Jump to content
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    16,284

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Patient Safety Learning

Administrators

 Content Type 

News posted by Patient Safety Learning

  1. Patient Safety Learning
    A trust has warned it could be forced to restrict maternity services due to a high midwife vacancy rate, and large numbers unvaccinated among the current staff.
    The government has mandated that all patient-facing NHS staff must have had two covid vaccination doses from 1 April — meaning they will need to have received their first dose by 3 February. If not, they can be redeployed to non patient-facing roles, or face dismissal.
    Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust’s board heard on Tuesday that the current numbers pose a “significant operational problem” amid efforts to encourage more staff to get both covid jabs before the government’s deadline.
    The board meeting was told that, of the trust’s 7,550 staff, approximately 1,300 workers – or 17.4% – do not have a vaccination recorded against them, with the areas of greatest concern being women’s and children’s health, geriatric services, the emergency departments and some clinical support services.
    At the board meeting, BHRUHT chief executive Matthew Trainer said: “The vacancy rate, plus the unvaccinated rate, would put us in quite a serious position.
    “At the minute, for example, the Queen’s Birth Centre [at Queen’s Hospital in Romford, east London], I don’t think, has been open since I got here. I couldn’t see any circumstances in which it would reopen if we lost another chunk of midwives, for the foreseeable future certainly, in terms of vaccination.
    “I think it would leave us in a position where we’d have to look at constraining services and focusing in on core [services], establishment being focused on the labour ward, looking at complex births and making sure we’re doing everything we possibly can to manage it as safely as possible.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 12 January 2022
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    East of England Ambulance Service Trust has launched an ‘independent investigation into the circumstances’ surrounding the death of a staff member, its chief executive told a board meeting today.
    Nick Lee, 46, from Ovington in west Norfolk, died on 3 December. The cause of death is yet to be officially established. He was a leading operations manager for west Norfolk, and hospital ambulance liaison officer at Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn Foundation Trust and had worked for the ambulance trust for nearly 20 years.
    This is not the first time the trust, which has faced significant cultural problems in recent years, has been required to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of members of their workforce.
    The trust launched an investigation into the “underlying factors associated with” the sudden deaths of three of its employees in November 2019, HSJ exclusively revealed in January 2020.
    A whistleblower alleged in 2019 that staff at the ambulance provider were at risk of suicide because of its “completely toxic culture”. A month after the allegations were reported in October, three young staff members died suddenly in 11 days.
    The deaths happened while the trust was transitioning to a new staff welfare provider. The staff who died were ambulance dispatcher Luke Wright, aged 24, and paramedics Christopher Gill, from Welwyn Garden City, and Richard Grimes, from Luton.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 13 January 2022
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    Two paramedics have been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing medication from terminally ill patients.
    Ruth Lambert, 33, and Jessica Silvester, 29, of the South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb), preyed specifically on people receiving end-of-life care packages, Kent Police said in a statement.
    The pair, who live together at Gap Road in Margate, accessed addresses of patients in the east Kent area through their work and posed as nurses to gain access to patients’ homes to steal morphine and other painkillers.
    They worked in tandem, one researching the addresses and sending details to the other who would visit and steal the medication, police said, with victims being targeted in Thanet, Canterbury, Whitstable, Faversham and Herne Bay.
    Evidence gathered from the pair’s mobile phones showed they had also conspired to steal from Secamb by taking medication from ambulances when on duty.
    Detective sergeant Jay Robinson, from Kent Police, described the offences as “an astonishing abuse of position”.
    “Many of their victims have since passed away and will never know that justice has been done,” he said. “Our investigation was carried out, knowing we had to represent those victims and do the very best for them.”
    Dr Fionna Moore, medical director for Secamb, added that Lambert and Silvester’s behaviour was a “clear and targeted abuse of their position and does not reflect the commitment and integrity of our staff”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 12 January 2022
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    Many supposedly “incidental” infections aren’t really incidental, and cannot be dismissed, writes Ed Yong.
