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Patient-Safety-Learning

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News posted by Patient-Safety-Learning

  1. Patient-Safety-Learning
    The number of young people receiving their MMR jab is up nearly a quarter from last year, official figures show.
    A national campaign to boost uptake was launched in January amid concern over measles rates in England, when the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) declared a national incident after a major outbreak in the West Midlands. The growth in infections shows no sign of abating, with a 40% increase in reported cases in England since March.
    The latest NHS England data shows more than 360,000 MMR jabs were administered in the 12 weeks to 24 March 2024, a 23% rise. 
    The new campaign encourages parents and carers of children aged from six to 11 to make an appointment with their child’s GP practice so they can receive missed MMR vaccinations, and just over a million people aged 11 to 25 in London and the West Midlands have also been encouraged to catch up on missed jabs. In order to keep measles at bay, more than 95% of children should be vaccinated, but NHS figures from December suggest England is only at about 85%.
    With an estimated 3.4 million under-16s at risk of getting the virus, the campaign sent more than a million parents letters and emails inviting them to get their child vaccinated. Pop-up MMR clinics have been held in wellbeing buses, libraries and schools, pharmacies and outside supermarkets.
    But measles cases continue to rise. According to UKHSA figures released last week, there were 103 new cases in the past week. The number of laboratory confirmed cases since 1 October 2023 rose to 1,212 , an increase of 40% on March’s figures . In October 2023, there were just 17.
    The biggest increases in vaccination numbers were in the north-west, London and the West Midlands.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 28 April 2024
  2. Patient-Safety-Learning
    A nurse who drugged patients on a hospital stroke unit for an “easy life” has been struck off the nursing register.
    Catherine Hudson was jailed for seven years and two months in December 2023 for illegally sedating two patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and conspiring with a junior colleague to sedate a third.
    Now she has been struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) at a hearing held this week.
    Police were alerted by hospital chiefs in November 2018 after a student nurse on a work placement said Hudson suggested administering unprescribed zopiclone, a sleeping pill, to an elderly patient, Preston Crown Court heard during her sentencing. Hudson was found guilty by a jury of three counts of ill-treating patients and she was also convicted of conspiring with her junior colleague to inappropriately sedate another patient.
    The nursing misconduct panel found Hudson’s “ill-treatment of vulnerable stroke patients over a prolonged period of time particularly deplorable”, a report published this week said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 12 January 2025
  3. Patient-Safety-Learning
    New Jersey will begin stockpiling supplies of a key abortion drug, Governor Phil Murphy announced, days before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office with Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
    “A couple of years ago, New Jersey worked proactively to protect abortion rights,” Murphy said during his State of the State address on Tuesday, in reference to a law he signed months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. “And now we must further secure our reputation as a safe haven for reproductive freedom.”
    In addition to urging the Democratic-held state legislature to pass a law to “scrap out-of-pocket costs for abortion procedures,” Murphy announced that New Jersey will stockpile abortion medication mifepristone “so every woman can access this crucial form of reproductive care.” The decision, he said, was prompted by “anti-choice policies supported by the current majorities in Congress.”
    In November, reproductive-health organizations and companies reported that more women were seeking abortion pills in the aftermath of Trump’s election victory, while antiabortion advocates began planning aggressive legal action against people and organizations that help women get abortions, as The Washington Post reported. As states moved to restrict people’s access to abortion and abortion pills in the wake of Roe’s fall, New Jersey’s abortion protections have ensured that both remain legal there.
    In 2023, Democratic governors in other states—including California and Massachusetts—also announced plans to stockpile abortion pills. Eighteen US states now have bans on all or most abortions, three have bans on abortions after 12 or 15 weeks, while courts in two others have blocked similar laws—although thousands of women in states with restrictions are turning to online providers to access abortion pills.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: Washington Post, 16 January 2025
  4. Patient-Safety-Learning
    More than one in 10 women are taking weight-loss jabs, research has suggested.
    Some 11 per cent of women aged 30 to 75 said they were taking a weight-loss jab, a survey by Juniper, a digital weight-loss service, found. Extrapolating the results across the UK would mean that about two million of the almost 20 million women within the age group are using the drugs.
    The injections, which include semaglutide, known by brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, have been made popular by famous faces including Elon Musk and Boris Johnson.
