Jump to content
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    211

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Clive Flashman

Administrators

 Content Type 

News posted by Clive Flashman

  1. Clive Flashman
    GP practices will be included in the remit of a new patient safety watchdog, due to come in from 2023 under the new Health and Care Bill, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said. DHSC said that it expects the new Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) to be ‘fully operational’ in England from April 2023 – ‘subject to parliamentary clearances’. 
    It confirmed that the statutory independent body will investigate NHS care in GP practices, although it said that the HSSIB’s ‘focus is likely to be predominantly on investigating patient safety incidents in NHS trusts’. The body will also investigate care provided by the independent healthcare sector.
    RCGP vice-chair Dr Gary Howsam said: ‘It is important that we have further details about how this regulator will interact with general practice, and the expectations it will have of GPs and our teams, including ensuring GPs are not implicated for systemic issues out of their control.’
    Read the full article here
  2. Clive Flashman
    Looking to improve practice through learning
    Errors, mishaps and misunderstandings are surprisingly common in medicine and around one in 10 patients suffer avoidable harm, impacting on patients, their families, health care organisations, staff and students. However a research project seeking to improve patient safety across Europe, led by Newcastle-based Northumbria University, has received international acclaim as it looks to improve practice through learning.
    The SLIPPS (Shared Learning from Practice to improve Patient Safety) project is Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, and is led by Professor Alison Steven, a Reader in Health Professions Education at Northumbria University.  Professor Steven has a longstanding interest in the use of education to raise standards of care and ensure patient safety. Considering the rapid spread of Covid 19, she says improving patient safety and standards of care across Europe and beyond, has never been more important.
    Read full article here
  3. Clive Flashman
    What does whistleblowing in a pandemic look like? Do employers take concerns more seriously – as we would all hope? Does the victimisation of whistleblowers still happen? Does a pandemic compel more people to speak up? We wanted to know, so Protect analysed the data from all the Covid-19 related calls to theirr Advice Line. They found:
    * 41% of whistleblowers had Covid-19 concerns ignored by employers
    * 20% of whistleblowers were dismissed
    * Managers more likely to be dismissed (32% ) than non-managers (21%)
     
    They found that too many whistleblowers feel ignored and isolated once they raise their concerns and that these failing are a systematic problem.
    Protect, which runs an Advice Line for whistleblowers, and supports more than 3,000 whistleblowers each year, has been inundated with Covid-19 whistleblowing concerns, many of an extremely serious nature. Its report, The Best Warning System: Whistleblowing During Covid-19 examines over 600 Covid-19 calls to its Advice Line between March and September. The majority of cases were over furlough fraud and risk to public safety, such as a lack of social distancing and PPE in the workplace.
     
  4. Clive Flashman
    The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has been officially launched by the UK Government, aimed at preventing health disparities across the country and supporting people to live longer, healthier, and happier lives.
    OHID will focus on stopping debilitating health conditions before they develop and represents a distinct step-change in focus from the Government towards a more preventative, rather than reactionary, approach to health.
    One of the key intentions of this is to reduce the backlog and also put social care on a long-term sustainable footing, tackling health issues much earlier in their presentation, tackling the underlying causes of many of these, or preventing them altogether.
    The new government office will see Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, provide professional leadership to the organisation.
    Announcing the official launch of OHID, the Government pointed to some of the clear trends shown in recent figures, which highlight how geographical location can play a significant role in a person’s life expectancy and the years that they can expect to live a healthy life. For example:
    men in the most deprived areas in England are expected to live nearly 10 years fewer than those in the least deprived. Women in the same areas can expect to live 7 years fewer smoking is more prevalent in more deprived areas and one of the leading causes of inequalities in life expectancy; an international study found it accounts for half the difference in mortality between the least and most deprived men aged 35 to 69 obesity is widespread but more prevalent among the most deprived areas; prevalence is almost 8% higher among those living in the most deprived decile of local authorities (66.6%) compared to those in the least deprived areas (58.8%) Under its new remit, OHID will work to coordinate across local and central government, the NHS and wider society – utilising expert advice, analysis, and evidence – to drive improvements in the public’s health which may be able to have preventative roles and level up health across the UK.
    Preventative approaches to health can, it is intended, reduce the pressure on existing healthcare services, saving significant resource and money, and ensure that record investments into health and social care services can go further.
    Source: National Health Executive
    Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid said: “The pandemic has laid bare the health disparities we face not only as a country, but as communities and individuals.
    “This must change, and this body marks a new era of preventative healthcare to help people live healthier, happier and longer lives.
    “The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities will be the driving force across government, supported by communities, academics, industry and employers, to level up the health of our nation, which will reduce the pressure on our NHS and care services.”
  5. Clive Flashman
    Where Healthcare Is Improving and Where It Needs More Work
    While the public discourse on health equity has increased in recent years, there are still many problems in health disparities research and in care delivery. Health systems are struggling to tackle health equity issues as highlighted by a recent study that evaluated online consumer reviews of hospitals and experiences of racism. 