    More Americans are now hospitalised with COVID-19 than at any previous point in the pandemic. The current count—147,062—has doubled since Christmas, and is set to rise even more steeply, all while Omicron takes record numbers of healthcare workers off the front lines with breakthrough infections. For hospitals, the math of this surge is simple: Fewer staff and more patients mean worse care. Around the United States, people with all kinds of medical emergencies are now waiting hours, if not days, for help.
    Some reporters and pundits have claimed that this picture is overly pessimistic because the hospitalisation numbers include people who are simply hospitalised with COVID, rather than for COVID—“incidental” patients who just happen to test positive while being treated for something else. In some places, the proportion of such cases seems high. UC San Francisco recently said a third of its COVID patients “are admitted for other reasons,” while the Jackson Health System in Florida put that proportion at half. In New York State, COVID “was not included as one of the reasons for admission” for 43% of the hospitalised people who have tested positive.
    But the “with COVID” hospitalisation numbers are more complicated than they first seem. Many people on that side of the ledger are still in the hospital because of the coronavirus, which has both caused and exacerbated chronic conditions. And more important, these nuances don’t alter the real, urgent, and enormous crisis unfolding in American hospitals. Whether patients are admitted with or for COVID, they’re still being admitted in record volumes that hospitals are struggling to care for. “The truth is, we’re still in the emergency phase of the pandemic, and everyone who is downplaying that should probably take a tour of a hospital before they do,” says Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Massachusetts.
    Read full story
    Source: The Atlantic, 12 January 2022
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    Endemic ill-health in England’s “left behind” neighbourhoods costs the country almost £30bn a year because people are often too ill to work and die earlier, a report claims.
    The cost of lost productivity results directly from those very deprived areas having much worse health than the rest of the country, according to parliamentarians and academics.
    Experts from the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) have calculated that the economy would grow by that amount if health in those areas was improved to such an extent that local people began to enjoy the same health as those in better-off places.
    The report, by the NHSA and all-party parliamentary group for left behind neighbourhoods (LBNs), highlights the scale of the challenge Boris Johnson faces in meeting his pledge to level up England’s poorest and richest areas.
    “The health of people living in left behind neighbourhoods is considerably worse than the health of people living in the rest of the country,” said Dr Luke Munford, the report’s lead author and a lecturer in health economics at the University of Manchester. “This is true across all measures of health.”
    The report shows rates of obesity, lung conditions, high blood pressure, mental health problems and other diseases are much higher than the national average in the 225 LBNs. This means people there have less “healthy life expectancy” and also shorter lives and thus are less productive over their lifespan than those elsewhere.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2022
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    Care homes are missing a third of the staff they need and more than one in four have closed their doors to new admissions in a deepening labour crisis that is “putting safety and dignity at risk”.
    With thousands of care workers off sick with Covid on top of a rising number of vacancies, the situation in social care has become “grim, difficult and relentless”, according to the National Care Forum (NCF), which ran a survey of its not-for-profit care-home members.
    Omicron absences are running at 14% on top of an 18% vacancy rate – a sharp increase on estimates before the pandemic – as beleaguered care workers quit jobs, often for better paying roles in retail or warehouses. The picture is even worse for domiciliary care, with two-thirds of providers forced to decline families’ new requests for help because they are short of carers.
    The executive director of the NCF, Vic Rayner, said the worsening situation showed the government’s approach to tackling the problem of staff shortages by giving social care “crumbs from the table” was negligent.
    We “have been highlighting the growing shortages in the workforce and the knock-on impact on those who remain working in the sector and those who use care and support services for many months”, she said. “How many times does this message need to be repeated for it to be heard?”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2022
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    A surgeon who burned his initials on to the livers of two patients during transplant surgery has been struck off the medical register.
    Simon Bramhall, 57, admitted using an argon beam – used to stop livers bleeding during operations and to highlight an area to be worked on – to sign “SB” into his patients’ organs in 2013 while working at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital.
    On Tuesday, a review by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) concluded Bramhall’s actions were “borne out of a degree of professional arrogance” and that they “undermined” public trust in the medical profession.
    Bramhall, of Tarrington, Herefordshire, was first suspended from his post as a consultant surgeon in 2013 after another surgeon spotted the initials during follow-up surgery on one of his patients. A photograph of the 4cm-high branding was taken on a mobile phone.
