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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Further funding cuts to the NHS will unavoidably endanger patient safety, an NHS leader warned last week after the chancellor’s promise of spending cuts of “eye-watering difficulty”.
    Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said his members were issuing the “starkest warning” about “the huge and growing gulf between what the NHS is being asked to deliver and the funding and capacity it has available”.
    The warning came as figures showed that paramedics in England had been unavailable to attend almost one in six incidents in September due to being stuck outside hospitals with patients. Service leaders say wait times for A&E and other care are being exacerbated by an acute lack of nurses, with a record 46,828 nursing roles – more than one in 10 – unfilled across the NHS.
    "Patients are presenting more unwell," says a GP from South Wales,
    "Wait times in A&E have become unmanageable, so we’re seeing patients who have waited so long to be seen they’re bouncing back to us. Things we can’t deal with, like injuries and chest pain. We tell them they have to go back to A&E.
    "Abuse of surgery reception and admin staff began last year and it’s just scaled up from there. We’ve had staff members who have been verbally and physically threatened and we’re struggling to recruit and retain staff – people are hired and quit in a couple days. A lot of people are going off sick with stress."
    Five healthcare workers describe the pressures they are facing, including ambulance stacking, rising A&E wait times and difficulties discharging patients.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 1 November 2022
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    The plan to tackle long waits in hospital treatment and cancer care in England by 2025 is at serious risk, the spending watchdog says.
    The National Audit Office report warned inflation and other pressures on the NHS could undermine the push. These included a lack of staff and hospital beds, which was affecting productivity, the watchdog said.
    But NHS bosses said they could overcome the challenges and the health service was on track to hit its targets.
    NHS England and the government have set a series of targets over the next three years.
    They include:
    returning performance on the 62-day target for cancer treatment to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023 ending waits of over a year and a half for planned treatment, such as knee and hip operations, by April 2023 ending waits of over a year for planned treatment by March 2025 The NAO report comes as the chancellor prepares to set out his tax and spending plans in his Autumn Statement on Thursday. Cuts to public spending are likely but Health Secretary Steve Barclay has strongly hinted the NHS will receive more money.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 17 November 2022
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    The health service’s independent data watchdog has issued a warning to local NHS bodies over concerns confidential patient information is being shared unlawfully with third parties, including for ‘population health’ analysis.
    In a letter to integrated care systems (ICSs), National Data Guardian Nicola Byrne and UK Caldicott Guardian Council chair Arjun Dhillon said they had both “been made aware that within some local record sharing programmes, organisations could be processing confidential patient information without ensuring that the processing does not breach confidentiality”.
    They added among the four areas of concern health and care staff had raised with them was that confidential patient information may be being transferred from local record sharing programmes to third party hosted secure data environments. Secure Data Environments are data storage and access platforms where organisations can apply to access data for planning and research purposes.
    It is not clear what kind of patient data may have been unlawfully shared.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 November 2022
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England “forgot the people” when it published controversial guidelines last month which said patients faced being removed from the waiting list if they declined two appointment dates, a senior director has admitted.
    NHSE elective recovery chief Sir Jim Mackey said the guidance was drafted to address legitimate concerns from trusts, but that the process had been “rushed”.
    Following Sir Jim’s comments, NHSE told HSJ the guidance, which had sparked widespead criticism including from patient groups, would not be changing. But Sir Jim said NHSE would “spend time” better understanding patients after “reflecting” on the process which had created the controversial guidelines.
    Speaking at the King’s Fund annual conference, Sir Jim said: “[The guidance] was largely a response to trusts saying to us: ‘We keep offering these patients options and they won’t take them, so what do we do?’
    “We rushed through a policy to try and deal with that, and in the process, I think forgot the people…We’ve reflected on that.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 1 November 2022
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    Doctors have warned of "unsafe" maternity services at a Sussex hospital in emails seen by the BBC.
    In the email chain between senior staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, consultants wrote of "compromises" to patient care.
    One doctor said during a birth "we were one step away from a potential disaster".
    One senior doctor wrote in the exchange that "increasing workforce issues" had contributed to making the situation in the maternity unit "almost unmanageable at times". They added: "We are making compromises to patient care every day as a result."
    Another wrote that their workload was often "unmanageable, and obviously impacted by the staffing issues".
