforming social care reporting to the prime minister, made her comments during a speech at the Nuffield Trust’s annual summit today. 
During her address she also criticised integrated care boards for paying private firms “to find ways to cut how they pay out Continuing Healthcare budgets” and allowing them to take a profit if they were successful. She said this was “quite astonishing”.
The respected Whitehall trouble-shooter warned ministers she would be “watching” them to make sure Continuing Healthcare funding was not “sucked up into the world of acute hospitals”.
She said: “It is my belief that we really have a national hospital service, not a national health service, and that may feel tough and may feel unfair, but that’s what it looks like to me…
“As the NHS has evolved, it has withdrawn from the community, reducing the number of beds they offer other than for acute or specialised care, putting many more staff into hospitals whilst hollowing out the staff numbers in community and primary care provision.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 5 March 2026
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Trust CEO: National leaders are holding back mental health progress

A leading trust CEO and former national director has warned the mental health sector feels “abandoned”, with no long-term plan and its “share of spend falling like a stone”.
Claire Murdoch, who was NHS England’s mental health and learning disabilities lead until she resigned in September, said leaders in the sector were “geared up wanting to go further, faster”, but were being held back as “there is no overarching long-term national plan”.
She said the service was being “overshadow[ed]” by the current weight put by government and NHSE leadership on “electives, A&E and money”.
In a comment responding to an HSJ leader column  last week, Ms Murdoch said there were signs that staffing was “faltering”,  while many MH services required investment. She pointed in particular to the need to improve “assertive outreach” to high-risk patients in the community, and tackle widespread long waiting lists, particularly for young people.
Ms Murdoch, who is also a registered mental health nurse, said “ending the awful practice” of out-of-area placements – where people are sent a long way from their home area in order to get an inpatient mental health bed – should be “an imperative for all systems”.
Read full story
Source: HSJ, 4 March 2026
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The UK scandal of women handcuffed while in labour: ‘I was so shocked when the restraints weren’t removed’

Joanna was a model prisoner who followed the rules. She had been convicted for a non-violent drugs offence and was not deemed to be at high risk of escape, particularly not in the throes of an agonising labour. She hoped to use hypnobirthing, breathing and relaxation techniques to make the birth calmer and more comfortable. Thanks to information provided by the charity Birth Companions she knew it was her right not to be handcuffed during labour. She had highlighted the handcuffing points in the booklet.
When Joanna went into labour on 30 December 2022, she was taken to hospital, handcuffed and chained to a prison officer. She remained so for the 36 hours of a long, difficult birth. Any thoughts of hypnobirthing went out of the window. “I was crying so much that my nose was too blocked to use any of the breathing techniques,” Joanna says. “I’m the kind of person who is good at researching my rights. So many people had told me during my pregnancy that I wouldn’t have to give birth in handcuffs. I was taken to hospital chained to an officer with handcuffs but assumed they would be removed at the entrance to the hospital.
“I was so shocked when the cuffs weren’t removed. When I told the prison guards who had brought me to hospital about what the Birth Companions booklet said, they replied: ‘We don’t know what that book is, we’re not going to abide by it.’ I felt so scared. It was my first baby, I didn’t know what to expect from birth and I wasn’t a risk to anyone.”
Joanna gave an anonymous interview to Channel 4 News in 2025 about her ordeal. The prisons minister, Lord Timpson, subsequently announced last June that an independent investigation would be commissioned and carried out by the prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) into the practice in England of handcuffing pregnant prisoners during antenatal appointments, intimate examinations and labour. Timpson said reports of pregnant women being handcuffed during labour were “deeply concerning”. However, information on the number of prisoners handcuffed during labour and birth is not routinely collected by officials.
The Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have called for an investigation into the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 4 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Boards urged to ‘take ownership’ to avoid corridor care