    However, organizations are making a positive impact toward health equity in a variety of areas. Walmart is partnering with virtual care company Grand Rounds Health and Doctor On Demand on a digital health program aimed at tackling health disparities among African American workers. Women's health company Tia is looking to welcome female-identifying patients in an effort to improve inclusivity in health tech. For more content on companies that are addressing health equity gaps, including specialized care for women and individuals with female biologies, check out the recent blog post where we collaborated with Rock Health: Building comprehensive women+ digital health: Eight sectors serving women+ needs. 
  8. Clive Flashman
    People are being warned to familiarise themselves with the symptoms of sepsis after a study found that as many as 20,000 COVID-19 survivors could be diagnosed with the condition within a year.
    One in five people who receive hospital treatment for the coronavirus are at risk, according to the UK Sepsis Trust.
    Sepsis is triggered when the body overreacts to an infection, causing the immune system to turn on itself - leading to tissue damage, organ failure and potentially death. If spotted quickly, it can be treated with antibiotics before it turns into septic shock and damages vital organs.
    Read the full article here.
  9. Clive Flashman
    This survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at least one night in hospital as an inpatient.
    The results show that, generally, people’s experiences of inpatient care were positive and overall differences between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients were small, suggesting that care provided was consistent. Most people said they were treated with respect and dignity, had confidence and trust in the doctors and nurses that treated them and observed high levels of cleanliness.
    Survey findings were less positive, however, for areas of care including people’s experiences of receiving emotional support, information sharing and hospital discharge.
    For the detailed findings, click here
    Original source: Care Quality Commission
  10. Clive Flashman
    NHS People Plan provides a stop-gap but leaves glaring omissions
    'Two years after it was first promised, the NHS is still waiting for a long-term workforce plan. Some of the measures announced in today’s People Plan are positive. As the plan acknowledges, it is important to learn from the impressive changes made by NHS staff during the pandemic. And improving support for people from black and minority ethnic communities – who make up one fifth of the NHS workforce – is rightly a top priority. 
    'But there are glaring omissions. The NHS went into the pandemic with a workforce gap of around 100,000 staff, yet the plan does not say how this will be addressed in the medium term. This is particularly concerning at a time when our recruitment of nurses from abroad has dropped dramatically. These details are missing because the NHS is still waiting on government to set out what funding will be available to expand the NHS workforce – without which the NHS cannot recruit and retain the doctors, nurses and other staff it needs. 
    'While this plan at least provides a stop-gap to help get the NHS through the winter, there is no equivalent plan for social care – a sector suffering from decades of political neglect and the devastating impact of COVID-19 on care users and staff. A comprehensive workforce plan for both the NHS and social care is needed now more than ever'.
  11. Clive Flashman
    The BMA has advised practices to immediately start offering consultations of 15 minutes or more; and apply to close their patient list, as part of the fightback against the Government’s new GP access plan.
    It set out a range of measures GPs should take to protect their staff and patients and ‘prioritise’ core work amid pressure to return to pre-pandemic ways of working.
    In an email bulletin sent to GPs on Friday, the BMA’s GP Committee said that practices ‘should not feel pressured to return to a traditional 10-minute treadmill of face-to-face consultations that are neither good for patients nor clinicians’.
