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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    A new mum was confused for another patient and mistakenly fitted with a contraceptive coil after a C-section.
    Another patient in north Wales almost had the wrong toe removed during surgery to amputate two others.
    A third incident happened when a patient, unable to swallow oral medication, had it crushed, mixed with water and administered with a syringe.
    These so-called "never events" happened at hospitals in the Betsi Cadwaladr health board area in February.
    In a report into the three incidents in February, Betsi Cadwaladr health board outlined how a patient had a coil - an intrauterine device which prevents pregnancy - inserted after undergoing a Caesarean section.
    Described in the report as "wrong procedure", it had been planned for a different patient but a mistake had been made after the "list order was changed due to the increase in category for this patient".
    Another incident, described in the report as "wrong site surgery", described a patient who was due to have their second and third toes amputated. However, an incision was made in their fourth toe by accident.
    Luckily, the error was spotted and the correct toes were amputated.
    In the third never event, described as "wrong route", the report details the case of a patient who was unable to swallow oral medication.
    To administer it, a member of staff crushed it, mixed it with water and "inadvertently" gave it intravenously, according to the report.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 28 March 2024
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    Healthcare workers' perceptions of safety at their organisations is improving, though a gap still remains between senior leaders and front-line workers, according to a Press Ganey report.
    Press Ganey surveyed more than 1 million employees from 200 health systems in the USA in 2023. The poll included 19 questions related to safety culture across three domains: prevention and reporting, pride and reputation, and resources and teamwork.
    Three takeaways:
    Staff safety culture scores have risen from an all-time low of 3.96 (out of 5) in 2021 to 4.01 in 2023. This increase was largely driven by improvements around staff members' perceptions of resources and teamwork, including views on adequate unit staffing. "While these improvements are encouraging, there's still a lot of work to do," Press Ganey said. "Pre-pandemic rates were never the desired end state, and it’s important to note that nearly half (48.5%) of employees still have a low perception of safety culture."  Senior management reported the highest perceptions of safety culture at 4.53, while registered nurses and advanced practice providers reported the second- and third-lowest at 3.95 and 3.92, respectively. Security team members had the lowest perceptions of safety at 3.91. large gap was also seen between senior leaders and registered nurses regarding perceptions of workplace violence protections. Senior management gave their organizations a 4.30 out of 5 for having strong security measures in place to prevent violence, compared to just 3.36 for nurses.  Read full story
    Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 3 April 2024
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    Harold Chugg spent much of early 2023 in a hospital bed because of worsening heart failure. During his most recent admission in June, the 75-year-old received several blood transfusions, which led to fluid accumulating in his lungs and tissues.
    Ordinarily, he would have remained in hospital for further days or weeks while the medical team got his fluid retention under control. But Harold was offered an alternative: admission to a virtual ward where he would be closely monitored in the comfort of his own home.
    Armed with a computer tablet, a Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff and weighing scales, Harold returned to his farm near Chulmleigh in north Devon and logged his own symptoms and measurements daily, which were reviewed by a specialist nurse in another part of the county.
    Virtual wards provide hospital-level care in people’s homes through the use of apps, wearables and daily “virtual ward rounds” by medical staff, who review patient data and follow up with telephone calls or home visits where necessary.
    More than 10,000 such beds are already available across England and at least a further 15,000 are planned. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also funding their expansion.
    But while proponents claim patients in virtual wards recover at the same rate or faster than those treated in hospital, and that the wards’ provision can help cut waiting lists and costs, some worry that their rapid expansion could place additional strain on patients and caregivers while distracting from the need to invest in emergency care.
    “Virtual wards, if they deliver hospital-level processes of care, are just one part of the solution, not a panacea,” said Dr Tim Cooksley, a recent ex-president of the Society for Acute Medicine.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 7 February 2024
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    Areas across England where the highest proportion of ethnic minorities live have the poorest access to GPs, with experts attributing this disparity to an outdated model being used to determine funding.
    As of October 2023, there were 34 fully qualified full-time-equivalent GPs per 100,000 patients in the areas with the highest proportion of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, according to a Guardian analysis of NHS Digital and census data.
    This is 29% lower than the 48 general practitioners per 100,000 people serving neighbourhoods with the highest proportion of white British people.