    But concerns have been raised about people—and young women in particular—not eligible for them under NHS rules obtaining them privately.
    Lottie Moss, the 26-year-old half-sister of Kate Moss, was taken to hospital after the jabs made her violently ill when she used them despite being a healthy weight.
    And health authorities have been forced to issue safety warnings about fake pens being distributed. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has urged people to be aware of fake pharmacy websites and social ­media posts offering the medicines without a prescription. The regulator said ­criminals would go to great lengths to make their businesses appear authentic and the products that they sell could ­contain “toxins and other ingredients that could cause real harm”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 15 January 2025
  5. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Families of those harmed by Covid vaccines told the UK Covid Inquiry they were forced to support each other during the pandemic because there was no other help.
    Kate Scott, who represents the group Vaccine Injured and Bereaved UK (VIBUK), said they felt they were "almost being pushed into the shadows during the pandemic."
    The inquiry also heard from a victims' group in Scotland which raised concerns that the vaccine had been rolled out too quickly, and that safety had been sacrificed for speed.
    This is the Inquiry's fourth module, which will consider issues relating to the development of Covid-19 vaccines and their implementation.
    Mrs Scott, whose husband Jamie was left severely disabled by a vaccine, said, "We are an uncomfortable truth, but we are a truth and the truth is for everyone in our group—the vaccine caused serious harm and death."
    Jamie Scott, a father of two boys, worked in a high-powered job until he was severely injured by a Covid vaccine.
    He spent four weeks and five days in a coma and suffered an extremely rare, life-threatening side effect called VITT, or vaccine-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. Jamie survived, but suffered a significant brain injury, which affected his thinking processes. He is now partially blind and his wife says he will never live independently.
    Jamie has received £120,000 - the maximum payout from the government's Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. His wife, who is clear that neither of them is against vaccines, says he will never work again and that this is not a fair or adequate amount.
    Read full story
    Watch an interview on the hub with Charlet Crichton, founder of UKCVFamily, a support group for patients in the UK who have had an adverse reaction to a Covid-19 vaccination.
    Source: BBC News, 15 January 2025
  6. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Patients are dying in hospital corridors and going undiscovered for hours, while others who suffer heart attacks cannot be given CPR because of overcrowding in walkways, a bombshell report from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) on the state of the NHS has revealed.
    So many patients are being cared for in hospital corridors across the UK that in some cases pregnant women are having miscarriages outside wards while other patients are unable to call for help because they have no call bell and are subjected to “animal-like conditions”, said the RCN.
    The RCN warned that patients were “routinely coming to harm” and in some cases dying because vital equipment was not available and staff were too busy to give everyone adequate care.
    Dr Adrian Boyle, the leader of Britain’s A&E doctors, said the nurses’ testimonies on which the report was based were so horrendous that it “must be a watershed moment, a line in the sand” and must prompt the government to redouble its efforts to get the NHS working properly again.
    Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “I am shocked, appalled and so saddened that this is the level of care we as clinicians are being forced to provide to our patients – people who turn to the NHS and its staff when they are most vulnerable and in need.”
    The RCN’s 460-page report, based on “harrowing” descriptions given by 5,400 UK nurses of their experience of working in hospitals, sets out how:
    Patients have died on trolleys and chairs in corridors and waiting rooms in settings where “all the fundamentals of care have broken down.” One nurse had seen “cardiac arrests in the corridor with no crash bell, crash trolley, oxygen, defibrillator … straddling a patient doing CPR while everyone watches on.” Patients are being given drugs, intravenous infusions and, in one case, a blood transfusion in corridors which are cold, noisy and too cramped to allow them to have loved ones present. One nurse had to tell a patient he was dying as other patients were wheeled past and orders were shouted across the unit. They said, “How is it fair to tell someone they are dying in a corridor?” Lack of space means patients also being treated in storerooms, car parks, offices and even toilets. The report came as Wes Streeting, the health and social care secretary, was forced to defend the government’s record on the NHS in an urgent Commons debate about the intense pressures this winter that have left many hospitals overwhelmed in recent weeks.
    Streeting responded to Conservative attacks by telling MPs that corridor care “became normalised in NHS hospitals under the previous government. It is unsafe, undignified, a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.”