    A senior member of maternity staff said "we are delivering suboptimal care" and "we are one step away from potential disaster".
    A doctor also said staff were being "stretched", and that there were delays to women's care.
    Another consultant wrote: "We have an unsafe service and we have to strive for better than that."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 16 November 2022
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    Many people who are medically ready to leave hospital are not able to go home because of pressures in social care.
    Health and social care teams across Scotland are working to create more room in hospitals as we go into winter when it traditionally gets busier.
    In Lothian, they are using care homes as an interim measure to help rehabilitate people before they can go back home.
    Nineteen rooms at the Elsie Inglis Nursing Home in Edinburgh are being used in an effort to help people get out of hospital.
    Archie McQuater, who spent seven months in The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh after one of his big toes was removed because of an infection, has finally got out of hospital and is now staying at the Elsie Inglis.
    The 94-year-old has been in the care home for two months and is trying to improve his mobility so that he can return home.
    Archie is among 200 people in Edinburgh who have been moved from a hospital to a care home between November 2021 and September 2022.
    NHS Lothian estimates it has saved about 13,000 bed days in hospitals during that time.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    Mandatory training for treating people with autism and learning disabilities is being rolled out for NHS health and care staff after a patient died.
    It comes after Oliver McGowan, 18, from Bristol, died following an epileptic seizure.
    At the time, in November 2016, he had mild autism and was given a drug he was allergic to despite repeated warnings from his parents.
    His mother Paula lobbied for mandatory training to potentially "save lives".
    A spokesman for the NHS said the training had been developed with expertise from people with a learning disability and autistic people as well as their families and carers.
    The first part of the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training is being rolled out following a two-year trial involving more than 8,300 health and care staff across England.
    Mark Radford, chief nurse at Health Education England said: "Following the tragedy of Oliver's death, Paula McGowan has tirelessly campaigned to ensure that Oliver's legacy is that all health and care staff receive this critical training.
    "Paula and many others have helped with the development of the training from the beginning.
    "Making Oliver's training mandatory will ensure that the skills and expertise needed to provide the best care for people with a learning disability and autistic people is available right across health and care."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    A consultant oncologist who ignored a hospital instruction and attended patients’ cancer surgery on two days when he knew he was still testing positive for Covid-19 has been suspended from the UK medical register for three months.
    Andrew Gaya admitted knowingly breaking the rules but told the medical practitioners tribunal he had feared that the patients’ treatments would be postponed if he could not attend the private London Gamma Knife Centre, part of HCA Healthcare UK. The two incidents occurred in the early weeks of the pandemic, at a time of high covid death rates.
    “I did not take the decision to attend the centre on 3 April 2020 lightly and was aware it was not in accordance with the instructions I had been given,” Gaya told the tribunal. “At the time I thought that I wasn’t going to do any harm and that I was acting in the best interests of the patient as the case was urgent.
    “I know I should have telephoned [the relevant manager] and asked if she would allow me to undertake the treatment, but I was afraid her answer would be ‘no’ and that the patient’s treatment would be cancelled,” he told the tribunal in a witness statement.
    Both patients have since died, but after the tribunal concluded Gaya told the Daily Telegraph, “One lived for 6 months with good quality of life.”
    Gaya, who was present as part of a multidisciplinary team, wore protective gear and observed social distancing. There is no evidence that he had infected anyone.
    Read full story
    Source: BMJ, 1 November 2022
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has ordered the collection of identifiable patient data from hospitals by US data firm Palantir, for a pilot scheme aimed at accelerating recovery of elective waiting lists.
    The regulator has instructed NHS Digital, with which it will merge in January, to use Palantir’s Foundry platform to collect data about patients’ admission, inpatient, discharge and outpatient activity at acute hospitals.
    Identifiable data such as patients’ NHS numbers, date of birth, and postcode will be collected through Palantir’s software. Patients cannot opt out of having their data collected.
    But NHS Digital’s Caldicott Guardian – who is meant to safeguard use of data – has identified “risks” in the pilot and said it needs additional work before it can meet confidentiality requirements.