    Although ethnic minorities tend to be younger than the white British population, minority ethnic areas still have the lowest number of GPs per person even when factors such as age, sex and health necessities are considered.
    Prof Miqdad Asaria at the London School of Economics department of health policy said it was “very concerning” that ethnic minorities “have systematically poorer access to primary care which is likely to be a key driver of current and future health inequalities”.
    “Primary care plays a crucial role in preventing disease, diagnosing and treating illness, and facilitating access to specialist or hospital treatment for people who need it,” he added.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian,15 February 2024
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS board members must speak up against discrimination, challenge others constructively and help foster a safe culture, under a new NHS England assessment framework.
    The new leadership competency framework, published today, sets out six domains which board members are required to assess themselves against as part of an annual “fitness” appraisal.
    Each domain (see below) contains competencies directors must exhibit, such as:
    Speak up against any form of racism, discrimination, bullying, aggression, sexual misconduct or violence, even when [they] might be the only voice; Challenge constructively, speaking up when [they] see actions and behaviours which are inappropriate and lead to staff or people using services feeling unsafe, or staff or people being excluded in any way or treated unfairly; and Ensure there is a safe culture of speaking up for [their] workforce. Each competency statement gives board members a multiple choice to assess themselves against, ranging from “almost always” to “no chance to demonstrate”. Organisations have been told to incorporate the six competency domains into role descriptions from 1 April, and use them as part of board member appraisals.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 28 February 2024
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    Physician associates should never see ‘undifferentiated’ patients in a GP setting, the BMA has declared in new ‘first of its kind’ guidance.
    Today, the union has published a national scope of practice laying out how physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AA) should work safely in GP practices and secondary care. 
    According to the BMA, the guidance is different from what it describes as the current ‘piecemeal or fragmented approach’ whereby individual organisations set their own guidelines for how PAs should be supervised.
    In general practice, the guidance said a GP ‘should first triage’ all patients and ‘decide which ones a PA can see’, suggesting annual health checks as an appropriate contact. 
    The union is also clear that PAs ‘must not make independent management decisions for patients’ and must be clear in all their communications that ‘they are not doctors’. 
    Read full story
    Source: Pulse, 7 March 2024
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    A secret report has warned that the NHS is failing to protect trainee paramedics from widespread sexual harassment and racism at work, The Independent has revealed.
    A confidential NHS England report uncovered by The Independent has found that “extremely alarming” conduct and undermining behaviour are rife in ambulance trusts across the country, with trainees subjected to derogatory comments about their age, ethnicity and appearance in front of patients.
    There is a “worrying acceptance” that this is “part of the job”, with students hesitant to raise complaints about sexual behaviour by male colleagues in case it gives them a reputation as “annoying snowflakes”, the report says.
    The revelations come after a recent NHS staff survey revealed that thousands of ambulance staff had reported unwanted sexual behaviour from colleagues and patients last year.
    One healthcare leader described the findings as “harrowing”, warning that much more needs to be done to protect junior staff.
    The national report, which is understood to have gone through several edited versions and is marked commercially sensitive, was not due to be released until The Independent obtained the document through a freedom of information request.
    It found an “undercurrent” of bullying in some areas, with examples of students leaving their jobs as a result of inappropriate behaviour.
    Trainees reported feeling undervalued and unwanted while on the job, with one apparently told: “Your concerns don’t matter – we have to meet patient demands.”
    Ambulance handover delays have also led to student paramedics having less experience and training on the job, prompting fears that newly qualified paramedics do not have sufficient levels of experience in life-critical situations.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 19 March 2024
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    People with long Covid have evidence of continuing inflammation in their blood, which could help understanding of the condition and how it may be treated, a UK study suggests.
    It found the presence of certain proteins increased the risk of specific symptoms, such as fatigue, in people sick enough to need hospital treatment.
    It is unclear whether milder cases of Covid have the same effect on the body.
    A test remains a long way off - but the findings may prompt future trials.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 8 April 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    Top picks: 12 research papers on Long Covid
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Unregulated healthcare workers are a risk to the most vulnerable patients, a former victim’s commissioner has warned after The Independent and Sky News uncovered a “horrifying” sexual abuse scandal within NHS mental health services.
