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Patient Safety Learning

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Everything posted by Patient Safety Learning

  1. News Article
    Taking acetaminophen – known in the US by the brand name Tylenol – during pregnancy has no effect on later autism diagnoses, according to a sweeping new study from Denmark published on Monday. The Trump administration has targeted Tylenol use in pregnancy as a major cause of autism in children, which appears to have led to a drop in pregnant people taking the pain reliever. Health officials announced in September 2025 that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would initiate a label change for acetaminophen, warning of a potential link to autism. Trump cautioned several times against taking the pain reliever during pregnancy. “If you’re pregnant, don’t take Tylenol,” Trump said at a press conference at the time. “Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t have your baby take Tylenol.” He said the medication was “not good” and taking Tylenol during pregnancy was associated with “a very increased risk of autism”. Through Denmark’s robust national healthcare system, researchers were able to track more than 1.5 million children ‌born between 1997 and 2022 in the national health registry, including 31,098 children who were exposed to Tylenol in utero. Autism was diagnosed in 1.8% of children who were exposed to Tylenol and 3% of those who weren’t, according to the study, which was published in Jama Pediatrics. A similar 2024 study in Sweden found a marginal link that disappeared after taking siblings into account, suggesting that autism is strongly genetic, which has already been demonstrated in other studies. Tylenol is safe to take during pregnancy and can play a key role in relieving pain and bringing down fevers. Yet after the September announcement, Tylenol orders for pregnant women in emergency rooms dropped by 16% in the initial study period, according to a Lancet study published last month. Health officials’ “words are affecting behavior”, said Jeremy Faust, a co-author of that Lancet study, an emergency physician at Mass General Brigham and a health services researcher at Harvard Medical School. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2026
  2. News Article
    The Health Secretary has asserted that securing a timely cancer diagnosis "shouldn't be a question of luck," as he announced a substantial funding injection to facilitate patient checks closer to home. The government is investing £237 million into new and improved community diagnostic centres (CDCs) across England. Wes Streeting described the new CDCs as "part of the biggest expansion in NHS diagnostics in a generation." “The NHS delivered a record number of tests and scans last year but there’s still a long way to go before we’re catching disease on time,” Mr Streeting said. “The NHS should be there for all of us when we need it, catching illness earlier so we can treat it faster.” The investment will lead to four new CDCs in Gorton, Luton, Boston and Bideford, which will open in 2026/27. Some 17 CDCs will be expanded and 15 will receive enhancements to boost diagnostic capacity, the Department of Health and Social Care said. Mr Streeting went on: “These new CDCs are part of the biggest expansion in NHS diagnostics in a generation – continuing the progress we’re making and helping save lives. Read full story Source: The Independent, 14 April 2026
  3. Content Article
    Advice and Guidance (A&G) has been used in the NHS for years. It helps GPs get advice from specialists on a patient’s condition to decide the best course of treatment. The Department of Health and Social Care sets out the facts following media reports with a letter from the Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting, published in the Daily Telegraph on 31 March.