    During his sentencing hearing in 2018, Bramhall was told one of the victims suffered serious psychological harm as a result of the branding. The surgeon later told police he branded the organs to relieve operating theatre tensions following difficult and long transplant operations.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 11 January 2022
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    A hospital rated inadequate by inspectors two years ago has been praised for making improvements.
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has welcomed changes in urgent and emergency care at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
    The trust said the report was a "testament" to its staff's hard work.
    The CQC's unannounced inspection in November was carried out to check improvements had been made since a previous visit in August 2020.
    Among the concerns highlighted previously were patients left at high risk of harm during periods of heavy demand, staff shortages and staff who were "not competent for their roles".
    The new report said inspectors found urgent and emergency care had improved from inadequate to good overall and for being safe and well-led.
    "It has gone from requires improvement to good for being effective and caring. Responsive has gone from inadequate to requires improvement," the report said.
    Karen Knapton, CQC's head of hospital inspections, said: "We acknowledge the efforts of the emergency care team at Stepping Hill Hospital. We found staff provided good care and treated people with compassion and kindness."
    "They gave patients, their families and carers help, emotional support and advice when they needed it. Also, the service has been tailored to meet individual needs, including those living with dementia or a learning disability. "
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 12 January 2022
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has told local systems to defer ‘low priority’ cases across 11 community services, because of the pressures created by the omicron wave. 
    NHSE has issued guidance for the prioritisation of the community health workforce “given the increasing pressures on the health system due to the omicron wave of COVID-19 this winter and the need to provide booster jabs as quickly as possible”.
    It is hoped the guidance will encourage the redeployment of community staff to help reduce the strain on acute services.
    Staff working in musculoskeletal services are being asked to deprioritise some low priority rehabilitation work, with patients enabled to self-manage at home.
    It adds: “Where possible, provide capacity to support other community resources focused on rehabilitation and recovery for those discharged from acute care and those whose functioning is deteriorating at home, and/or the administration of vaccines.”
    A host of other services have been advised to continue, but with “prioritised” waiting lists and a deferral of provision considered for “low priority cases” to “free up workforce capacity”, including children’s therapy interventions, children’s community paediatric services and audiology services for older adults.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 11 January 2022
     
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Parents are being warned to look out for signs of a non-Covid virus that is “rife” in the UK amid a surge in reports of children struggling to breathe.
    The British Lung Foundation (BLF) said Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is staging a comeback this winter after lockdown last year meant there were fewer infections than would normally occur.
    It is concerned that this year children will have “much lower immunity” at a time when the NHS is already under extreme pressure.
    “In the last few weeks, we have noticed a surge in calls from parents who are worried about their child’s breathing,” said Caroline Fredericks, a respiratory nurse who supports the BLF’s helpline. “Most of these parents have never heard of RSV which is worrying.”
    RSV is common in babies and children. Almost all will have had it by the time they are two. It may cause a cough or cold but for some it can lead to bronchiolitis, an inflammatory infection of the lower airways which can make it hard to breathe.
    The early symptoms of bronchiolitis are similar to those of a common cold but can develop over a few days into a high temperature, a dry and persistent cough, difficulty feeding, and wheezing. While many cases clear up in two to three weeks, some children will end up being hospitalised.
    “There are steps parents can take to make their child more comfortable at home if their RSV develops into bronchiolitis, such as keeping their fluid intake up, helping them to breathe more easily by holding them upright when feeding and giving them paracetamol or ibuprofen suitable for infants,” said Fredericks.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 12 January 2022
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    A further £12.5 million has been made available to help the NHS recovery, alleviate waiting times and reduce “extremely challenging” winter pressures, the Welsh Government has said.
    Health minister Eluned Morgan said the extra money will be spent on supporting people out of hospitals and into independent living, and pharmacies so they can help more people stay well without needing to see a GP.
    Around £10 million of the pot will be distributed across the country’s 22 local authorities to buy equipment such as flow mattresses, patient turning systems, stair lifts, hoists and telecare equipment for people’s homes – allowing individuals to be discharged more quickly and freeing up hospital beds, it was revealed.