    Dame Vera Baird called for a formal framework for healthcare assistants and support workers, who do not have a mandatory professional register like doctors and nurses and can “come in and go out from one hospital to another” without the same thorough checks.
    Dame Vera told The Independent that the setup did not lead to a “very safe way of working” because healthcare assistants are “in an environment where they are responsible for vulnerable people”.
    “If there has been abuse from mental health care assistants who are also agency staff who are coming in and going out from one hospital to another, that needs to be looked at,” she said.
    “This is not a very safe way of working. Some kind of framework around agency staff seems to be very important [to have].”
    She warned that sexual predators may go into mental health services and work in units where patients can be “highly sexualised”, prompting a “dreadful combination”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 30 January 2024
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    A hospital trust has admitted that a young autistic boy should still be alive had they delivered the appropriate level of care.
    In an exclusive interview with ITV News, the day before the inquest into his death, Mattheus Vieira's heartbroken parents described him as "special", adding: "And special in a good way, not just special needs."
    "People may think because he was autistic he was difficult, but it's not the case, he was very easy.
    "He was the boss of the house, we just miss his presence."
    Mattheus, aged 11, was taken to King's Lynn Hospital, in Norfolk, with a kidney infection. He struggled to cope with medical staff taking observations, and his notes recorded him as "uncooperative".
    His dad, Vitor Vieira, told ITV News: "He doesn't like to be touched, even a plaster he doesn't like.
    "And they say 'Oh he does not co-operate'. He was an autistic boy, what do you expect?
    Mr Vieira believes staff did not understand his son's behaviour. Mattheus was non verbal and so unable to articulate his distress.
    Observations were dismissed as "inaccurate" by some medical staff. In fact, they were accurate and indicated that his kidney infection had developed into septic shock.
    He suffered a cardiac arrest and died, aged 11.
    Read full story
    Source: ITV News, 26 February 2024
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Medics and managers must overcome a system-wide “aversion” to risk after their integrated care system was identified as a national outlier for low numbers of patients discharged home, according to the ICS’s chief executive.
    Kate Shields, CEO of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICS, has highlighted a discrepancy between the ICS and the rest of England, with a lower proportion of patients discharged with no new social care requirements, or discharged directly to their own home, with only intermediate additional care (known as ”pathways” 0 and 1 in national discharge guidance). 
    Problems with delayed patient discharges – known as “no criteria to reside” patients – are a major contributor to overcrowding and long waits in the emergency department at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, as well as severe delays for ambulances to handover patients.
    Discharge on pathways 2 and 3 – to a care home or intermediate care bed, with substantial additional care requirements – typically take a lot longer, and require more resources. 
    Ms Shields’ comments come 18 months after an external report warned of an “over-reliance on bedded care” in Cornwall.
    Speaking at a meeting of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board last month, Ms Shields said the health economy needed to “look at how we get people out of hospital faster”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 4 March 2024
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    The government is facing calls for a public inquiry into the scandal of sexual abuse in mental health hospitals, following an investigation by The Independent.
    Rape Crisis England and Wales has warned that the “alarming” scale of abuse within the UK’s psychiatric system requires “major intervention” from ministers.
    It comes after an expose by the Independent and Sky News revealed that almost 20,000 reports of sexual incidents – involving both patients and staff – had been made in more than half of NHS mental health trusts in the past five years.
    As well as a public inquiry, which would give survivors the chance to give evidence, Rape Crisis England and Wales wants the government to appoint a named minister with responsibility for addressing the problem.
    Chief executive Ciara Bergman said: “That anyone in the already vulnerable position of needing or being detained for in-patient care because of their mental health needs should experience sexual violence and abuse whilst in the care of the state, is deeply concerning.
    “We are concerned that without major intervention and leadership at the highest levels, this could lead to more incidents of sexual violence and abuse happening, and this behaviour being accepted as inevitable, when it is not, and is indeed absolutely preventable.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 15 March 2024
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    A&E staff are unable to properly look after the most vulnerable mental health patients or treat them with compassion because emergency departments are so overwhelmed, top medics have warned.