  4. News Article
    A children's nurse has been struck off from practising after the regulator found serious care failings. Elzabeth Lennon, a children's nurse working in Northampton, was reviewed by a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Fitness to Practise Committee over care provided in March 2022. The panel previously found she failed to carry out regular checks of a cannula location, did not properly respond to repeated infusion pump alarms, and did not escalate concerns for "Baby A", a vulnerable baby when required. "Mrs Lennon's actions breached fundamental tenets of the profession, pose an ongoing risk to patient safety and would be deemed concerning by the members of the public," the panel said. The panel said Lennon had "addressed how she would handle a similar situation differently in the future", and accepted her statement that, although she made mistakes, she believed she was acting in Baby A's best interests. However, the NMC panel found she had not shown a full understanding of the seriousness of her misconduct or its impact on colleagues and the nursing profession. Because of this, the panel said there was an "ongoing risk of repetition", and so "a finding of impairment is necessary on the grounds of public protection". Read full story Source: BBC News, 14 April 2026
  5. News Article
    Thousands of cancer patients from minority ethnic backgrounds will have access to “groundbreaking” genetic testing on the NHS that previously discriminated against them. This routine form of genetic testing, used before chemotherapy treatment, could save the lives of Black and minority ethnic cancer patients who already face poorer health outcomes after diagnosis compared with their white counterparts. Before undergoing chemotherapy, cancer patients across England undergo genetic testing that can lead to changes in treatments to reduce the adverse side-effects chemotherapy can have, including mouth sores, hair loss, nausea and fatigue, and which can also be fatal. Up to 40% of the 38,000 patients treated with fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy in England will develop an adverse drug reaction to the treatment. Until last year, these genetic tests only looked for four types of DPYD gene variants, which are mainly found within the DNA of people from white European backgrounds. Consequently, this genetic testing was less effective on Black cancer patients, leading them to be more likely to experience severe side-effects including death after chemotherapy. These genetic tests are now being offered by the NHS across England to include testing for a fifth DPYD genomic variant, which is more prevalent among people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Dr Veline L’Esperance, the senior clinical adviser at the NHS Race and Health Observatory, said that the introduction of these new genetic tests represents “tangible results for patients who have historically been left behind”. “Patients of African ancestry deserve the same standard of safety as everyone else, and now clinicians have the means to deliver it,” L’Esperance said. “What makes this significant is that it moves the conversation about ethnic health inequality in cancer care from words to action. This is the first concrete, clinical response to the evidence that Black and ethnic minority patients were being failed by tests designed around white European genetics.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2026
  6. News Article
    Two in five international health workers are considering leaving the UK, with many citing feelings of not being welcome amid anti-immigrant rhetoric. The union Unison warns that government proposals to tighten settlement rules for migrant workers, coupled with escalating visa fees and restrictions, threaten to deepen the ongoing NHS staffing crisis. A Unison survey of nearly 1,900 international health professionals working in Britain found that 43% are now considering departure, with a quarter feeling unwelcome and a fifth reporting they feel unsafe. The union’s head of health Helga Pile said: “The UK’s health and care services would collapse without the skilled workers who’ve come here from overseas. How we treat them matters – they should be respected, not taken advantage of and abused. “It’s shocking so many NHS staff say they don’t feel safe or welcome in this country. No wonder so many are thinking of leaving. “These findings make it clear ministers must think again about trebling the settlement period for crucial migrant health and care staff. Otherwise, the workforce crisis will get worse. “Politicians of all stripes need to stop demonising people who are doing crucial work, often for very low pay. They’re the ones shoring up the UK’s crumbling health and care sectors. We simply cannot do without them.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 14 April 2026
  7. News Article
    An inquiry into the preventable deaths of babies in Sussex will fail to learn the lessons as it “systematically” excluded dozens of families, Wes Streeting has been warned before a meeting with bereaved parents. The health secretary has ordered a review of nine infant deaths at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust amid maternity scandals across England. However, families are calling on Streeting to expand the investigation to all those who died and might have survived with better care. To date, the families of more than 60 babies who died between 2019 and 2023 have expressed concerns about their care, although the true figure is expected to be higher. Dr Marija Pantelic, a public health expert whose baby Sasha died in the care of UH Sussex in January 2022, said the narrow scope and opt-in nature of the review was dangerous and potentially harmful as it would be based on the experiences of an “overwhelmingly white and British” group of parents. Parents want an expanded investigation to be led by Donna Ockenden, the senior midwife who is leading maternity inquiries into preventable deaths at NHS trusts in Nottingham and Leeds. They also want the Sussex investigation to actively seek out families who are affected so it is not based only on the nine cases whose parents have raised the alarm. Pantelic, an associate professor in public health who specialises in health inequalities, said it should alarm Streeting that the review would be based on the experiences of the “overwhelmingly white and British” families who had come forward. “If you only hear from certain groups, you will only see certain problems,” she said. “For instance, you can be sure not to identify racism if you only hear from white families. If you fail to identify the real drivers of harm, the solutions you propose will be partial at best, and harmful at worst.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2026
  8. Content Article
    The King's Fund has launched the latest edition of their annual Social Care 360 report. 2024/25 saw the continuation of a new trend in adult social care. Local authorities are spending more on social care, with that investment focused not just on paying higher fees to the providers who supply care, but, now, increasing the number of people who receive it as well. More people are now receiving publicly funded long-term care than at any time in the last decade. This change is due to increasing local authority spending power – the total amount that councils have to spend, both from money they raise themselves (for example, from council tax and business rates) and from central government grants. However, councils still do not have the resources to meet all the demands on them and their overall financial position is worsening. As a result, local authorities are increasing fees below the increase in costs faced by social care providers. This has potential implications for market stability, quality, and particularly private-paying clients, who are being charged much more for their care so that providers can balance their books. Taken together, the picture for social care remains precarious, then, with significant pressure on the government to ensure stability in the sector in the medium term, and on the Casey Commission to identify coherent proposals for reform in the long term.