    But, he added, while ending corridor care was the government’s ambition, “I cannot and will not promise that there will not be patients treated in corridors next year. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS.”
    Read the RCN report: On the frontline of the UK’s corridor care crisis
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 January 2025
  7. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Around 500 draft inspection reports are “stuck” in the Care Quality Commission’s IT system and cannot currently be retrieved, its leaders admitted today.
    Outgoing chair Ian Dilks told the Commons health and social care committee hearing: “We have reports that go back for some months that are stuck in the system. People can’t get them back out… [The inspectors] have started their work, they have started their draft report… There is probably more information required, it has to go for quality assurance, [but] they can’t get it back out of the system. I can’t actually tell you exactly how that happened, I’m just giving you an illustration of the difficulties.”
    CQC chief executive Sir Julian Hartley—who took up the post last month—told the MPs around 500 reports were involved.
    HSJ asked the CQC for more details of which providers’ reports have been lost. It indicated the “majority” were of adult social care providers, but has not yet given further details. 
    The regulator said the delays caused “falls far short of what people using services and providers should be able to expect and we have apologised for this”, but that “any immediate action [we] needed to take to protect people… has not been affected”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 15 January 2025
  8. Patient-Safety-Learning
    One woman who tracks preventable deaths says the failure to take action when inquests identify threats to life is ‘mind-blowing’.
    Thousands of deaths could be prevented every year if public bodies took action over concerns highlighted at inquests. Almost 82,000 deaths in 2022 were recorded by the Office for National Statistics in England and Wales as “preventable”, meaning they could have been avoided “through effective public health and primary prevention interventions”.
    Analysis by the Preventable Deaths Tracker project at King’s College London revealed that 1,495 Prevention of Future Deaths reports (28 per cent of the total) have not received any responses and another 741 (14 per cent) received only partial responses. Once reports are issued there is no official monitoring of responses or whether any action follows. Coroners have no powers to ask further questions or request progress reports on reforms.
    The founder of the Preventable Deaths Tracker, the epidemiologist Dr Georgia Richards, said it was “mind-blowing” there was no system to disseminate learning from inquests. “Across 5,000 reports over the last 12 years, it is impossible to know anything about what action that might or might not have been taken following a coroner’s report,” Richards said. "People think there must be a system that’s protecting us. We assume that if you were in government that you would want to know what’s happening in these death investigations. But the system doesn’t work, it’s a waste of time. There are very few PFDs that have led to meaningful change and often it’s not the PFD that triggered it. Change comes from additional factors like change in leadership of the organisation, huge media scrutiny or dedicated families.”
    Peter Thornton KC, chief coroner from 2012-16, said: “First, there are not enough coroners writing these reports. Secondly, they can’t force a response. Thirdly, they can’t follow up a response. Fourthly, they can’t force action — they can only suggest that an area of action is considered. And last, there’s no national follow-up, there’s no co-ordination.” Thornton urged reform through the creation of a national coroner service. The inquest system is jointly managed by the judiciary, local councils and the police. It is poorly funded and has big backlogs: 1,685 bereaved families are waiting longer than two years for hearings.
    Read full story
    Source: The Times, 14 January 2025 (paywalled)
    Related reading
    Five recommendations to prevent future deaths: Written evidence for the Parliamentary follow-up Inquiry to The Coroner Service (Georgia Richards, 9 February 2024) Patient Safety Learning - Mind the implementation gap: The persistence of avoidable harm in the NHS (7 April 2022)
  9. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Doctors are proposing a “radical overhaul” of how obesity is diagnosed worldwide amid concerns that a reliance on body mass index may be causing millions of people to be misdiagnosed.
    More than 1 billion people are thought to be living with the condition that for decades has been diagnosed by measuring a person’s BMI (their ratio of height to weight) to estimate the amount of excess body fat they have.
    However, there are fears BMI on its own is not a “reliable measure” of an individual’s health and may be resulting in both under- and over-diagnosis of obesity, with “negative consequences” for those affected and wider society.
    Dozens of the world’s leading experts across a broad range of medical specialisms – including endocrinology, internal medicine, surgery, biology, nutrition and public health – are now calling for a “reframing” of the condition that is causing major harm on every continent and costing countries billions.