    It said: ‘Instead, they should offer patients consultations that are 15 minutes or more [and] apply to close the practice list to focus on the needs of existing patients.’
    Read full article here
    Original source: Pulse
  12. Clive Flashman
    Study finds 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients still had fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness.
    Almost seven out of 10 patients hospitalised due to coronavirus still suffer from debilitating symptoms more than seven weeks after being discharged, according to a new study.
    Researchers from the University College London (UCL) division of medicine, in collaboration with with clinicians at the Royal Free London (RFL) and UCL, followed 384 patients who had tested positive and had been treated at Barnet Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital or UCLH. Collectively the average length of stay in hospital was 6.5 days.
    The team found that 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients were still experiencing fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness. They also found that 34% still had a cough and 15% reported depression. In addition 38% of chest radiographs (X-rays) remained abnormal and 9% were getting worse.
    Dr Swapna Mandal, an honorary clinical associate professor at UCL division of medicine, said the data shows so-called long COVID is a real phenomenon and that further research is needed to understand how the symptoms of COVID-19 can be treated over an extended period. She said: "Patients whose COVID-19 illness is serious enough for them to require hospital care often continue to suffer significant symptoms for many weeks after their discharge."
    Read full story
    Source: Sky News, 11 November 2020
  13. Clive Flashman
    More than one in five GP partners said they removed practice staff away from face-to-face care due to ethnicity during the pandemic, a Pulse survey has revealed. 
    The survey in June revealed that 84 of the 378 respondents said that ‘ethnicity was a crucial factor in removing anyone in your practice away from face-to-face assessments’.
    Around 70% of respondents said they had been counting ethnicity as a factor when risk assessing staff.
    See full article here
  14. Clive Flashman
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged last week that a significant number of COVID-19 patients do not recover quickly, and instead experience ongoing symptoms, such as fatigue and cough.
    As many as a third of patients who were never sick enough to be hospitalized are not back to their usual health up to three weeks after their diagnosis, the report found.
    Read the full article here
  15. Clive Flashman
    A new report has highlighted how point-of-care scanning in the NHS can help to improve patient safety, saving the NHS millions of pounds.
    Six NHS hospital trusts which implemented regular point-of-care scanning have ensured complete traceability of healthcare items to help improve patient safety while securing millions of pounds of savings and releasing thousands of hours of clinical time, a new report reveals.
    ‘A scan of the benefits: the Scan4Safety evidence report’ details the results at hospital trusts that took part in a national two-year programme, known as Scan4Safety, to investigate the benefits of point-of-care barcode scanning in the NHS.
    Full article here
    We wonder if @Richard Price might like to post more about what the impact of Scan4safety has been at University Hospitals Plymouth. Perhaps here:
    https://www.pslhub.org/learn/commissioning-service-provision-and-innovation-in-health-and-care/digital-health-and-care-service-provision/other-health-and-care-software/ 
  16. Clive Flashman
    U.S. News has just released its list of the best hospitals with associated rankings and ratings.
    Scores are based on several factors, including survival, patient safety, nurse staffing and more. U.S. News reviews hospitals performance in 15 adult specialties, 10 pediatric specialties and 17 surgical procedures and medical conditions affecting millions of people across the country.
    Find all of the rankings and ratings here
     