  9. News Article
    Private firms providing services to the NHS including healthcare and consultancy have made £1.6bn in profits over the last two years, research reveals. The findings – on the basis of contracts worth £12bn – have prompted claims of “scandalous” profiteering, concern that the health service is being “taken for a ride” and calls for ministers to impose a cap on maximum profit levels. The £1.6bn in profits made in 2023-24 and 2024-25 would have been enough to pay for 9,178 doctors or 19,428 nurses during that time, according to the Centre for Health and the Public Interest. Its findings are based on analysis of NHS contracts in England, with 760 private firms providing services including diagnostic tests such as CT scans to patients, and treatments including hip and knee replacements, and for skin problems and mental health conditions. Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesperson, said: “Private companies making super-profits from our NHS is an unacceptable waste. This money should be going on frontline services, not fattened profits for big corporations. “The NHS should be able to benefit from economies of scale and use its power as a major buyer to drive down prices. I’m afraid it looks like our health service is being taken for a ride.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2026
  10. News Article
    A trust chair “exceeded her authority” and “badly handled” the suspension of its chief executive, according to investigation findings seen by HSJ. Annette Doherty, chair of East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, gave chief executive Tracey Fletcher less than 24 hours to either accept a settlement package or face suspension during a mid-year performance review on 18 November last year. Ms Fletcher was formally suspended three days later. In December, she raised a grievance concerning the handling of her suspension and the matters leading up to it. HSJ has seen a draft report into that grievance prepared by a specialist HR consultant firm, dated 15 March. The document says that it “details high-level interim findings based on the evidence gathered so far”, although the author believed further information was “unlikely to change the findings”. It concluded that on the basis of the evidence, the chair’s actions were “not in line with the NHS values and expectations of a senior leader”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 April 2026
  11. News Article
    The government has revealed the locations of 40 new and expanded urgent care centres and same-day emergency care units. The programme, backed by £215.5m, includes 10 new urgent treatment centres, four expanded UTCs, five new same-day emergency care services and 21 expanded SDECs. They are across 33 hospital trusts. A government announcement said the facilities would tackle corridor care by “reducing waiting times and improving patient flow through hospitals” – but the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has disputed this claim. While many of the hospitals set to host the new UTCs and SDECs are above the national average for 12-hour waits in A&E, others appear to have less of a problem with long A&E waits. This measure is a close barometer of corridor care. “Expert teams” from NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time programme are also being sent to the hospitals with the highest levels of corridor care to provide “bespoke clinical support to leadership staff”, the government has said. RCEM president Ian Higginson welcomed the government’s commitment to eradicate corridor care, but said urgent treatment centres “are not the answer to reducing corridor care and will not make a dent in the number of people who are enduring long waits on trolleys in inappropriate places such as corridors”. “These services focus on the least unwell patients, and it’s the most unwell or those with mental health problems who are filling our corridors,” he added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 April 2026
  12. News Article
    Malina Lee, a 31-year-old wedding baker based in San Antonio, Texas, joined TikTok during the Covid pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Like many people at the time, she was bored and began using the platform to pass the time and advertise her business. She didn’t expect a cancer diagnosis. Four years after Lee joined the app, a commenter with the username “PickleFart” told her that her neck looked asymmetrical in a way that could suggest she had a goiter – an enlarged thyroid gland – and that she should get it checked out. The anonymous amateur clinician turned out to be right – Lee had thyroid cancer, received treatment quickly, and, less than a year later, was cancer free. TikTok users are increasingly reporting that the app’s hyper-specific algorithm has steered them towards detecting medical problems before they were aware of them themselves. In many instances, users reported that symptoms described by other TikTokers matched their own inscrutable set of ailments, which led to diagnoses. In instances like Lee’s, human commenters were responsible