Skip to content
the hub has moved to a new software platform. You will need to login using your email address. Find out more here.

News

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

Antibiotics in short supply across Australia as GPs call for fix to ‘increasing problem’

Medicine shortages are an “increasing problem” for Australia and antibiotics are among the commonly prescribed drugs currently in short supply, the peak body for general practitioners says.
The drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA),  said the three most commonly prescribed antibiotics – amoxicillin, cefalexin and metronidazole – are scarce. They are used to treat a range of bacterial infections, including pneumonia and other chest infections, skin infections and urinary tract infections.
To see patients through the shortage, the TGA has authorised pharmacists to provide alternative antibiotics without approval from the prescribing doctor.
“Importantly, many of these medicines have alternatives available,” the TGA said. “Your pharmacist may be able to give you a different brand, or your doctor can prescribe a different strength or medicine with similar spectrum of activity.”
A TGA spokesperson said “most of the antibiotic shortages are caused by manufacturing issues or an unexpected increase in demand”.
Dr Nicole Higgins, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, said the shortage of certain medicines was “becoming an increasing problem in Australia”.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

USA: Surgeons concerned about impending cuts to surgical care

A new survey of more than 1,000 surgeons across the USA reiterates concerns that impending cuts to surgical care, set to take effect on 1 January 1 2023, will lead to a decrease in Medicare patient intake, increased delays to care, and longer wait times for patients in surgical practices. These survey results support the efforts of the over one million physician and non-physician healthcare providers joining together in urging congressional leadership to stop the full cut to Medicare payments through a Week of Action.
"Our survey results confirm that the impending cuts to Medicare payments will be disastrous for patients and their access to life-saving and life-altering care," said Patricia L. Turner, American College of Surgeons Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer. "As our population continues to age, more and more seniors depend on Medicare to receive the care they need. Congressional leadership must protect patients by stopping the full cut to Medicare payments so healthcare providers can focus on delivering high-quality care to patients."
The survey, conducted for the American College of Surgeons, a founding member of the Surgical Care Coalition, found:
Around two-thirds of members expect patients will be faced with delays to care (68%) or longer wait times (65%). These are up from 56% and 57%, respectively, in 2021. One-in-three (33%) members say there will be a change in their Medicare patient intake if the cuts were to go into effect, up from 25% in 2021. 20% say they expect to take on fewer new Medicare patients, but that they will keep all existing Medicare patients. While members report feeling the impact from supply chain issues and inflation, surgeons are also sounding the siren around healthcare worker shortages. Over nine-in-ten (93%) report healthcare worker shortages impacting their ability to provide high quality care over the last year. Over three-quarters (77%) report "a great deal of impact" from these shortages. Read full story
Source: CISION PR Newswire, 9 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

English hospitals make emergency plans amid winter power loss fears

English hospitals have increased emergency fuel supplies and put staff on standby to postpone operations and switch off X-ray scanners amid heightened concerns over energy provision this winter.
NHS hospital trusts across England have put their power plans under the microscope as they look to protect patients from potential outages for lifesaving equipment.
Responses to freedom of information requests to 63 NHS trusts revealed that 41 are re-examining their plans for a loss of power for this winter. A further 10 trusts said they conducted routine reviews of their business continuity plans this year, while 12 had not revised their strategies.
National Grid warned in October that, in extreme circumstances, it would be forced to enact planned three-hour power cuts with a days’ notice.
Major hospitals are exempt from this system, called rota disconnection, however businesses and the government have studied their plans for a complete power failure on the network.
Despite the pressure on the NHS budgets, the responses show that most hospitals have up-to-date plans and backup generators to ensure lives are not lost due to lack of power.
A quarter of hospital trusts said they were able to run indefinitely on backup diesel generator power, providing they had access to fuel supplies. Just over 10% said they could run on backup power for 10 days.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Man with broken hip taken to hospital tied to plank