    Prof Francesco Rubino, the chair of the Lancet commission which produced the report, said the changes would provide an opportunity for health systems globally to adopt a universal, clinically relevant definition of obesity and a more accurate method for its diagnosis.
    He said: “The question of whether obesity is a disease is flawed because it presumes an implausible all-or-nothing scenario where obesity is either always a disease or never a disease. Evidence, however, shows a more nuanced reality. Some individuals with obesity can maintain normal organs’ function and overall health, even long term, whereas others display signs and symptoms of severe illness here and now."
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 14 January 2024
  10. Patient-Safety-Learning
    New cases of dementia in the United States are projected to double in the next three decades, a new study suggests.
    The study, published this week in the journal Nature Medicine, looked at more than 15,000 people and estimated the lifetime risk of dementia from ages 55 to 95.
    The team—including researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic and New York University—projected new US dementia cases would double from more than 500,000 in 2020 to approximately one million by 2060. The authors said this increase is directly tied to the ageing of the US population.
    The study also showed that the risk of developing dementia after age 55 is 42%, more than double the risk seen by older studies. After age 75, the lifetime risk increases to more than 50%, according to the study.
    "Our study results forecast a dramatic rise in the burden from dementia in the United States over the coming decades, with one in two Americans expected to experience cognitive difficulties after age 55," Dr Josef Coresh, a study senior investigator, epidemiologist and founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute at NYU Langone, said.
    Read full story
    Source: ABC News, 14 January 2025
  11. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Plans to pay trusts to validate and sometimes remove patients from their waiting lists could be “wide open to gaming” and create a public perception problem, senior NHS figures have told HSJ.
    The new proposals were set out in the elective reform plan, published last week, which says NHS England “will ensure validation is, for the first time, formally reflected as a form of activity within the 2025-26 NHS Payment Scheme”.
    HSJ understands the plans, already piloted by 10 trusts, involve relatively modest payments being paid to providers for “clock stops”—where an entry is removed from the referral to treatment waiting list—achieved by checking whether the entry remains valid.
    So-called “removals other than treatment”, known as ROTTs, from the waiting list are common, and happen for numerous reasons such as patients moving house, no longer requiring the treatment, or having been treated elsewhere.
    Waiting list expert Barry Mulholland, a partner at the MBI Health consultancy, said he was in favour of paying providers for ROTTs, but understood “concerns” among some in the NHS “that it provides an increased risk that patients may be removed incorrectly”.
    Further details of the scheme are expected in the delayed 2025-26 NHS planning guidance.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 15 January 2025
  12. Patient-Safety-Learning
    The difficulty of getting an appointment with a GP is a familiar gripe in the UK.
    Even when an appointment is secured, the rising workload faced by doctors means those meetings can be shorter than either the doctor or patient would like.
    But Dr Deepali Misra-Sharp, a GP partner in Birmingham, has found that AI has alleviated a chunk of the administration from her job, meaning she can focus more on patients.
    Dr Mirsa-Sharp started using Heidi Health, a free AI-assisted medical transcription tool that listens and transcribes patient appointments, about four months ago and says it has made a big difference.
    “Usually when I’m with a patient, I am writing things down and it takes away from the consultation,” she says. “This now means I can spend my entire time locking eyes with the patient and actively listening. It makes for a more quality consultation."
    She says the tech reduces her workflow, saving her “two to three minutes per consultation, if not more”. She reels off other benefits: “It reduces the risk of errors and omissions in my medical note taking."
    With a workforce in decline while the number of patients continues to grow, GPs face immense pressure.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 14 January 2025
  13. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Chinese health officials are reportedly monitoring an increase in cases of human metapneumovirus (HMPV). There is currently no evidence that the outbreak is out of the ordinary or that a new respiratory virus or illness has emerged in China. HMPV is a virus that can cause upper and lower respiratory disease, according to the CDC. It was discovered in 2001 and is in the Pneumoviridae family along with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the CDC said.
    A spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) said data from China indicates "there has been a recent rise in acute respiratory infections" but that "the overall scale and intensity of respiratory infectious diseases in China this year are lower than last year."