for diagnoses that doctors had missed or not yet identified. Lee is not the only user that PickleFart, whose real name is Billie Jean Tuomi, has accurately diagnosed in a comment section. By her estimate, Tuomi has commented on dozens of videos alerting content creators of potential thyroid problems – and correctly spotted serious problems in at least four cases that she knows of, including Lee’s. Tuomi’s career as the “thyroid avenger”, as some have started to call her, is personal in its origins: she herself was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2012, and after two years of treatment was declared cancer-free. But obtaining a diagnosis and undergoing the subsequent treatment were difficult processes. She now finds herself trying to spare strangers on the internet what she went through. “It’s something that you don’t ever stop struggling with – it’s constantly on my mind,” she said. “The earlier you get diagnosed, the easier it is to treat, so I feel like it’s important to say something if you see something.” Craig Mittleman, director of the department of emergency services at Lawrence + Memorial hospital in Connecticut, said in the last five years of his 36-year career practicing medicine, he has seen a sharp increase in patients coming in with internet-influenced diagnoses – for better and for worse. “In some ways, it’s allowed patients to feel empowered to ask certain questions and be more informed,” he said. “But I also find that we are often, as emergency physicians, spending a lot of time debunking information that patients present, which they’ve procured through social media.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 April 2026
  13. News Article
    At the height of Covid, hundreds of cancer patients had mastectomies without the reconstruction that would normally accompany them. They would eventually get the surgery, they were told – but for many that promise feels more meaningless by the day Every time she lifts her arms to get dressed or hang out her washing, Julie Ford gets a painful reminder of one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. At 7am one day in April 2021, she had gone into hospital, alone and wearing a mask, to have her right breast and lymph nodes removed in a bid to stop breast cancer from spreading. Later that day, still groggy from the anaesthetic, in pain and with surgical drains hanging from both sides of her chest, she had staggered to the door with the help of two nurses. She was eased into a friend’s car and driven home to fend for herself. While Julie’s breast had been removed, it was not reconstructed. Usually, both procedures are carried out in the same operation. But as reconstruction using tissue from the patient’s abdomen is a complex, eight-hour procedure requiring a large surgical team, it was considered “non-essential” and paused by most NHS trusts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like hundreds of women with breast cancer who underwent urgent mastectomies without reconstruction in 2020 and 2021, Julie was assured she could have the procedure once Covid restrictions lifted. But five years later, Julie, now 62, is still waiting. A national shortage of specialist surgeons and theatre space, as well as the need to prioritise new cancer cases, means many women like her, who had breasts removed during lockdown, feel they have been abandoned. They live in daily physical discomfort and mental distress as they continue to await the reconstructions they were promised years ago. A 2024 study found at least 2,200 patients who have survived breast cancer, or who were at high risk of developing it, were waiting for surgery across 40 NHS centres in England, with an average wait of 2.5 years. And Wood fears there is little to encourage struggling hospitals to clear the backlog. Instead of investing resources into “expensive and lengthy” surgeries such as breast reconstructions, NHS trusts that want to reduce the size of their overall waiting list have an incentive to prioritise quick, simple operations where several patients can be ticked off the list in a short time, he says. “There are capacity issues, with growing demand and a shortage of theatre time and surgeons’ time, but to tackle it you need to have [NHS trust] management that is bothered to find a solution, not just sit on their hands.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2026
  14. Content Article