    The data collected will be “anonymised in accordance with the ICO’s (Information Commissioner’s) Anonymisation Code of Practice”. However, privacy campaigners Medconfidential claimed this code is not fit for purpose and warned that NHS chiefs were making the same mistakes as previous failed efforts to use patient data appropriately.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 1 November 2022
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Some of the most senior gender identity specialists in the UK have accused their professional body of “contributing to an atmosphere of fear” around young people receiving gender-related healthcare.
    More than 40 clinical psychologists have signed an open letter to the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK in protest at the organisation’s recent position statement on the provision of services for gender-questioning children and young people. They say they believe there was a failure to properly consult experts in the field or service users, resulting in a “misleading” statement that “perpetuates damaging discourses about the work and gender-diverse identities more broadly”.
    About half of those signatories are current or former holders of senior roles – including the current director – at what was the only NHS gender identity service for children in England and Wales, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London.
    NHS England announced in July it would be closing the GIDS and replacing it with regional hubs, after being warned by the interim report of the Cass Review into gender services for young people that having only one provider was “not a safe or viable long-term option”.
    In 2021, inspectors rated the service “inadequate” overall and highlighted overwhelming caseloads, deficient record-keeping and poor leadership, suggesting that record waiting lists meant thousands of vulnerable young people were at risk of self-harm as they waited years for their first appointment.
    In a position statement published last month, the ACP-UK wrote that “the new, regional services will have to offer a radical alternative [after the closure of GIDS] to meet the needs of all young people with gender dysphoria.”
    The letter suggests: “An alternative interpretation is that it is possible to provide support for distress related to gender identity where mental health needs and neurodiversity are also present, and remain cognisant of all factors within formulation-based practice”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 November 2022
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    A baby was left "severely disabled" after a delay during his delivery by Caesarean section, a High Court judge has been told.
    Betsi Cadwaladr health board will pay £4m in compensation after a negligence claim was brought by one of the boy's relatives.
    He has required 24-hour care since his birth in 2018 at Glan Clwyd Hospital in Denbighshire.
    The hospital apologised, saying doctors are "working hard" to learn lessons.
    "We are extremely sorry," barrister Alexander Hutton KC, representing the health board, told Mr Justice Soole.
    "[Betsi Cadwaladr] is working hard to learn lessons from this case," he added.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    Extreme disruption to NHS services has been driving a sharp spike in heart disease deaths since the start of the pandemic, a charity has warned.
    The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said ambulance delays, inaccessible care and waits for surgery are linked to 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in England.
    It has called for a new strategy to reduce "unacceptable" waiting times.
    Doctors and groups representing patients have become increasingly concerned about the high number of deaths of any cause recorded this year.
    New analysis of the mortality data by the BHF suggests heart disease is among the most common causes, responsible for 230 deaths a week above expected rates since February 2020.
    The charity said "significant and widespread" disruption to heart care services was driving the increase.
    Its analysis of NHS data showed that 346,129 people were waiting for time-sensitive cardiac care at the end of August 2022, up 49% since February 2020.
    It said 7,467 patients had been waiting more than a year for a heart procedure - 267 times higher than before the pandemic.
    At the same time, the average ambulance response time for a suspected heart attack has risen to 48 minutes in England against a target of 18 minutes, according to the latest NHS figures.
    The BHF said difficulty accessing face-to-face GP and hospital care may have also contributed to the rise.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 3 November 2022
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has revealed it estimates there are 5.5 million people on elective referral to treatment waiting lists, rather than the 7 million which is often reported.
    No figures have previously been given for the number of separate individuals, but many in politics, policy and the media have often indicated it is the same as the total number of entries on the RTT list – which hit 7 million in August.
    NHSE elective recovery chief Sir Jim Mackey, speaking at the King’s Fund annual conference in London yesterday, revealed an estimate for the first time of the number of individuals.
    Sir Jim said: “It’s actually 5.5 million people, but seven million entries on the waiting list. There are around a million and a half people, we think, who are on multiple times. So, it’s a lot more complicated than we all think.”
    He said it was not clear how many were patients waiting for genuinely separate issues or procedures, and how many were duplicates for the same pathway – essentially errors. Sir Jim said he hoped a new NHSE project would clarify the picture.
    He said: “Sometimes there are people on twice, where they need one thing then another thing. Other times it’s a bit more complicated… We’re just about to start a process with a handful of organisations to try and work out what that means.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 2 November 2022
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    A damning report has highlighted failures in how NHS Tayside oversaw a surgeon who harmed patients for years. 