A man who had broken his hip was taken to hospital strapped to a plank in the back of a van after his granddaughter was told no ambulances were available.
Nicole Lea found Melvyn Ryan behind the door of his home after he pressed an emergency call button around his neck.
When she got there she discovered the 89-year-old also had a broken shoulder.
She said she went to grandfather-of-eight Mr Ryan's home, in Cwmbran, Torfaen, after being contacted just after midnight on Friday.
She said: "I didn't waste any time in calling 999 and gave them my details. And they turned around and said they were unable to send anyone, there wasn't any help to send and that I'd have to find a way of getting him there myself."
The call handler advised her to call the out-of-hours GP before saying she had to go to deal with other calls.
She did not call the GP as she thought it would be a waste of time.
"With my partner and my mum's help we managed to come up with the idea of getting him onto a plank of wood and into the back of my partner's van to get him up to hospital," Ms Lea said. 
"Mr Ryan has had what sounds like the most appalling of experience," said Dr Iona Collins, chairwoman of the British Medical Association (BMA) Cymru.
"How must the ambulance service feel when they are getting calls like this? Obvious its an emergency and they need help and they are unable to help," she told Radio Wales Breakfast.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 12 December 2022
 
 
Patient Safety Learning

Decade of neglect means NHS unable to tackle care backlog, report says

A “decade of neglect” by successive Conservative administrations has weakened the NHS to the point that it will not be able to tackle the 7 million-strong backlog of care, a government-commissioned report has concluded.
The paper by the King’s Fund says years of denying funding to the health service and failing to address its growing workforce crisis have left it with too few staff, too little equipment and too many outdated buildings to perform the amount of surgery needed.
The UK’s poor public finances, health service staff suffering from exhaustion, and a wave of NHS strikes this winter will also lead to ministers being unable to deliver key pledges on eradicating routinely long waits, the thinktank says.
“Though Covid certainly exacerbated the crisis in the NHS and social care, we are ultimately paying the price for a decade of neglect,” said the King’s Fund chief executive, Richard Murray.
“The sporadic injections of cash during the austerity years after 2010 were at best meant to cover [the service’s] day-to-day running costs. This dearth of long-term investment has led to a health and care system hamstrung by a lack of staff and equipment and crumbling buildings. These critical challenges have been obvious for years.
“The NHS in 2022 faces many of the same challenges it faced in 2000: unacceptably long waiting times and a service hobbled by staff shortages. To that is now added a cost of living crisis, industrial action by staff and a backdrop of a weak economy and weak public finances.”
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

100 ambulances were left waiting outside hospitals with 600 patients stranded without help last night

Bosses at the North West Ambulance Service issued an urgent warning to members of the public on 999 calls and apologised for delays last night.
At 5pm on Monday (December 12), more than 600 patients were waiting for an ambulance across the North West, the service said. Another 100 emergency vehicles were parked outside of hospitals waiting to handover patients.
'Severe weather and hospital handover delays' had an impact on the service last night, as well as 'significant demand'. Ambulance chiefs said they had to 'maximise resources' by putting all clinically-trained staff on the frontline and increasing use of private providers.
In an urgent message issued on Monday night, medical director Dr Chris Grant said: "This is an urgent message for the public across the whole of the North West. Tonight, across both our 111 and 999 services, we're seeing a really significant demand and I apologise for the delay in getting care to you but I do need your help.
"We've called in all our operational and clinical resources to make sure we prioritise those who have the most life-threatening conditions. We need to keep our phone lines free so please only call us back if you no longer need our help or if your own condition has got significantly worse. Thanks for your support."
Ged Blezard, director of operations at NWAS said: "Please only call 999 if someone has a serious illness or injury, you think their life is at risk, and you cannot get them to hospital by any other means. We know there are patients waiting for our help and we are sorry that we are unable to respond as quickly as we would like.
Read full story
Source: Manchester Evening News, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

NHS operations cancelled in England due to staff shortages double in three years

The number of operations cancelled by the NHS in England because of staff shortages may have doubled in three years, with an estimated 30,000 not proceeding because no staff were available to perform them.
At least a third of cancelled operations were those that were deemed urgent, according to the analysis by Labour. It suggested at least 2,500 cancelled operations for cancer patients and 8,000 on children.
It found staff shortages were the most common reason given for cancellations by hospitals, accounting for one in five of all operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons last year.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it was “misleading” to extrapolate that figure from the data in the FOIs. “Thousands of elective appointments and procedures had to be cancelled during the pandemic to protect the NHS, and since then we’ve been focused on delivering the biggest catch-up programme in health history - virtually eliminating the longest 2-year waits for treatment,” a spokesman said.
In total, 158,000 operations were cancelled for issues including equipment failures, a shortage of beds, and 5,700 because of equipment failure, administrative errors, and theatre lists overrunning. Labour cited one case that involved a 72-year-old woman who had two operations to remove a brain tumour cancelled in September, blamed on a lack of available beds.
About 9,500 operations were cancelled because an emergency case took priority, and 250 due to adverse weather.
Separate figures from the NHS show record numbers of operations cancelled at the last minute are not rearranged to take place within a month, with one in five patients waiting longer.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 12 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Lucy Letby trial: Nurse used syringe to force milk and air into baby, court is told