  17. Clive Flashman
    A dedicated team of 32 volunteers are hitting the roads across North Wales assisting the Welsh Ambulance Service in dealing with fallers.
    Based out of the Ambulance headquarters in St Asaph, the Community First Responder Falls Team was launched on 30 April this year and has already assisted almost 250 people.
    The team was created to use the talents and experience of the familiar Community First Responders (CFRs) who had to be stood down from their normal duties at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
    Read the full article here.
  18. Clive Flashman
    Mental health patients who were discharged from or admitted to acute mental health services during the first Covid-19 lockdown experienced loneliness and social isolation, according to a new study. Published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open the 34 patients, carers and clinical staff were interviewed by a team of researchers from The University of Manchester. 
    Mental health service users also reported ‘working harder’ to avoid admission due to fears around environmental safety as a result of COVID-19.  “Even before the pandemic, there are lots of safety concerns associated with recent discharge from inpatient mental health services, for example suicide and self-harm,“ said lead author Dr Natasha Tyler, researcher at the GM PSTRC and The University of Manchester. Dr Tyler added: ‘Our patients and carers felt that because of the national need to free-up hospital beds, the quality of discharge and admission planning was compromised at times. “That meant discharging patients from hospitals who were not ready to cope in the community or not admitting patients who needed in-patient care. “The closure of most community support services meant patients had minimal opportunities for accessing care via alternative routes.  This worsened  their feelings of helplessness and loneliness.” 
    Full article here
    Source: Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre
  19. Clive Flashman
    Making data on medical interventions easier to collect and collate would increase the odds of spotting patterns of harm, according to the panel of a recent HSJ webinar
    When Baroness Julia Cumberlege was asked to review the avoidable harm caused by two medicines and one medical device, she encountered no shortage of data.
    “We found that the NHS is awash with data, but it’s very fractured,” says Baroness Cumberlege, who chaired the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review and now co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group which raises awareness of and support for its findings.
    And it is that fracturing that can make patterns of harm difficult to spot. The report concluded that many women and children experienced avoidable harm through use of the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, the epilepsy drug sodium valproate, and the medical device pelvic mesh – simply because it hadn’t been possible to connect the dots.
    “It’s very hard to collect things together and to get an overall picture. And one of the things that we felt very strongly about was that data should be collected once, but used often,” said Baroness Cumberlege at a recent HSJ webinar. Run in association with GS1 UK, the event brought together a panel to consider how better data might help address patient safety challenges such as problems with implants.
    “But the big problem was they couldn’t identify who had which implants. No doubt somebody somewhere had written this down with a fountain pen and then someone spilt the tea over it and the unique information was lost,” recalled Sir Terence Stephenson , now Nuffield professor of child health at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and chair of the Health Research Authority for England.
    The review he chaired therefore suggested establishing a concept of person, product place – “for everybody who had something implanted in them, we should have their name, the identifier of what had been put in, and where it had been put in. And one of my panel members said: ‘Well, how are we going to record this? We don’t want the fountain pen and the teacup.’”
    Ultimately the answer suggested was barcode scanning. By scanning the wristband of a patient, that on the product being implanted, and one for the hospital theatre or department at which it was being implanted, the idea was to create an immediate and easy-to-create record.
    For those long convinced of the virtues of barcode scanning in health, it is a welcome development
    Two years later, the then Department of Health launched the Scan4Safety programme, in which six “demonstrator sites” implemented the use of scanning across the patient journey. At these organisations, barcodes produced to GS1 standards – meaning they are globally unique – are present on patient wristbands; on equipment used for care, including implantable medical devices; in locations; and sometimes on staff badges.
    Link to full article here (paywalled)
  20. Clive Flashman
    New study results in more precise language in the federally mandated warning about this possibility. (Article from the USA)
    Women who choose to use an intrauterine device, or IUD, for birth control should be aware of the very small possibility that the device could puncture their uterus. They should know how to recognize that circumstance if it occurs, according to a new study published in The Lancet.
    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated the study to evaluate women's risks when an IUD is placed in the year after giving birth and when an IUD is placed during the period that a woman is breastfeeding a baby. These results were compared, respectively, with non-postpartum insertions and insertions in non-breastfeeding individuals, explained UW Medicine’s Dr. Susan Reed, the study’s lead author.