Trust boards can “virtually eliminate” corridor care with “the right leadership ambition and focus”, including more walking wards and corridors, NHS England has said.
National leaders held a meeting last week with execs from the 30 trusts with the biggest corridor care problem. 
In a letter to all trusts CEOs and chairs today, NHSE said those at the meeting had agreed that a concerted approach, and several actions in particular, could allow the practice to be largely wiped out.
This includes boards taking “formal ownership” of corridor care as an organisational risk, requiring approval by executive directors, reporting it as an “incident”, and discussing it at each board meeting. NHSE plans to revise its escalation and reporting rules accordingly. 
NHSE’s letter stressed that “the right leadership ambition and focus” could avoid the practice, which has risen steeply in the past two years, as hospitals have been pressured to off-load ambulances more quickly even when they are very busy. Twelve-hour A&E waits hit a record high in January.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 4 March 2026
Related reading on the hub:
Corridor care guidance needs to move beyond what “should” happen and grapple honestly with why it isn’t A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift The crisis of corridor care in the NHS: patient safety concerns and incident reporting
Patient Safety Learning

Boy, 9, died 'in agony' after being operated on by suspended surgeon

A nine-year-old boy suffered "fatal physical harm" after he was operated on by a suspended surgeon at Addenbrooke's hospital.
Jack Moate died two months after Kuldeep Stohr performed surgery on him in 2015.
Jack suffered "significant blood loss" during the operation and was left in continuous pain.
His mother, Elizabeth Moate said: "They sent my boy home, and he died in agony."
She said she "felt pressured" to give consent for the operation, fearing it might be too much for her son, who had complex medical needs.
Independent experts recently assessed Jack's case as part of a wider investigation into Ms Stohr's practice.
They said they had "significant concerns" about his operation, which "carried significant risks" given his condition.
The reviewers also found no imaging was carried out before he was discharged after his surgery.
A later scan found his operation had not worked, leaving the procedure "unhealed and unstable".
Jack's mother said her son was "crying and screaming" with pain when he arrived home.
"I can't believe that Ms Stohr was unaware of the damage she had done… I'll never be able to forgive the hospital for what happened," she said.
Read full story
Source: Sky News, 5 March 2026
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Dentists return £900m for not seeing NHS patients

Dentists in England are returning hundreds of millions of pounds a year to the government for unfulfilled NHS care, the BBC has learnt.
Over the last two years, more than £900m has been handed back - £1 out of every £7 they have been paid - as dentists instead prioritise private work.
The findings help explain why despite record sums being set aside for NHS dentistry, so many patients are struggling to get one - more than a fifth of people report not being able to access care when they need it.
The government said improvements were being made this year and any money returned was reinvested into services.
Nikita Jenkins, 27, from Cornwall, is one of millions of people who has struggled to access NHS dental care.
She has not seen one for 14 years and has been forced to pay privately for her two young daughters to get treatment as she was told waiting lists locally were seven years long.
"I tried every dentist in and around my area, but it was near impossible.
"We were waiting and, in the end, I felt like we had no choice but to take the jump and pay to go private, to ensure that our children had the right health care."
"Dentistry feels like a luxury, not a necessity, because it's just so inaccessible, which shouldn't be the case - especially for children," she told the BBC.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 5 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

Patient safety: MPs urge Streeting to stop “forced merger” of agencies

MPs have written to health secretary Wes Streeting asking him to stop a “forced merger” between two patient safety bodies.
The all party parliamentary group (APPG) on patient safety says that the Health Services Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB) should be kept separate, rather than becoming part of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
APPG co-chair Jeremy Hunt told The BMJ, “At a time when families want honesty and real change, we should be strengthening the HSSIB’s role and ensuring evidence based safety recommendations are properly tracked and implemented, not weakening the very independence that makes it credible.”
Hunt, a former Conservative health secretary, said, however, that the APPG supported the need to simplify the patient safety landscape which had “become too diffuse and complicated.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: BMJ, 3 March 2026
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‘Boys’ club’ shutting women out of private hospitals