Lucy Letby used a plunger to force milk and air into one of the babies she is accused of attempting to murder, a medical expert has told a court.
The alleged attack caused the infant’s stomach to distend to such a degree that she then projectile vomited a “massive” amount of milk so violently that the material left her cot and splashed over a chair several feet away.
Staff at the Countess of Chester Hospital managed to save Baby G’s life but the incident was so catastrophic that it caused the child severe brain damage. Seven years later she still suffers from quadriplegic cerebral palsy.
Dr Dewi Evans, a consultant paediatrician called in by the prosecution, said the use of a plunger on the end of a syringe was the only explanation for the baby’s sudden collapse in the early hours of 7 September 7 2015.
Letby, 32, of Hereford, is accused of murdering seven children in the neonatal unit of the hospital in Cheshire, and of ten attempted murders, between June 2015 and June 2016. She denies all the charges.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

NHSE estimates mortality rate for autistic people is 51% higher

Autistic people in England who do not also have a learning disability are approximately 51% more likely to die in a single year compared to the general population, according to a leaked document which estimates the mortality rate for the first time.
According to an internal NHS England document, seen by HSJ, the standardised mortality rate between April 2020 and March 2021 was 16.6 deaths per 10,000 for people with autism and no learning disability compared to 11 deaths per 10,000 for the general population. 
NHSE also determined life expectancy for this group to be 75 years – 5.4 years less than the general population.
Dominic Slowie, former national clinical director for learning disability, told HSJ that because of the different ways autism presents itself, it can be difficult to pinpoint causes of premature mortality. 
“In some cases, people with autism who are severely disabled and can’t communicate their needs in a conventional way are going to have premature mortality for the same reasons that people with a learning disability do, because people do not really understand the level of their need or do not investigate their need in a reasonably adjusted way,” he said.
“While, if someone is presenting atypically in their communication, we mustn’t make presumptions – we must make reasonable adjustments to ensure they are investigated and diagnosed in the same way.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Midwives will not strike, after ballot falls short

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has not met thresholds required to strike in its vote, it announced today, but physiotherapy staff are set to strike at more than 100 trusts in their first ever action ballot over pay.
The trade union announced this afternoon that its ballot had not reached the turnout required to take strike action. 88& of those who voted said they supported strike action, but only about 47% of eligible members voted. Law requires a turnout of at least 50%, the RCM said.
It comes as nurses prepare to take industrial action on 15 and 20 December, over pay and safety concerns, with ambulance staff across the GMB Union, Unison and Unite set to walk out on 21 December (and GMB also on 28 December).
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
Sam

Every ambulance trust on highest alert level

All ambulance services have declared the highest level of alert due to ‘extreme pressures’ facing the urgent and emergency care system.
One senior ambulance chief told HSJ that ambulance response times have dropped dramatically in the last few days, while A&E handover delays have surged. They said: “The wheels are falling off [the emergency care system] now, we’re in a really awful situation.”
They said ambulance leaders have major concerns about the planned strike action by nurses on Thursday, fearing this will exacerbate discharge delays and have a knock-on effect on ambulance handover problems.
It also comes ahead of strike action planned by ambulance staff for next week.
HSJ has seen internal communications which confirm all ten ambulance trusts in England are now in level four of their “resource escalation action plan”, which means they can seek assistance from other nearby trusts or services. However, this is more difficult when an entire sector is under pressure, as is the case currently. 
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Strep A: Parents say son misdiagnosed before death

The family of a boy who died of an invasive form of strep A have said they sought medical help three times before he was admitted to hospital.
Jax Albert Jefferys, who attended Morelands Primary School in Waterlooville, Hampshire, died on 1 December, aged five.
His family said they were initially told he had flu.
Since September, UK Health Security Agency figures show 15 UK children have died after invasive strep A infections.
Paying tribute to their "darling son", Jax's family said they had sought medical advice on three occasions during the four days leading up to his death and were told that he was suffering with influenza A.
"We then followed the recommended course of action: to administer a proprietary paracetamol-based medication in the prescribed dosage," they said in a statement.
However, they said on the fourth day Jax's condition "deteriorated so much" they "rushed him to hospital" and he later died.
"Only after his death was it confirmed that the cause was [strep A]," the family said.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 14 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Urgent call for help as ambulance trust faces relying on ‘first aiders’ during strikes