    Pharmacies will get £2.5 million to improve access to treatment and advice for a range of common ailments, reducing pressures on GPs and other NHS services.
    Baroness Morgan said: “The pressures on the health and social care system remains extremely challenging. We all need to work together to support our health and social care services and help us to help you this winter.
    “Simple things like visiting local pharmacies or minor injuries units for advice on minor health concerns, checking symptoms online using the NHS 111 Wales website or getting a Covid vaccine can make a high difference to our NHS and help people look after their health this winter."
    Read full story
    Source: The National, 11 January 2022
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    An inmate gave birth to a stillborn baby in shocking circumstances in a prison toilet without specialist medical assistance or pain relief, an investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) has found.
    A prison nurse who did not respond to three emergency calls from a prison officer to come to the woman’s aid when she developed agonising stomach cramps has been referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
    Louise Powell, 31, was unaware that she was pregnant. She gave birth on a prison toilet on 18 June 2020 at HMP & YOI Styal in Cheshire.
    She previously said she believed her baby girl could have survived had she had more timely and appropriate medical intervention.
    Her lawyer said they had obtained expert evidence that also suggested that the baby, who Powell named Brooke, may have survived had things been handled differently.
    The report is the second by the PPO in six months to investigate the death of a baby in prison.
    While Tuesday’s report found that there had not been failures before the day Powell gave birth, the ombudsman, Sue McAllister, found there were missed opportunities to establish that she needed urgent clinical attention in the hours beforehand.
    “It’s not safe to have pregnant women in prison, we are just treated like a number,” Powell told the Guardian in a previous interview. “I can’t grieve for my baby yet because there are still things I don’t know, like why an ambulance wasn’t called. I want to get justice for Brooke and I decided to go public in the hope that things will change and pregnant women will stop being imprisoned.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 11 January 2022
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    An urgent debate has been called in the Senedd over a move to extend routine cervical screenings in Wales from every three years to five years.
    Public Health Wales (PHW) said those aged 25-49 who had not tested positive for human papillomavirus (HPV) would now wait two more years between tests.
    PHW said it was because the screening tests are now more accurate. However, 30,000 people signed a petition against it, citing the risk it could cause an increase in deaths.
    Particularly concerned are those who have not received the HPV vaccine, a national immunisation programme for which began in 2008 for girls aged 12 to 13.
    The number of signatures on the official petition on the Welsh Parliament's website was more than enough to trigger the issue to be looked at.
    The change follows a recommendation from the UK National Screening Committee.
    Last week, Public Health Wales apologised for causing "concern" over how it explained changes to screenings following its announcement.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 10 January 2022
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    People with some of the deadliest forms of cancer are being diagnosed later than ever as a result of disruption to healthcare caused by the Covid pandemic, campaigners have warned.
    Stomach, lung, pancreatic, brain, stomach and oesophageal cancers have some of the poorest long-term survival rates and have always been disproportionately diagnosed late following an emergency hospital admission. However, campaigners are concerned that the poor prognoses for these patients have been exacerbated by factors such as a reluctance to attend A&E or bother GPs during the pandemic, and by bottlenecks in the numbers of patients waiting for tests such as CT scans or endoscopy. 
    A drive to raise awareness of the symptoms for these cancers – which are not subject to any routine screening programmes – along with a push for more investment into research for treatments has been launched today to mark the first Less Survivable Cancers Awareness Day.
    Dawn Crosby, head of Scotland and Northern Ireland for Pancreatic Cancer UK and a member of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, said: “We know that delays in diagnosis lead to much poorer outcomes for patients with these rapidly-advancing cancers. We also know the trauma associated with receiving a diagnosis in an emergency setting for both patients and families."
    “These cancers are currently difficult or impossible to treat at later stages and the time from diagnosis to death is often brutally short compared to more survivable cancers.
    “The situation is critical and has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Taskforce is calling for a significant increase in research funding, as well as a commitment to increasing resources for early diagnosis for less survivable cancers so we can close the deadly cancer gap.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Herald, 11 January 2022
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    A trust has written to its registered workforce to reassure them of management support when delivering care in ‘extremely challenging circumstances’.