    Prof Eljamel, the former head of neurosurgery at NHS Tayside in Dundee, harmed dozens of patients before he was suspended in 2013. 
    The internal Scottish government report into Prof Sam Eljamel, which has been leaked to the BBC, said the health board repeatedly let patients down. It outlined failures in the way Prof Eljamel was supervised and the board's communication with patients.
    The report was commissioned last year over unanswered questions and concerns from patients Jules Rose and Pat Kelly.
    Mr Kelly has been left housebound and Ms Rose has PTSD after the neurosurgeon removed the wrong part of her body.
    After her operation in 2013, Ms Rose discovered that Prof Eljamel had taken out the wrong part of her body. He removed her tear gland instead of a tumour on her brain.
    She still has not been told exactly when health bosses knew he was a risk to patients.
    The latest Scottish government report said she should receive an apology.
    The written apology she received from the board last month said it was sorry she "feels" there has been a breakdown in trust.
    "I actually rejected the apology," she said.
    Ms Rose said she wanted the chairwoman of the health board to explain why it will not offer a "whole-hearted apology" for its failures.
    Scottish Conservative MSP Liz Smith called for a public inquiry, saying there had been a lack of accountability and the investigation had still not got to the truth.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 3 November 2022
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    Three teenage girls died after major failings in the care they received from NHS mental health services in the north-east of England, an independent investigation has found.
    “Multifaceted and systemic” failures by the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys (TEWV) NHS trust contributed to the young women’s self-inflicted deaths within eight months of each other, it concluded.
    Christie Harnett died aged 17 on 27 June 2019 at the trust’s West Lane hospital in Middlesbrough. Nadia Sharif, also 17, died there six weeks later, on 5 August. Emily Moore, who had been treated there, died on 15 February 2020 at a different hospital in Durham. All three had complex mental health problems and had been receiving NHS care for several years.
    The investigation into their deaths, commissioned by the NHS, found that 119 “care and service delivery problems” by NHS services, especially TEWV, had occurred.
    Charlotte and Michael Harnett, Christie’s parents, said their daughter had “lost her life whilst in a hospital run by TEWV trust where there was little or no care or compassion”. Emily’s parents, David and Susan Moore, said she received “horrific care” while at West Lane. Services at the hospital were understaffed, “unstable and overstretched”, the investigation’s final report found.
    Both families, and also Nadia’s parents, Hakeel and Arshad Sharif, said the dangerous inadequacy of the care provided by TEWV, and the likelihood that other patients with fragile mental health had died as a result, showed that ministers should order a full public inquiry. “This mental health trust is a danger to the public,” the Moores said.
    The report said TEWV failed to properly monitor the girls, given their known risk of self-harm; to take seriously concerns about their care and suicide risk raised by their families; and to remove all potential ligature points.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 November 2022
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients are not always getting the care they deserve, says the head of NHS England.
    Amanda Pritchard told a conference the pressures on hospitals, maternity care and services caring for vulnerable people with learning disabilities were of concern.
    She even suggested the challenge facing the health service now was greater than it was at the height of the pandemic.
    Despite making savings, the NHS still needs extra money to cope, she said.
    Next year the budget will rise to more than £157bn, but NHS England believes it will still be short of £7bn.
    Ms Pritchard told the King's Fund annual conference in London that demand was rising more quickly than the NHS could cope with.
    "I thought that the pandemic would be the hardest thing any of us ever had to do," she said.
    "Over the last year, I've become really clear.... it's the months and years ahead that will bring the most complex challenges."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    “Failing” IT systems in the NHS are a threat to patient safety. medics have warned.
    Doctors and nurses should not “tolerate problems with IT infrastructure as the norm”, according to a new editorial, published in The BMJ.
    Experts from Imperial College London and University College London point to an incident in which IT systems at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust – one of the largest hospital trusts in the country – went down for 10 days.
    The outage, caused by the July heatwave, led to procedures and appointments being postponed for a number of patients.
    The new editorial highlights how IT failures can restrict services as doctors are unable to access records and are prevented from ordering diagnostic tests.
    This can “bring a halt to the everyday business of healthcare”, they said.