Medics and nurses have been urgently called upon to support London Ambulance Service during next week’s strike action, as it will otherwise have to rely on staff only able to provide ‘first aid’.
The North East London primary care team has sent out a request for clinical staff working for integrated care boards to be released from duties ahead of industrial action on 21 December.
Unison members are preparing to walk out, alongside thousands of other staff at nine other ambulance trusts across the country, in a dispute over pay.
The letter, seen by HSJ, was sent yesterday afternoon. It said: “LAS are keen to have experienced medics and nurses, who have current urgent and emergency clinical exposure, have knowledge of how to navigate the system and can operate as a senior clinical decision maker. Medical Practitioners would ideally be from general practice and emergency medicine.
“Advanced Paramedics and Advanced Care Practitioners with urgent care or IUC CAS experience are also required. A knowledge of ambulance services is preferred as it removes the need to learn very quickly the significant differences in ambulance services and LAS control rooms."
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

Delays to mental health treatment in England ‘putting more children in care’

Increasing numbers of emotionally troubled children have been taken into care while waiting long periods for NHS treatment because their condition deteriorated to the point where their parents could no longer cope with their behaviour, child protection bosses have revealed.
Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president Steve Crocker said that since the pandemic, youngsters with complex emotional needs had become a significant factor in rising child protection referrals.
“We are seeing children in the social care system because they have not been supported in the [NHS] mental health system,” he said.
Crocker urged ministers to “do better” for children facing “unacceptable” delays in NHS mental health treatment, adding that it was not uncommon for waiting lists to involve waits of over a year.
Councils were “filling gaps” in NHS provision but struggling to find placements for children with severe behavioural problems, and when they did, typically paid “untenable” fees of tens of thousands of pounds a week.
He accused private children’s residential care providers and their “rapacious” hedge fund backers of “profiteering” from the care crisis, and urged the government to intervene to cap typical profit margins that were currently about 20%. “We do not see how this can be allowed to continue,” he said.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

All new hospitals must have single rooms only, government rules

All new hospitals built in England must have only single patient rooms, health infrastructure chiefs have confirmed, requiring an overhaul of many trusts’ current proposals.
Leaders of the New Hospitals Programme said the NHS needed to be “brave”, with the move marking an end for multi-bed bay wards and representing a major change in hospital design.
Previously, NHS trusts were expected to consider a minimum of 50% single rooms when refurbishing or building new facilities, but HSJ revealed in September that officials were considering a 100 per cent requirement.
Natalie Forrest, senior responsible officer for NHP, said England was “behind the times” on single patient rooms.
She said: “If we really want to look for evidence of why patients should have the ability to sleep in privacy and choose to socialise in social areas… we need not look very far. Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Europe, the US – where they wouldn’t dream of building a hospital that didn’t provide single bedroom occupancy.”
Ms Forrest, who is also a nurse, acknowledged an “anxiety” among NHS staff that they can’t care for patients in single rooms as well, and stressed the need to combine them with “digital technology”.
“I have said we need to be brave and take on new challenges, and this is one of those brave decisions the NHS needs to stand up and move forward with.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
Patient Safety Learning

NHS leaders warn patient lives will be put at risk by strikes as cancer services “hit hard”

NHS leaders fear patients will come to harm as cancer services are “hit hard” by upcoming nurses’ strikes.
The NHS’s four chief nurses wrote to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Pat Cullen warning patients’ lives are at risk due to life-saving services not being protected when nurses walk out on Thursday.
And a separate letter from Dame Cally Palmer, the national cancer director for NHS England, urged Ms Cullen to protect urgent cancer operations from strike action “to ensure a consistent and compassionate approach for patients across the country”.
The RCN has since agreed that staff will cover emergency cancer and mental health crisis services on strike days but has maintained only night-level staffing for inpatient services.
But trust executives told The Independent that they were concerned they won’t be able to fill any gaps with agency staff due to RCN rules, which will worsen existing shortages.
One senior NHS source claimed cancer services weren’t being prioritised by unions despite national agreements to protect chemotherapy treatments.
They said: “I fear that someone is going to get hurt as the system is so pressured and fragile right now, whether strike-related or not, public sympathy will shift considerably if this were to happen.”
Read full story
Source: The Independent, 14 December 2022
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.