    Derbyshire Community Health Services Trust sent out a “statement of support for professionally registered colleagues”, in which it thanked them for their “continued efforts”, and explained how they would support staff from a “professional and regulatory perspective”, when delivering services that require “a high level of clinical knowledge and autonomous decision-making”.
    This week has seen NHS staff absences hit new highs – over 100,000 – and the military brought in to support care in London hospitals, in combination with very high community covid transmission rates and very busy acute trusts. 
    The DCHST email, signed by executive director of nursing Michelle Bateman, executive medical director Ben Pearson and interim director of Allied Health Professionals Trish Bailey, said: “When services are at this high level of escalation it can mean that we are not always able to deliver care in the way we would like and that can challenge our professional values.”
    Helen Hughes, chief executive of charity Patient Safety Learning, said Derbyshire Community Healthcare’s message needed to be echoed by every trust in the country.
    “Without sufficient staffing resources, difficult decisions are required to prioritise care,” Ms Hughes said. “In some cases, delays in treatment as a result of these decisions could lead to avoidable harm.”
    She stressed it was “imperative” that future investigations into safety incidents “properly reflect the systemic nature of reasons for error or harm, not simply blaming staff for failures to provide safe care”.
    “Health professionals’ codes mean that they are not allowed to work outside their sphere of competence. But what if staff are being tacitly encouraged or required to work in an unsafe system? Staff need to be able to feel secure in raising any concerns they have, being listened to and being supported,” Ms Hughes added.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 10 January 2022
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS leaders have been accused of downplaying the impact of the Covid crisis and putting hospitals under scrutiny for declaring critical incidents and postponing surgeries.
    A leaked email urges hospitals to use the “correct terminology” and make NHS leaders aware when declaring their status.
    Sources said the message was a “thinly veiled threat” and that there was “subtle pressure” amid rapid spread of Omicron.
    At least 24 trusts have declared critical incidents this week, including one in Northamptonshire on Friday afternoon, while new figures show a 59% rise in staff absences in just seven days.
    Trusts in London were told hospitals will be scrutinised for declaring a critical incident if there is “doubt” over the decision, according to an internal email sent from NHS England on Wednesday.
    In light of media coverage, it would be “valuable” to “raise awareness of the key terminology and encourage you to ensure that you are clear ... when considering a declaration,” it said. “National scrutiny on the declaration on incidents has heightened ... and [senior managers] will need to make additional enquiries where there is doubt as to the status of an organisation’s incident.”
    Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “We know that the NHS is under enormous pressure and it is important that local trusts are able to be honest and open with parliament and the public about the challenges they’re facing. We are increasingly concerned that ministers are more interested in covering up problems than solving them.”
    Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem Health spokesperson, said: “This is an insult to every health worker who has given their all, and every patient with cancelled appointments and delayed surgeries.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 9 January 2022
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    Occupational health professionals should avoid employment and management matters related to unvaccinated NHS staff, new guidance has warned.
    The Faculty of Occupational Medicine guidance comes as trusts are considering their options of how to approach patient-facing staff who remain unvaccinated, including their potential redeployment or dismissal.
    However, HSJ understands some occupational health practitioners are concerned they may become entangled in difficult ethical issues, such as the vaccination status of individual employees, or disciplinary processes.
    Today’s FOM guidance said: “There is no scope for occupational health practitioners to provide an opinion on medical exemptions, whether to confirm or refute them…
    “Redeployment, dismissal and other employment consequences of vaccine refusal by a worker, within the scope of the proposed regulations, are entirely employment and management matters, and not an area in which occupational health should be involved.”
    FOM president Steve Nimmo said: “When the programme is implemented, occupational health professionals should be mindful of ethical and consent issues, and be careful not to be associated with any disciplinary process.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 7 January 2022
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    A manifesto pledge to hire 26,000 extra health professionals to work in GP surgeries is set to be broken by the government, health leaders have warned, leaving family doctors straining under a heavier workload.
    About 9,500 of the promised physiotherapists, pharmacists, mental health therapists and other clinical staff so far have been recruited to help GPs and practice nurses.