    An exclusive report shared with The Independent shows more than 40% of patients who needed emergency care due to self-harm or suicide attempts received no compassionate care while in A&E, according to their medical records.
    The data, collated by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), prompted a warning from top doctor Dr Adrian Boyle that mental health patients are spending far too long in A&E – where they are cared for by staff who are not specifically trained for their needs – before being moved to an appropriate ward.
    Dr Boyle, who is president of the RCEM, said there had been some progress in improving care for a “historically disadvantaged” group, but added: “Patients with mental health problems are still spending too long in our emergency departments, with an average length of stay of nearly 10 hours and this has not really improved.
    “An emergency department is frequently noisy and agitating, the lights never go off and cannot be described as an environment that promotes recovery.”
    When a patient goes to A&E after a self-harm attempt, they should receive an assessment by a clinician into the type of self-harm, reasons for it, future plans or further suicidal thoughts.
    The college said it indicates a “significant gap” in the NHS’ ability to provide holistic care for mental health patients with complex needs and warned “urgent” improvements are needed.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 25 March 2024
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    Families have been told they will have to prove liability for the harm caused to mothers and children at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust before getting compensation.
    This is despite the inquiry having examined each case in detail and concluding 45 babies could have survived, while 12 who sustained brain damage could have had a different outcome. It also determined 23 women who either died or suffered injuries might have had better outcomes had care been given to “nationally recognised” standards. 
    However, NHS Resolution – which handles claims for clinical negligence – now says families must prove causation and a breach of duty of care before any compensation can be made. This stipulation has been made even in cases where the inquiry found different treatment would have been reasonably expected to make a difference to the outcome.
    The investigation into the trust’s maternity care led by Bill Kirkup reported 18 months ago. Speaking to HSJ, its author said: “I am disappointed that East Kent families are facing these problems after everything that has happened to them. Of course, it is true that the independent investigation panel was not in a position to rule on negligence, but we did provide a robust clinical assessment of each case.
    “I would have hoped that this could be taken into account in deciding to offer early settlement instead of a protracted dispute. It seems sad that a more compassionate approach has not been adopted.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 2 April 2024
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    Public protection and support for bereaved families are at the heart of a government overhaul of how deaths are certified.
    From September, medical examiners will look at the cause of death in all cases that haven’t been referred to the coroner in a move designed to help strengthen safeguards and prevent criminal activity.
    They will also consult with families or representatives of the deceased, providing an opportunity for them to raise questions or concerns with a senior doctor not involved in the care of the person who died.
    The changes demonstrate the government’s commitment to providing greater transparency after a death and will ensure the right deaths are referred to coroners for further investigation.
    Health Minister, Maria Caulfield said:
    Reforming death certification is a highly complex and sensitive process, so it was important for us to make sure we got these changes right. At such a difficult time, it’s vital that bereaved families have full faith in how the death of their loved one is certified and have their voices heard if they are concerned in any way. The measures I’m introducing today will ensure all deaths are reviewed and the bereaved are fully informed, making the system safer by improving protections against rare abuses. From 9 September 2024 it will become a requirement that all deaths in any health setting that are not referred to the coroner in the first instance are subject to medical examiner scrutiny.
    Welcoming the announcement today, Dr Suzy Lishman CBE, Senior Advisor on Medical Examiners for Royal College of Pathologists, said:
    “As the lead college for medical examiners, the Royal College of Pathologists welcomes the announcement of the statutory implementation date for these important death certification reforms.
    “Medical examiners are already scrutinising the majority of deaths in England and Wales, identifying concerns, improving care for patients and supporting bereaved people. The move to a statutory system in September will further strengthen those safeguards, ensuring that all deaths are reviewed and that the voices of all bereaved people are heard.”
    Read full story
    Source: Gov.UK, 15 April 2024
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Women who experience depression during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth are at a higher risk of suicide and attempting suicide, researchers have warned.
    The British Medical Journal study warned that women who develop perinatal depression are twice as likely to die compared to those who don’t experience depression.
    Suicide was the leading cause of death for women in the UK in 2022 between six weeks and one year after birth, while deaths from psychiatric causes accounted for almost 40 per cent of maternal deaths overall, according to a Perinatal Mortality Surveillance report.