    The authors suggest that the NHS IT infrastructure is “crumbling” and leads to “poor user experiences” as well as patient safety incidents.
    “Increasing digital transformation means such failures are no longer mere inconvenience but fundamentally affect our ability to deliver safe and effective care – they result in patient harm and increased costs,” they wrote.
    Read full story
    Source: 10 November 2022
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    Almost one out of every three people infected with HIV through contaminated NHS blood products in the 1970s and 80s was a child, research has found.
    About 380 children with haemophilia and other blood disorders are now thought to have contracted the virus.
    The new estimate was produced by the public inquiry into the disaster, after a BBC News report into the scandal.
    In August, the government agreed to pay survivors and the partners of those who died compensation.
    The first interim payments of £100,000 per person were made last month.
    The initial agreement does not cover bereaved parents or the children of those who have died.
    A wider announcement on compensation is expected when the inquiry concludes, next year.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 9 November 2022
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Ministers have offered about 1 million NHS staff in England – everyone bar doctors and dentists – a pay rise of at least £1,400 for 2022-23. That represents a rise of between 4% and 5% for staff covered by the longstanding Agenda for Change negotiating framework.
    Health unions have rejected the £1,400. They want a rise that would at least match inflation – which is currently 10.1% – while the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is seeking inflation plus 5%. Without inflation-proof rises, staff will suffer a real-terms cut in their take-home pay, unions say.
    “Our members will no longer tolerate a financial knife-edge at home and a raw deal at work”, said the RCN general secretary, Pat Cullen. Sara Gorton, head of health at Unison, added: “Inflation has already wiped out this year’s 72p-an-hour increase. The government must put pay right to spare the NHS, its staff and all those relying on its care from a dispute no one wants to see.”
    The RCN has balloted its members across the UK. The results, published on Wednesday, show that a majority of nurses in most but not all hospitals and other NHS services across the four home nations have rejected the government’s offer and decided to strike in pursuit of better pay.
    Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has condemned as “unacceptable” the fact that strikes will disrupt services and affect patients’ care. While he has not criticised nurses or any health union, he has blamed ministers for not negotiating with the RCN to try to avert strike action.
    “I’m concerned, I think lots of people are concerned about the impact of disruption”, he told LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr on Monday. “That’s still a disruption to patients, which I think is unacceptable.”
    If he were the health secretary he would see patients as his “first and foremost” responsibility, he said. “That’s why I think the government have to get a grip on this and get the unions around the table because there is a deal there to be done.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 9 November 2022
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    A new treatment to protect babies against a common and potentially dangerous winter virus has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
    Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the main reason children under five end up in hospital. In a normal winter, RSV mostly causes coughs and colds which clear up in a couple of weeks - but it can be particularly serious in infants under the age of two, causing severe lung problems such as bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Every year, about 29,000 babies need hospital care for RSV and most have no other health issues beforehand.
    The new antibody treatment, called nirsevimab, from Sanofi and AstraZeneca, has already been shown to reduce lower respiratory tract infections caused by RSV by 74.5% in trials involving 4,000 babies.
    It works by preventing RSV from fusing to cells in the respiratory tract and causing infections.
    But it still needs more research in larger numbers of babies before it can be used on the NHS.
    Researchers now plan to investigate whether it can cut the number of babies needing hospital care for RSV, and are urging parents to sign up to their study.
    The study is open to newborn babies and those up to 12 months old. Only one visit for the antibody injection is needed, and follow-up sessions happen via an app.
    Co-study leader Dr Simon Drysdale, consultant paediatrician in infectious diseases at London's St George's Hospital, said the treatment could eventually be given at birth to offer protection for the first months of life, or during routine immunisations at two months old.
    Read full story
    Source: 10 November 2022
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    A consultant urologist left a 6.5cm swab in a patient after surgery and failed to identify it in a scan three months later, an inquiry has heard.
    The public inquiry concerns the work of Aidan O'Brien at the Southern Trust between January 2019 and June 2020. It heard Mr O'Brien endangered or potentially endangered lives by failing to review medical scans.
    He previously claimed the trust provided an "unsafe" service and was trying to shift blame on to its medics.
    On Tuesday, the inquiry into Mr O'Brien's clinical practice heard almost 600 patients received "suboptimal care".