    Senior doctors have warned that patients will pay the price for the slow delivery of extra personnel by facing persistently long waits for an appointment.
    The plan was to free up family doctors’ time by having physiotherapists see patients with sore backs, pharmacists undertaking medication reviews, counsellors supporting people with mental health problems and dieticians advising those with food-related problems.
    Those 26,000 staff, alongside the arrival of “6,000 more doctors in general practice” in a separate pledge, would help GPs and their teams offer 50m more consultations, the Conservatives said. But in November the health secretary, Sajid Javid, admitted that Johnson’s often-repeated 6,000 extra GPs pledge would be missed.
    “Whilst progress in meeting this target is better than the GP [recruitment] target, it’s still slow and very concerning that this could be another promise that won’t be met,” said Prof Matin Marshall, the chair of the RCGP.
    “The impact of not having enough staff in general practice is being felt acutely both by GPs and our team members who are working to their limits, and our patients, who are facing longer waits for the care they need. Meeting this [extra staff] target – and the GP target – will be vital to addressing this.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2022
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Pregnant women are being urged not to delay getting their Covid jab or booster in a government campaign.
    More than 96% of pregnant women admitted to hospital with Covid symptoms between May and October last year were unvaccinated, according to the UK Obstetric Surveillance System.
    The campaign will share testimonies of pregnant women who have had the jab on radio and social media.
    The government said the vaccine was safe and had no impact on fertility.
    In December, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation added pregnant women to the priority list for the vaccine, saying they were at heightened risk from Covid.
    Around one in five pregnant women admitted to hospital with the virus needed to be delivered pre-term to help them recover, and one in five of their babies needed care in the neonatal unit, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
    Prof Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser to the DHSC, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a third of unvaccinated pregnant women with COVID-19 needed help with breathing and one in six were admitted to intensive care.
    "We've also seen stillbirths and neonatal deaths in the latest wave," she said.
    Prof Chappell said the vaccine causes pregnant women to produce antibodies against the virus, which cross over to their babies and give them protection too.
    Dr Jen Jardine, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who is seven months pregnant and has had her booster jab, said: "Both as a doctor and pregnant mother myself, we can now be very confident that the Covid-19 vaccinations provide the best possible protection for you and your unborn child against this virus."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 10 January 2022
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    The Covid-19 pandemic has entered its third year, with no end in sight, and the world is fed up to the gills. A new and even more highly transmissible variant, Omicron, has been scorching through holiday gatherings over the past couple of weeks. People who are thrice vaccinated are among the infected.
    STAT asks Mike Ryan, head of the health emergencies programme at the World Health Organization, if he expected the pandemic to last as long as it has, who should make the call on whether to update Covid vaccines, and what he thinks are the main mistakes the world has made.
    “What’s shocked me most in this pandemic has been that absence or loss of trust,” he said of people’s unwillingness to follow the advice of public health leaders and the containment policies set out by governments," says Ryan.
    Read full interview
    Source: STAT, 3 January 2022
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    A Norfolk hospital trust has been fined £60,000 after pleading guilty to criminal charges of exposing a 28-year-old patient who died to significant risk of avoidable harm.
    Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn Foundation Trust was sentenced on Thursday 8 December at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court, as a result of a prosecution brought by the Care Quality Commission.
    The dilapidated hospital’s “outdated” computer system, which is long overdue a major upgrade, was cited as a factor in the young patient’s death, which followed a mix-up over scans.
    Lucas Allard, who was awaiting heart surgery, had attended the hospital’s emergency department on 12 March 2019 with chest pain.
    He was sent home after staff determined his computerised tomography scan results meant he was fit for discharge. But two days later, a consultant discovered staff had been looking at the wrong scan, and the correct report showed significant abnormality.
    Mr Allard was urgently called back to the hospital but suffered a cardiac arrest shortly after arriving, and died despite attempted resuscitation.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 9 December 2022
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    The government has announced 200 military personnel are being deployed to “support the NHS in London amid staff shortages due to COVID-19”. The 200 figure is equivalent to about 1.8% of the covid-related absences in acute trusts in the capital on Wednesday, and 0.2% of the national all-trust total of 120,000.