    Cases of HMPV have been steadily increasing in the U.S. since November 2024 with 1.94% of weekly tests positive for HMPV as of Dec. 28, 2024, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By comparison, 18.71% of weekly tests were positive for flu and 7.10% were positive for COVID during the same week, the data shows.
    Public health experts told ABC News that HMPV is well-known to health care professionals and commonly circulates during respiratory virus season.
    MORE: Cases of RSV, flu ticking up among young children in US as respiratory virus season begins
    "This is that winter respiratory virus season, indeed," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told ABC News. "So, all of these respiratory viruses -- influenza, COVID, RSV, human metapneumovirus -- they all increase this time of the year, in part because we get so close to each other."
    Read full story
    Source: ABC News, 7 January 2025
  14. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Long ambulance handover delays hit record levels in the past week as the winter crisis in the NHS reached its height. There were an average of 2,834 hour-long handover delays every day in the week to 4 January, according to the latest NHS winter sitrep data released today. That was the highest since records began.
    The previous record was at the start of January 2023—a time of intense and high-profile pressures on services, due to a very high flu peak and ongoing Covid-19, when many patients were harmed.
    At that time a daily average of 2,682 hour-long delays were reported. Since then, cutting handover delays has been a high priority of government and NHSE.
    On Monday, HSJ reported long ambulance handover delays were surging in the Midlands and northern regions, which have recorded more of them than in the 2022-23 winter.
    Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said: “It is clear that hospitals are under exceptional pressure at the start of this new year, with mammoth demand stemming from this ongoing cold weather snap and respiratory viruses like flu—all on the back of 2024 being the busiest year on record for A&E and ambulance teams."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 9 January 2025
  15. Patient-Safety-Learning
    A robot-guided “smart biopsy” technique has been tested on UK patients for the first time, with researchers hopeful it could spell the end of invasive procedures for those with suspected cancer.
    Medics used advanced MRI scans to identify different areas of tumours and take multiple samples at once to better understand their biology.
    This could potentially help personalise cancer treatment, they suggest, with hopes that patients could one day forego biopsy completely as doctors would be able to study tumours from scan images the same way they would under a microscope.
    For the study, led by a team at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, 12 patients with suspected etroperitoneal and pelvic sarcomas (RPS) – a rare group of soft tissue tumours that develop in the pelvis and the back of the abdominal cavity – were given smart biopsies.
    Dr Edward Johnston, consultant interventional radiologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, told the PA news agency: “Current biopsy just involves sampling one region rather than multiple regions. Secondly, it doesn’t have a very detailed MRI acquisition beforehand. So we want to make it a lot more thought out.”
    The team is now exploring expanding the technique for other tumour types.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 9 January 2025
  16. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Black men in England are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer than their white counterparts, while being less likely to receive life-saving treatment, analysis by the National Prostate Cancer Audit has found.
    The analysis found that black men were diagnosed with stage three or four prostate cancer at a rate of 440 per 100,000 black men in England, which is 1.5 times higher compared with their white counterparts, who had a diagnosis rate of 295 per 100,000.
    Furthermore, the research also found that black men in their 60s who had a later diagnosis were 14% less likely to receive life-saving treatments that have been approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for use on the NHS.
    The research was conducted by analysing new prostate cancer diagnoses by ethnicity in England from January 2021 to December 2023, using data from the Rapid Cancer Registration dataset and the National Cancer Registration dataset.
    Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among British men, with about 52,300 new cases and 12,000 deaths recorded in the UK each year. Black men are twice as likely to be diagnosed and 2.5 times more likely to die from the disease compared with white men.
    Prostate Cancer UK is calling for the government’s guidelines to be updated as, under current guidance, it is an individual’s responsibility to find out his risk and decide if he would like to request a blood test.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2025
  17. Patient-Safety-Learning
    University Hospitals Birmingham has ordered an independent review into a major international medical training programme, after concerns the scheme may be routinely underpaying overseas doctors.
    The foundation trust confirmed to HSJ it was “now in the process of commissioning an independent review” into its three international medical training programmes. A spokesman said the decision to order an external review had been sparked by an earlier internal review of its medical training, which itself followed “concerns raised by clinical and non-clinical colleagues”.