    Last year an analysis by Labour revealed 30,000 women who were pregnant were on waiting lists for specialist mental health support. The number of women waiting rose by 40 per cent between August 2022 and March 2023.
    The most recent NHS data shows in September 2023, 61,000 women accessed perinatal mental health services. For 2023-24, the health service must hit a target to have 66,000 women accessing care.
    In August 2023, the Royal College of Midwives published a research warning half of anxiety and depression cases among new and expectant mothers were being missed amid NHS staff shortages in maternity care.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 11 January 2024
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    Ministers are facing calls to tackle the NHS’s chronic lack of staff as figures reveal that the bill for hiring temporary frontline workers has soared to more than £10bn a year.
    Hospitals and GP surgeries across the UK are paying a record £4.6bn for agency personnel and another £5.8bn for doctors and nurses on staff to do extra “bank” shifts to plug gaps in rotas.
    Widespread short staffing has increasingly forced the service in all four home nations to hand colossal sums to employment agencies to hire stand-in workers. In England alone, the bill for agency staff, particularly nurses and GPs, has risen from £3bn to £3.5bn over the past year – a 16% rise.
    Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said years of neglect of the growing NHS staffing crisis by Conservative governments had obliged “desperate” hospitals to spend “huge” sums on agency staff, including doctors who can cost more than £5,000 to hire for a single shift.
    The Royal College of Nursing said the levels of agency spending were “staggering”. It would be cheaper to employ more nurses as staff instead of having tens of thousands of vacancies, the general secretary Pat Cullen said. The NHS in England currently has 42,306 vacant nursing posts.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 January 2024
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    From forgetfulness to difficulties concentrating, many people who have Long Covid experience “brain fog”. Now researchers say the symptom could be down to the blood-brain barrier becoming leaky.
    The barrier controls which substances or materials enter and exit the brain. “It’s all about regulating a balance of material in blood compared to brain,” said Prof Matthew Campbell, co-author of the research at Trinity College Dublin.
    “If that is off balance then it can drive changes in neural function and if this happens in brain regions that allow for memory consolidation/storage then it can wreak havoc.”
    Writing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Campbell and colleagues report how they analysed serum and plasma samples from 76 patients who were hospitalised with Covid in March or April 2020, as well 25 people before the pandemic.
    Among other findings, the team discovered that samples from the 14 Covid patients who self-reported brain fog contained higher levels of a protein called S100β than those from Covid patients without this symptom, or people who had not had Covid.
    This protein is produced by cells within the brain, and is not normally found in the blood, suggesting these patients had a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 22 February 2024
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    The lives of thousands of blind and partially sighted people are being put at risk by delays in vital care that they have a legal right to after being assessed as visually impaired, according to a report.
    More than a quarter of English councils are leaving people who have just been diagnosed as blind waiting more than a year for vision rehabilitation assessments and potentially life-saving support, the report by the RNIB revealed.
    It cited the example of one person who died while waiting for council help. The Guardian can reveal that the case involved a woman from Church Stretton in Shropshire who had been waiting 18 months for an assessment when she tripped on a pothole and died later from head injuries. She had been trying to teach herself how to use a white cane, without any support or training, despite getting a certificate of visual impairment.
    Councils are obliged to provide such help for those coping with a recent visual impairment under the 2014 Care Act. The support involves helping people cope practically and mentally with visual impairment at a critical time after a diagnosis.
    The social care ombudsman recommends that councils should provide these services within 28 days of someone receiving a certificate of visual impairment.
    But the RNIB report, which is based on freedom of information requests to councils in England, found that 86% were missing this 28-day deadline. The report, Out of sight – The hidden scandal of vision rehabilitation warned that the delays uncovered in the figures were dangerous.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 10 March 2024
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    Large regional variations in the risk of death from cancer by the age of 80 have been revealed in research by Imperial College London based on NHS data for England.
    Analysis of the figures by The Independent shows the risk of dying is highest in northern England cities, while men and women living in the London boroughs had the lowest chance.
    Although the risk of dying from cancer has decreased across all areas of England in the last two decades, it is now the leading cause of death in England, having overtaken cardiovascular diseases.