    The Ministry of Defence will provide 40 defence medics and 160 general duty personnel, it said. The first were deployed this week, including in Whipps Cross in east London.
    According to the minutes of an internal meeting held by senior leadership at the hospital, 10 general duty military personnel have been deployed. They do not have clinical training so cannot take blood, but will undertake general duties, such as feeding patients and communication with teams and relatives. 
    Staff absences from NHS trusts hit nearly 120,000 on Wednesday after another increase, HSJ has learned.
    Figures due to be published by NHS England are expected to show there were total absences across acute trusts of just over 80,000 on 2 January, down from more than 85,000 on 30 December. 
    However, figures seen by HSJ show that, after the end of the new year bank holiday period, this acute trusts figure leapt to more than 92,000 by Wednesday (5 January).
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 7 January 2022
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS trusts have been unable to get anywhere close to the target for reducing delayed discharges set by NHS England last month ahead of the omicron wave.
    The latest NHSE data shows that, in the week beginning 27 December, there were on average 9,857 medically fit for discharge adult patients occupying hospital beds.
    This is just 836 fewer than the average of 10,693 in the week of 13 December. This was when NHSE told trusts to discharge at least half of their medically fit patients to free up beds ahead of a surge in Covid patients.
    The news follows ministers announcing £300m would be invested into the adult social care workforce to fund community placements to aid discharges. However, in the letter on 13 December, NHSE said “a significant proportion of discharge delays are within the gift of hospitals to solve”.
    Meanwhile, ambulance handover delays remained a near record high levels last week as the urgent and emergency care system showed clear signs of pressure, including massive demand on NHS 111.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 7 January 2022
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    Trusts will be told next week how they should go about dismissing potentially thousands of NHS staff who have decided not to be vaccinated against covid, HSJ has learned.
    Last year, the government decided all patient-facing NHS staff would need to have received their first dose of the covid vaccine by 3 February, and two doses by April 2022. The stipulation covers non-clinical staff who may have face-to-face contact with patients, such as receptionists, porters and cleaners.
    NHS England published the first part of its guidance for employers in December last year, which warned staff who have to be redeployed because of a refusal to have the covid vaccination could be forced to compete for their job and also have their pay and pension affected.
    HSJ understands NHSE will issue its ‘phase two’ guidance’ next week.
    To date, government and NHSE announcements or guidance have not mentioned what will happen to patient-facing staff who refuse to be redeployed or are exempt from the requirement.
    However, HSJ understands the new guidance will make it clear that — while redeployment remains the preferred outcome — some staff are likely to be dismissed and trusts should be prepared for taking that action next month.
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ, 6 January 2022
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    A Christian nurse who claimed she was discriminated against for wearing a cross at work has won her case for unfair dismissal.
    Mary Onuoha, a theatre practitioner at Croydon University Hospital in London, said she was bullied and harassed for refusing to remove her necklace in 2018.
    But an employment tribunal has ruled Croydon Health Services NHS Trust discriminated against and harassed Ms Onuoha over her refusal to remove the jewellery. The trust told her the necklace was a safety risk and must not be outwardly visible.
    Ms Onuoha, supported by Christian Legal Centre, said she had worked at the hospital for 13 years before being asked to remove the symbol.
    The tribunal found the employer’s uniform policy arbitrary, with many staff allowed to wear necklaces and other religious symbols were permitted.
    Following the ruling, Christian Legal Centre chief executive Andrea Williams said the trust’s interpretation of uniform guidance had led to a campaign of harassment against a devoted, experienced, and highly professional nurse, who was in effect hounded out of the NHS.
    Ms Onuoha said she was investigated and suspended from clinical duties when she refused to remove the item and she was demoted to receptionist duties. In June 2020, she went off work with stress and said she felt she had no alternative but to resign.
    Read full story
    Source: Nursing Standard, 6 January 2022

© 2026 Patient Safety Learning. All rights reserved.

Patient Safety Learning is registered as a charity with the Charity Commission Registration number 1180689.

×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.