    A review carried out by the National Guardian’s Office has found that temporary workers feel largely excluded from being able to speak up about workplace issues – with almost two-thirds (60.4%) of temporary workers surveyed saying they do not have a voice in the NHS in England. In the report review, it was found that the biggest barrier to speaking up for temporary workers was the fear of losing shifts. The review was carried out to enhance the understanding and improvement of a speak up culture among temporary workers in the NHS, working in roles such as nursing, midwifery and health and social care. The review included surveys, focus groups and interviews to gather diverse perspectives. It spoke to workers, Freedom to Speak Up guardians and other key stakeholders including national representative organisations. The review heard deeply moving stories from temporary workers, with many recounting experiences of unfair treatment at work, not being supported and feeling like an outsider. In addition, temporary workers reported issues such as a lack of proper staff induction, a lack of advocacy and representation, mistrust in speaking up processes and a lack of support after raising concerns. The review was carried out following a Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) Investigation in 2024 which found widespread discrimination and cultures of fear hindering speaking up among temporary staff. The review found: About two-thirds (64.6%) of participants surveyed said they knew speaking up arrangements in their organisation. 5% of workers from NHS Professionals were not aware of Freedom to Speak Up guardians whereas only 18.8% of workers from Trust Bank were not aware of Freedom to Speak Up guardians. Seniority had an impact on whether workers knew the arrangements for speaking up. 71% of staff pay bands five-to-eight knew what the speaking up arrangements were, whereas only 59% of bands one-to-four did. The review report contains six recommendations to help tackle the issues identified, aimed at both the healthcare system and provider organisations and temporary workforce suppliers. The recommendations include calls for the strengthening of support allowing temporary workers to speak up and the promotion of a culture of inclusion and belonging for temporary workers. Related reading on the hub: Speaking up for patient safety: An interview with Kathy Nabbie Speaking up as an agency nurse cost me my career My experience as an agency nurse
  15. Content Article
    The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has launched its Strategic Plan for 2026-29, setting out how it will encourage a more preventative approach to regulation through delivery of its statutory duties to help meet the challenges of today’s rapidly changing health and social care landscape. At its heart, the plan reaffirms the PSA’s unwavering commitment to protecting the public. It recognises that regulation can best support safe, effective care when it is targeted, proportionate and preventative, and when it works as part of a wider safety and quality system. PSA's strategic plan identifies five strategic themes around their work: oversight prevention reform governance collaboration. The plan contains three strategic aims: delivering highly effective oversight of regulation and registration driving continuous improvement across regulators and Accredited Registers working with others to make the overall system more cohesive, supportive and preventative. It also sets out how the PSA will support governments to maximise the benefits of a more modern and flexible legislative framework while remaining agile in prioritising work that delivers the greatest benefit for patients, service users and the public across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
  16. Content Article
    This case study is one in a set of patient safety ‘how we acted on patient safety issues you recorded’ case studies which show the direct action taken in response to patient safety events recorded by organisations, staff and the public, and how their actions support the NHS to protect patients from harm. The National Patient Safety Team were notified by a trust Medical Device Safety Officer (MDSO) of an incident where a baby ingested the cap off a purple colostrum syringe. The baby was being fed expressed colostrum by the parent who was unaware of the presence of the cap when the feed started . Colostrum is the first breast milk the mother produces providing important nutritional benefits for newborns. When pressure was placed on the syringe plunger accidental cap dislodgement occurred and the baby required surgery to remove the cap. Despite the purple colour, the syringe was not licenced for the administration of colostrum. Collaboration with the MHRA resulted in the issuing of a device safety information alert. Working with key midwifery and neonatal stakeholders, a safety communication on reducing the risk of choking was issued to maternity and neonatal units. When advised of the safety issue, the manufacturer ceased production of the syringe and have introduced a new licenced colostrum collection and administration syringe. The new syringe does not have a cap and is available to order from the NHS Supply Chain. This intervention should reduce the risk of accidental ingestion of syringe caps.
  17. Content Article
    Healthcare regulation refers to the formal oversight of healthcare practices and organisations through standards, monitoring, and accountability mechanisms. Although often operating in the background, regulation shapes how care is organised, delivered, and accounted for. In this BMJ article, Josje Kok and colleagues argue that amid growing pressures on health systems, healthcare regulation must evolve beyond compliance driven approaches.