    And a bulletin sent to UHB staff today from chief medical officer Kiran Patel, seen by HSJ, said “pay parity” issues had come to light through the internal reviews. It follows previous reports that overseas doctors were being paid substantially less than domestic peers working at a comparable level.
    Details about who will carry out the external review, how long it will take, and the terms of reference are yet to be confirmed.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 9 January 2025
  18. Patient-Safety-Learning
    The NHS is experiencing intense winter pressure, with critical incidents declared at a dozen hospitals across the UK by Wednesday.
    The BBC has spoken to nurses dealing with demand in A&Es. "Patients are collapsing in the waiting room. It's just hectic," Lorraine, a nurse in Birmingham, told BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday.
    "There's women that are 90 that have been waiting for a bed for 24 hours," she said. "We try our best but if there's no beds what can we really do? We just make the old lady as comfortable as she can, just make sure that she's okay. But there's no beds."
    She said she felt sorry for paramedics who due to the lack of space in hospitals are being forced to hold patients on board for a long time. "And then when we do get them in they need a bed and there isn't one. It is really bad."
    Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer visited a hospital in London's south-east on Monday, revealing a new plan involving the private healthcare sector to help reduce waiting times for appointments.
    But nurses like Lorraine say he needs to witness the reality of emergency wards currently. "The prime minister should actually sit in the waiting room, see the abuse that we get, the poor old ladies and pensioners, the young people that are trying to kill themselves, people collapsing, people having cardiac arrests in the waiting room," she said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 8 January 2025
  19. Patient-Safety-Learning
    A national probe has been launched into the deaths and harm of thousands of NHS patients waiting for cardiac surgery, as doctors and experts warn of a “crisis in heart care”, an investigation by The Independent has revealed.
    The audit was ordered by NHS England after concerns were raised about the impact on patients left waiting too long for specialist surgery, according to a leaked memo. Waiting times for all types of cardiac surgery are also under review.
    Senior doctors have described how the NHS is struggling to provide life-saving care to those suffering heart attacks and strokes, with worsening ambulance delays meaning patients are being deprioritised.
    The latest figures show waiting lists for cardiology services have doubled since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 with 412,164 patients waiting for routine care in October 2024 – up from 397,956 the year before.
    As of October this year, just 58 per cent of heart patients were seen within the NHS target of 18 weeks.
    An NHS spokesperson said: “Patients who come to emergency departments with heart attacks and strokes should be transferred as quickly as possible to units that are able to offer this care and prioritised accordingly. Despite significant pressure on services and thanks to staff across the country, the NHS is making good progress with the overall waiting list coming down, however, we know boosting capacity for cardiovascular care remains crucial to improving outcomes. We’re committed to using innovations like surgical hubs and implementing the “right procedure, right place model” to help release capacity and speed up access for patients.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 9 December 2024
  20. Patient-Safety-Learning
    The proportion of NHS staff who have experienced physical violence from patients has fallen to its lowest levels in five years, according to the latest survey data.
    New figures showed the percentage of staff reporting at least one incident of physical violence from patients or the public, within the last 12 months, had declined from 15.1 per cent in 2019, down to 13.7 per cent in 2023. That is also almost one percentage point lower than 14.6 per cent in 2022, which is the biggest year-on-year percentage point fall in the five years. 
    The 2023 NHS staff survey, first published in early March, was updated recently to include the questions on physical violence. NHS England said earlier this week it had received a “higher than expected rate of missing data” for the questions, which meant they were not originally reported, but these issues had now been resolved. 
    However, ambulance workers remain disproportionately affected by physical violence compared to other roles, with 27.6 per cent saying they had experienced at least one instance of physical violence from patients or the public in the past year. This is down from 32.5 per cent five years ago in 2019.
    Acute and community staff were the next highest (13.7 per cent), followed by mental health (13.5 per cent), community (7 per cent), and then acute specialist (5.3 per cent). 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 5 June 2024
  21. Patient-Safety-Learning
    A new strain of Covid emerging in the UK is spreading as cases increase at a high rate, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said.at a high rate, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said.
    Called XEC, the strain is a combination of the KS.1.1 and KP.3.3 variants. Figures from the UKHSA show that the admission rate for patients testing positive for the new strain rose to 4.5 per 100,000 people in the week to October 6. This was up from 3.7 a week earlier.