Just 6% of surgeons in private hospitals are women, says a report warning that a “private boys’ club” culture stops talented female doctors from getting work.
Research by the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) found that for some specialties, such as orthopaedics, independent hospitals employ more male doctors than they do women.
Overall, only 488 of 7,934 surgeons at the country’s biggest private hospital chains are women — substantially lower than the proportion of female surgeons in the NHS.
More than half of the UK’s doctors are women, but surgery has traditionally been male-dominated and a series of reports in recent years warned of a culture of sexism and harassment.
Professor Felicity Meyer, a consultant vascular surgeon and chair of the Women in Surgery forum at RCS England, said: “The independent sector now delivers a growing share of surgical care, yet women remain strikingly underrepresented within its surgical workforce.
“RCS England’s own work has repeatedly shown that this is not just an issue of fairness, but one that affects the resilience, safety and sustainability of the profession as a whole and ultimately impacts patient safety."
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 1 March 2026
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More work, no funding - paediatrics under pressure

Ten-week-old Carson was struggling to breathe. He was born premature, at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, he was tiny.
It was suspected that he had picked up an infection which his young lungs could not cope with.
The team of doctors and nurses had stabilised him but Carson needed an extra level of care. So they called in the experts, and after a short time in intensive care he recovered.
Southampton Oxford Retrieval Team, external (SORT) are a team of specialists on call 24 hours a day to collect the most poorly children and babies and take them to intensive care, supporting 27 hospitals across the south of England.
But there is a problem. There are no beds in the paediatric intensive care unit, but the team get on the road anyway.
They are lead by Michael Griksaitis, a consultant paediatric intensivist at University Hospital Southampton: "We dispatch to go and help the child whether there is a bed or not because actually it is irrelevant.
"The child still needs critical care, so bed or not the transport team would go out."
The BBC has learned that despite rising demand on these services, this year SORT will be expected to collect potentially hundreds more children who do not need critical care, but still require transport by ambulance to hospitals.
This will involve picking up potentially hundreds more children who are less sick, known as level 2 – those who need a high-dependency hospital bed – but with no more resources.
All 13 retrieval teams UK-wide will be asked to increase their workload despite already being at capacity and without extra funding.
Most hospitals don't have a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), so the SORT team supports the 27 regional hospitals that call for help when they have done all they can to care for a child.
"Nowhere in our business case, in our funding, in our set up, were we ever planned to deal with that extra workload," Griksaitis says.
"When that happens, because it is happening, the demand on the service will increase because we'll have to move even more children to a high dependency unit."
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 4 March 2026
Patient Safety Learning

New health minister appointed

The government has appointed an MP who has campaigned on patient safety to be the new public health and prevention minister.
MP Sharon Hodgson will replace Ashley Dalton, who has metastatic breast cancer and yesterday announced she is stepping down. Ms Dalton will continue as MP for West Lancashire.
The new minister has campaigned for compensation for women injured by pelvic mesh, telling MPs that her mother was one of those who experienced “life-limiting complications” as a result of the implants.
She chairs a cross-party group of MPs set up to raise awareness of the 2020 Cumberlege review, which called for the appointment of a patient safety commissioner and an overhaul of existing arrangements for redress.
Earlier this year, Ms Hodgson said it was “frankly insulting” that the government had not issued an official response to a 2024 report into the mesh scandal. Government has failed to decide on compensation for the victims.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 3 March 2026
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Almost 2,000 doses of ‘dangerous’ illegal weight-loss jabs seized in raids

Illegal weight-loss medication has been seized from a farm and home in Lincolnshire suspected of being involved in a criminal network making and selling fake jabs.
Almost 2,000 doses of the dangerous “skinny jabs” were seized in two raids by officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Lincolnshire Police.
Manufacturing equipment, suspected pharmaceutical ingredients, packaging and commercial vehicles were also found in the raids. The street value of the finished weight-loss products alone was estimated to be more than £250,000.
The raids were in response to reports of people “becoming unwell” or finding the products were “ineffective” after using the unregulated drugs, Lincolnshire Police said.
Health officials warned the unlicensed products are potentially deadly and are often made with “no regard for safety, sterility, or quality”.
Dr Zubir Ahmed, health innovation and patient safety minister, said: “We will not allow criminals to profit by exploiting people looking for help with their weight.
“Do not buy weight-loss medicines from unregulated sources. Safe, effective, licensed treatments can make a real difference for those who need them – but they must come from a registered pharmacy, with a valid prescription.”
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 2 March 2026
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