    Across the study cohort of 327,000 women, the percentage of perforation cases diagnosed within five years of IUD insertion was 0.6 %, the study concluded.
    The risk of perforation increased by nearly seven times if it was inserted between four days and six weeks postpartum, and increased by about one-third if inserted during the span of breastfeeding. The risk of an IUD-related perforation was relatively lower when inserted in women who were more than a year beyond delivery, in women who had never had a baby, and when the insertion occurred at delivery. Read full article here
  21. Clive Flashman
    Five-year survival rates are expected to fall due to delays in getting urgent referrals or treatment at the height of the pandemic.
    Thousands of lives may be lost to cancer because 250,000 patients were not referred to hospital for urgent checks, says a report to be published this week. Family doctors made 339,242 urgent cancer referrals in England between April and June, down from 594,060 in the same period last year — a drop of 43%.
    The fall in the number of people seeing their GP with symptoms, and in referrals for scans, is resulting in cancers being spotted too late, according to the research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Carnall Farrar, a healthcare management consultancy.
    Full article on The Times website here (paywalled).
  22. Clive Flashman
    A LACK of capacity is meaning vulnerable kids in England are being put into foster care and children’s homes in Scotland, a new report has revealed. An investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into social care in the UK found that stakeholders are raising concerns about the practice.
    They warned that young people are facing disruption at school after being placed into different legal and educational systems – all due to a lack of spaces near their home area. It could mean some kids from as far away as London are being placed into care in Scotland.
    The investigation also revealed difficulties in Scotland placing children with disabilities or complex needs. And it found Scottish children in the care system were more likely to be separated from their siblings than their counterparts in England. The CMA reported that in England in 2019/20, 1400 (13% of all siblings in care) siblings were not placed according to their plan. In Scotland, there were 200 sibling groups separated after being placed into foster care - more than 20% of all sibling groups in foster care.
    For the full article, click here
    Original source: The National
  23. Clive Flashman
    A national investigation has been launched into the equipment used by NHS staff to monitor babies heart rates during labour because of concerns they could be contributing to deaths and disabilities.
    The independent Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), which investigates systemic safety risks in the NHS, has opened an inquiry after reviewing hundreds of maternity incidents.
    It found equipment used to record cardiotocographic (CTG) traces were linked to 138 maternity investigations since 2018 with more than 238 separate findings referencing the use of CTG as a factor in the error.
    Read the full article here
  24. Clive Flashman
    Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn carried out a transparent review of 389 Covid infections
    An NHS trust has apologised to hundreds of families whose relatives caught Covid-19 in hospital and died, after a review found a lack of private rooms contributed to the spread of the virus.
    The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, has carried out a review of all 389 cases of patients who either definitely or probably contracted Covid while in the hospital between March 2020 and February this year. Of those, 151 patients died. 
    The trust is the only NHS trust to have carried out a full and transparent review of hospital acquired infections of Covid-19 with staff speaking with each family to understand their concerns and views.
    Read full article here
    Source: Independent
  25. Clive Flashman
    The latest edition of the Wolters Kluwer Journal of Patient Safety has just been published.
    Original studies include:
    Is There a Mismatch Between the Perspectives of Patients and Regulators on Healthcare Quality? A Survey Study The Ideal Hospital Discharge Summary: A Survey of U.S. Physicians Impact of an Original Methodological Tool on the Identification of Corrective and Preventive Actions After Root Cause Analysis of Adverse Events in Health Care Facilities: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial Detach Yourself: The Positive Effect of Psychological Detachment on Patient Safety in Long-Term Care Patient Safety Activity Under the Social Insurance Medical Fee Schedule in Japan: An Overview of the 2010 Nationwide Survey Sustaining Teamwork Behaviors Through Reinforcement of TeamSTEPPS Principles Prescribing Errors With Low-Molecular-Weight Heparins Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Speaking Up About Patient Safety Questionnaire Descriptive Analysis of Patient Misidentification From Incident Report System Data in a Large Academic Hospital Federation Medication Errors at Hospital Admission and Discharge: Risk Factors and Impact of Medication Reconciliation Process to Improve Healthcare Reducing and Sustaining Duplicate Medical Record Creation by Usability Testing and System Redesign Full articles are payalled but the abstracts may be viewed free of charge.
    Access the Journal here
×
×
  • 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.

 Accept Cookies  Reject Cookies