  18. Event
    until
    The new NHS online hospital launches in 2027, but what is it and how will it work? Join the Patients Association's free online event on 11th May at 2pm to learn more. NHS Online will give patients with certain conditions the option of having their hospital appointment online. Together we’ll look at what an online NHS hospital means to people, and will discuss the benefits, opportunities, risks, and concerns. Join us if you are a patient, healthcare professional, policy-maker, carer, charity worker, or simply anyone who wants to learn more about this new initiative. Speakers Chair: Rachel Power - Chief Executive, the Patients Association Jonny Brown - Programme Director, NHS England Jacob Lant - Chief Executive, National Voices Patient representative Register
  19. News Article
    ChatGPT has helped to uncover a woman's rare condition after years of being misdiagnosed by doctors. Phoebe Tesoriere, 23, claims she was told she was anxious, depressed, had epilepsy and warned she'd be treated as a mental health patient if she kept returning to A&E. Following three days in a coma after a seizure, Phoebe, from Cardiff, put her symptoms into the AI chatbot. She said it suggested a number of conditions, including hereditary spastic paraplegia, external, which Phoebe presented to her GP. Genetic testing confirmed the diagnosis. Dr Rebeccah Tomlinson is a GP serving Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan, and said: "It's difficult for GPs to know everything. "With the pressure on the NHS, we have to know even more. "Patients coming with information helps me understand what they are thinking and guide the discussion more clearly. "It's good as a starting talking point [AI tools] which should be followed by going to a medical professional to discuss concerns further. "It's helpful for patients to come armed with information but the GP has to be open and receptive to the patient. "General practice has to be a two-way conversation." A recent University of Oxford study found that people using AI for healthcare advice were given a mix of good and bad responses, making it hard to identify what advice they should trust. Phoebe understands the challenges the hospital faced diagnosing her, but said she turned to AI after finding the experience "really lonely". "I had to fight to be listened to," she added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 April 2026
  20. Content Article
    The General Practice Requests for Advice and Guidance (A&G) is an enhanced service within the NHS that supports general practice teams to seek specialist advice from secondary care before or instead of making a planned care referral. This service is designed to support the Government's commitment to move more care from secondary into community settings. It aims to ensure patients receive care in the right place at the right time via the use of specialist advice and guidance by general practice. Participation is optional but practice that have signed up are eligible to claim payment for pre-referral A&G requests made since 1 April 2025.  The Royal College of Practitioners (RCGP) proposes 6 key recommendations for the use of A&G which includes shared clinical risk between primary and secondary care and aims to ensure that advice and guidance continues as one option for clinicians within a referral process and must not be mandated. Further support for collaboration between primary and secondary care is essential to enable the backlog of care exacerbated as a result of the pandemic to be managed and streamline patient care. If work is to be transferred from secondary to primary care, via A&G, then resource (time, money and people) must follow the patient and not stay in secondary care. A&G should be optional and not mandated. Other tools to promote closer working between primary and secondary care aiming to streamline patient care are available and should be considered by providers as alternatives, allowing choice. These include direct telephone calls, emails, teledermatology and commercial apps that are able to connect primary and secondary care. Clinical care governance and risk must be shared between primary and secondary care during A&G conversations, and this must be understood by all clinicians and their patients when A&G is used. When using A&G, all clinicians must uphold the standards of good medical record keeping as per GMC advice, documenting decisions and actions, identifying who has made the decisions and is agreeing with the actions, in the patient clinical record. This should apply to both primary and secondary care and not rely solely on primary care updating the clinical records.