    The Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce has that warned Britain has some of the worst cancer survival rates among the world’s wealthiest countries. It ranked the UK 28th out of 33 countries for five-year survival rate for stomach and lung cancer; for pancreatic cancer the UK was 26th, and it was 25th for brain cancer.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2024
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    Health secretary Victoria Atkins has said mental health patients and staff must report the “horrific” sexual abuse allegations uncovered by The Independent to the police.
    Ms Atkins said victims would have her full support if they reported their claims to the police.
    Her intervention comes following a joint investigation by The Independent and Sky News, which revealed almost 20,000 reports of sexual harassment and abuse on NHS mental health wards in England.
    The allegations uncovered include patients claiming to have been raped by staff and other patients while being treated on mental health wards.
    In response to the initial investigation, Ms Atkins said a review launched last year into mental health services would now also look into sexual assault within the sector.
    Speaking on Sky News, she said: “These are horrific allegations that should not and must not happen in our care. Very, very vulnerable people have to stay in mental health inpatient facilities, and they do so because they need care, support, and treatment.
    “Some of the behaviours that have come to light are criminal offences, and so I would encourage anyone who feels able to – and I appreciate it is a difficult step – to go to the police and please report them, because they are crimes and we must drive them out.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 21 February 2024
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    Thirteen more NHS hospitals have identified a potentially unsafe form of concrete in their buildings, causing closures and disruption to wards.
    The government has updated its list of hospitals that have confirmed reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete on their sites, with the total now at 54.
    This includes at least two trusts – Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Hampshire Hospitals – which in September said their sites did not contain the material, after the sudden closure of schools with the concrete sparked a wave of headlines over it.
    The material was used widely between the 1960s and 1980s and can be prone to collapse.
    The impact and risk of the concrete identified varies greatly between sites. HSJ has asked trusts who run the newly identified sites where it has been found, as well as the risks and impact from the discovery.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 29 February 2024
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    Patient safety has been put at risk by ministers striking a backroom deal with unions to cut the equivalent of 10,000 health service jobs by reducing the working week, NHS bosses have warned.
    Briefings prepared by the chief executives of Scotland’s NHS boards reveal top management thrown into chaos after appearing to be blindsided by the new health secretary, Neil Gray.
    Two weeks into the role, Gray, who replaced the scandal-hit Michael Matheson on 8 February met with unions without NHS staff present and signed off sweeping changes to working conditions, setting a deadline to implement them within five weeks.
    The Scottish Conservatives have called the deal “deeply alarming”, while Labour accused the new health secretary of “standing idly by while chaos looms”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 4 March 2024
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    Tens of thousands of people with type 1 diabetes in England are to be offered a new technology, dubbed an artificial pancreas, to help manage the condition.
    The system uses a glucose sensor under the skin to automatically calculate how much insulin is delivered via a pump.
    Later this month, the NHS will start contacting adults and children who could benefit from the system.
    But NHS bosses warned it could take five years before everyone eligible had the opportunity to have one.
    This is because of challenges sourcing enough of the devices, plus the need to train more staff in how to use them.
    In trials, the technology - known as a hybrid closed loop system - improved quality of life and reduced the risk of long-term health complications.
    And at the end of last year, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said the NHS should start using it.
    Prof Partha Kar, NHS national speciality advisor for diabetes, said the move was "great news for everyone with type 1 diabetes".
    "This futuristic technology not only improves medical care but also enhances the quality of life for those affected," he added.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 April 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    How safe are closed loop artificial pancreas systems?
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Patient safety in the Accident & Emergency unit at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow will be reviewed by an NHS watchdog.
    Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) was first contacted by 29 A&E doctors in May 2023 warning that safety was being "seriously compromised".
    HIS last month apologised for not fully investigating their concerns.
    The review will consider leadership and operational issues and how they may have impacted on safety and care.
    In the letter to HIS, the 29 consultants highlighted treatment delays, "inadequate" staffing levels and patients being left unassessed in unsuitable waiting areas.
    They claimed this resulted in "preventable patient harm and sub-standard levels of basic patient care".
    The doctors also said critical events had occurred including potentially avoidable deaths.
    The consultants said repeated efforts to raise the issues with health board bosses "failed to elicit any significant response".
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 4 April 2024
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