    It is thought the XEC strain is more transmissible due to its numerous mutations, and presents symptoms similar to those of other Covid variants including tiredness, headaches, a sore throat and high temperatures.
    Although self-isolation is no longer a legal requirement in the UK, the NHS has advised anyone who tests positive for Covid to avoid contact with others for at least five days. It is also recommended that contact with more vulnerable people be avoided for 10 days, to reduce the risk to them. As a general rule, it is advised anyone with symptoms at least wait for them to subside before returning to normal activities.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 17 October 2024
  22. Patient-Safety-Learning
    For a decade after her baby Kaiden was stillborn, Hayley Brunt blamed herself for the child’s death.
    The “deep grief” in believing she had been to blame for her baby’s death sent Hayley’s mental health into a spiral so bad she made multiple attempts to take her life, and caused her extreme anxiety during later pregnancies.
    Now Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has admitted that its own mistakes led to the death of Kaiden in 2013.
    Ms Brunt, 27, is one of almost 2,000 families whose maternity care will be scrutinised by an inquiry led by Donna Ockenden. The probe was launched by Sajid Javid, then the secretary of state for health and social care, after The Independent revealed in 2021 that dozens of babies and mothers had been harmed as a result of poor care by NUH services.
    The trust is also facing a criminal investigation into alleged failings in its maternity care.
    Speaking with The Independent, Hayley—who has since had three more children—said that shortly after Kaiden’s funeral she was told by a hospital doctor that his death had been due to her placenta “not working”.
    “This led to me blaming myself and my body for what happened to him. The inconsolable grief for Kaiden’s loss and the blame I felt caused my mental health to spiral. I began suffering awful nightmares about Kaiden and his delivery, which continue today. I became so depressed and low that it led to me making a number of attempts to end my life. I have had more children since Kaiden’s death, and each of the pregnancies has been plagued with anxiety and fear that history will repeat itself,” Hayley said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 16 October 2024
  23. Patient-Safety-Learning
    British doctors of BAME origin and overseas-trained medics working in the UK experience “persistent and pernicious” inequality throughout their careers, the medical regulator has warned.
    The General Medical Council (GMC) said too many doctors are still being reported by their employers for alleged misconduct compared with white British-trained medics.
    Doctors also experience “discrimination and disadvantage” in their efforts to progress medical careers because of a hostile “culture” in too many parts of the NHS, it said.
    The report, by the GMC’s chief executive, Charlie Massey, is intended to stamp out discrimination.
    Massey said, "For too many doctors, medicine is a story of discrimination and disadvantage. From the early days of education and training, to the leadership positions of latter years, issues of inequality are persistent and pernicious. This unfairness is deep-rooted and longstanding. It undermines doctors’ morale and ability to perform at their best. And it shames our health services. Fair treatment is not the preserve of a select few – it is the right of all doctors, regardless of who they are.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 17 October 2024
  24. Patient-Safety-Learning
    Lucy Letby gave a baby 10 times the prescribed dose of morphine "in error" two years before her killing spree began, a public inquiry has heard.
    The nurse was then unhappy at being told she could no longer administer controlled drugs at the Countess of Chester Hospital after the incident in July 2013.
    The Thirlwall Inquiry, which is examining how she was able to kill and attack babies between June 2015 and June 2016, heard Letby received extra training after the incident. Yvonne Farmer, who was practice development nurse at the time, told the inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall it was a "very serious error".
    The mistake was spotted quickly and the baby suffered no ill-effects, the inquiry heard. Ms Farmer said Letby was not far into her nursing career at the time, but was outside the period of supervision required by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
    Letby, of Hereford, was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, including one she tried to kill twice, and is serving 15 whole life prison sentences.
    The inquiry continues.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 16 October 2024
  25. Patient-Safety-Learning
    The mother of a woman who took her own life weeks after being discharged from a mental health ward fears a "culture of cover up" within the NHS trust.
    Hannah Roberts, 22, died by suicide in 2018 and her mother Sally said there were "discrepancies" in the accounts of the talented musician's discharge. She feels an ongoing internal review into all Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) suicides since 2017 should be independent.
    CPFT did not respond to her comments.
    The trust's chief executive Anna Hills previously said the internal review into 63 suicides would "be an important piece of work".
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 August 2023

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