    Counsel for the inquiry Martin Wolfe KC said the 6.5cm swab was left inside a patient by Mr O'Brien during a bladder tumour operation in July 2009.
    The error was described as a "never event'.
    At a CT scan appointment three months later in October 2009, a mass inside the patient's body was discovered by the reporting consultant radiologist. While he did not say it was a swab, he did "highlight the abnormality", said Mr Wolfe.
    A report was sent to Mr O'Brien but, the Inquiry heard, he did not read it and no one took steps to check out the abnormality.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 9 November 2022
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a record high.
    7.1 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September, according to new figures from NHS England.
    This is up from 7 million in August, and is the highest number since records begain in August 2007.
    A staggering 401,537 people have been waiting for more than 52 weeks to start their treatment, according to England’s September figures.
    NHS medical director Sir Stephen Powis said: “There is no doubt October has been a challenging month for staff who are now facing a tripledemic of Covid, flu and record pressure on emergency services with more people attending A&E or requiring the most urgent ambulance callout than any other October.
    “Pressure on emergency services remains high as a result of more than 13,000 beds taken up each day by people who no longer need to be in hospital.
    “But staff have kept their foot on the accelerator to get the backlog down with 18-month waiters down by three-fifths on last year.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 10 November 2022
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS bosses are increasingly paying premium rates for agency staff to plug holes in rotas, the BBC has found.
    Spending in this area rose by 20% last year to hit £3bn in England.
    For many shifts, bosses have been so short-staffed they have been willing to breach the government pay caps for these agency workers, most of whom are doctors and nurses.
    Separate data supplied by Labour showed some NHS trusts had paid as much as £2,500 to nurses to fill shifts.
    Out of 60 responses from trusts, 10 reported the most expensive shift cost over £2,000, and for another 13 it was between £1,000-2,000.
    The BBC spoke to one cancer doctor who was offered work for £130 an hour - well above the cap for his role - and described the fees available as "astonishing" and a reflection of "desperation by management".
    Chief executive of Colchester hospital, Nick Hulme, says a combination of factors is playing a role, including the need to open extra wards to cope with rising demand, as well as staffing shortages.
    Some people are even leaving their jobs, only to return later as agency workers.
    He says while many agency workers do fantastic work on the wards, he would still prefer to be able to use his own staff. "We know that's best for patient care, best for patient experience. Agency staff require more supervision and tasks such as handovers take longer."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 11 November 2022
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    A new report has highlighted for the first time an apparent rise in the suicide rate for pregnant or newly postpartum women in 2020, citing disruption to NHS services due to Covid-19 as a likely cause.
    According to the review of maternal deaths by MBRRACE-UK, 1.5 women per 100,000 who gave birth died by suicide during pregnancy or in the six weeks following the end of pregnancy in 2020, which is three times the rate of 0.46 per 100,000 between 2017 and 2019.
    The number of deaths by suicide within six weeks of pregnancy in 2020 was numerically small – 10 women – but this was the same as the total recorded across 2017 to 2019. This is also despite Office for National Statistics figures showing a year-on-year fall in suicides in the population overall in 2020.
    In relation to the rise in suicides during pregnancy and up to a year after birth, the report states: “During the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, very rapid changes were made to health services… Mental health services were not immune from this and there was a broad spectrum of changes from teams where some staff were redeployed to other roles, through to teams that were able to operate relatively normally…
    “All of this occurred on a background of a recent huge expansion in specialist perinatal mental health services."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 11 November 2022
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    There has been a sharp rise in long waits for cancer therapy in the past four years, BBC analysis shows.
    The number waiting more than the 62-day target time for therapy in the past year has topped 67,000 across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland - twice as many as the same period in 2017-18.
    Waits are also getting worse in Wales, but data does not go that far back.
    The national cancer director for the NHS in England said staff were striving to catch up on the backlog of care, but experts warned the problems could be putting patients at risk.
    Steven McIntosh, of Macmillan Cancer Support, told the BBC that the delays were "traumatic" and people were living "day-by-day with fear and anxiety".
    He said the situation was "unacceptable" and could even be having an impact on the chances of survival.
    Describing the NHS as "chronically short-staffed", he said: "The NHS doesn't have the staff it needs to diagnose cancer, to deliver surgery and treatment, to provide care, support and rehabilitation."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 9 November 2022
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