  21. News Article
    Training for NHS midwives will be overhauled to tackle a “national emergency” of racism, which means black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which regulates the profession, is introducing mandatory anti-racism training in degrees to combat “systemic” discrimination. Maternity scandals and reviews have highlighted how racism is contributing to the avoidable deaths of mothers and babies in Britain. Black mothers have been denied pain relief or emergency care by NHS staff after being stereotyped as “tough” or “demanding” and better able to endure pain. The Times revealed that the NHS has been issued with 22 separate safety warnings by official bodies to address racial disparities in maternity care over the past decade, yet the situation has not improved. Under the initiative, all universities offering midwifery degrees will have to update their curriculum to include awareness of racial biases and discrimination. From the next academic year, students will be taught about how racial stereotypes can affect care and how skin colour can affect the presentation of symptoms. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 8 April 2026
  22. News Article
    The NHS could save tens of thousands of pounds per patient each year by prescribing tablets instead of liquid medicine to children with a particular medical condition, experts have revealed. Researchers at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) found that patients as young as seven were not only able to successfully transition to pills but often expressed a clear preference for them over the taste of their liquid medicine. The study focused on children suffering from congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI), a condition characterised by elevated insulin levels that necessitate regular, often multiple daily, doses of diazoxide to maintain stable blood sugar. Until now, this vital treatment has predominantly been administered in liquid form, with liquid diazoxide costing a significant £15.50 per 50mg. Experts have estimated that switching from liquid to tablets could save the NHS £40,000 per patient per year. Jess Manktelow, who has CHI and has been a Gosh patient since she was 15 months old, was one of the children who took part in the project. The 11-year-old, from Kent, was switched to diazoxide tablets in April 2025. “It has made a big difference taking medicine that doesn’t taste horrible,” she added. “There were times where I didn’t want to take it because of the taste. “It makes things very easy for me now, I’m able to do it myself and it doesn’t take up as much time at school or when I’m doing things I like, like climbing, it doesn’t have as much impact and that makes me happy.” Kate Morgan, Gosh clinical nurse specialist who co-led the project, said: “We knew the potential this trial had for savings, but the scale of the quality-of-life improvements for children and their families we are seeing is something we didn’t anticipate. “Children are so much more than their diagnoses – they have full lives and families and their illnesses affects everyone, so it is very important we do all we can to make simple, positive changes that impact everyone for the better.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 April 2026
  23. News Article
    A former finance director has claimed he was ousted and subjected to a campaign to “silence” him by his trust after he asked “inconvenient” questions about race inequalities. Don Richards, who was chief finance officer at West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals Trust until 2024, told an employment tribunal preliminary hearing in Watford on Wednesday that he had been “pushed” into signing a settlement agreement. He left the trust shortly after two other executive directors wrote to chief executive Matthew Coats saying they had “no confidence” in him. Days earlier, the integrated care board CEO had sent a separate letter to Mr Coats saying she had concerns over the trust’s financial leadership. Mr Richards said in the hearing that there had been a “continuing campaign first to remove me, then to silence me”. He said this stemmed from a board meeting – which took place in the same month the letters were sent – where he had raised queries about mortality rates among Black women in maternity services, as well as staff with a minority ethnic background being passed over for promotion. He told the hearing: “I asked inconvenient questions, and the chief executive at the trust didn’t like that. His expedient solution was to remove me.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 April 2026
  24. News Article
    A child spent more than two months in A&E following a breakdown of a care placement, in what the trust described as “one of the longest waits we’ve seen”. Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust said the young person was at its Queen’s Hospital A&E for more than 70 days, while another was there for more than 30. They were both under the care of councils “outside our area”, and their care placements had broken down, the trust said. It has declined to say which councils. Both children had “complex behavioural needs” which meant they could not be moved on to children’s wards, the east London trust said. Speaking last week, it said the children had recently moved on to other placements. The trust has previously highlighted long waits for children under care at Queen’s A&E – including a wait of 44 days in 2024 – and said care placement breakdowns were the most common reason. Trust CEO Matthew Trainer said: “We’re seen as a place of safety for children and young people with mental health issues and/or challenging behavioural needs. This means several young people have experienced long waits for the right support in A&E. “It’s unacceptable and distressing for both patients and our staff, and something we’ve been discussing at our board meetings for several years, as well as working with mental health trusts and councils to see how we can reduce delays.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 April 2026
  25. Content Article
    French actor / theatre director and hernia mesh advocate Arnaud Dennis is in an assisted dying clinic in Belgium. In this powerful interview the 42 year old speaks about how he is awaiting approval for euthanasia after devastating complications from a hernia mesh that destroyed his life. In this final public appeal, he denounces the major health scandal of mesh, giving his last thoughts to the hundreds of implant victims he has represented in France and warns of systemic medical and institutional failures – as well as the conflicts of interests /payments from industry to surgeons, which continue to help fuel the lucrative mesh machine.

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