Sam
Administrators2 Followers
-
News ArticleNHS England has ordered an independent review into patient safety and governance concerns at an acute trust which had been resisting calls to take this step, HSJ has learned. The intervention at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust comes after pressure from staff and local MPs, who believe more extensive investigation is required into cases of patient harm within the trauma and orthopaedics division. The broad issues were first revealed by HSJ in November, with documents suggesting several patients were harmed after leaders failed to act on multiple concerns being r
-
News ArticleNew research led by researchers at King’s College London suggests that restricting testing to the ‘classic triad’ of cough, fever and loss of smell which is required for eligibility for a PCR test through the NHS may have missed cases. Extending the list to include fatigue, sore throat, headache and diarrhoea would have detected 96% of symptomatic cases. A team of researchers at King’s and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) analysed data from more than 122,000 UK adult users of the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app. These users reported experiencing any potential COVID-1
-
News ArticleNearly 20 major healthcare bodies are appealing to the Prime Minister for better personal protection against coronavirus. They say at least 930 health and care workers have died of COVID-19 and more are experiencing long-term effects. In a letter, they say measures to stop airborne spreading are "inadequate" and call for urgent improvement in masks and other defences against variants. The government said it was monitoring evidence on airborne transmission and would update advice "where necessary". The organisations involved represent a wide range of health professionals, fr
-
News ArticleAt home early abortions pose no greater risk and allow women to have the procedure much earlier on in their pregnancy, research has found. The findings have sparked calls from leading healthcare providers for the option, which was rolled out in the wake of lockdown measures last spring, to be made permanent. Researchers, who conducted the UK’s largest study into abortions, discovered there were no cases of significant infection which necessitated the woman to go to hospital or have major surgery. The study, conducted by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and MSI Reproductive
-
News ArticleStaff at a Midlands hospital trust told regulators they had repeatedly raised safety concerns internally without action being taken. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has downgraded maternity services at Worcestershire Acute Hospital from “good” to “requires improvement” following an inspection prompted by the whistleblowers’ concerns. Staff had reported “continuously escalating” staffing level concerns to senior managers, but said they got “no response”. Some said they were fearful of raising concerns internally. Whistleblowers also reported delays to induction of labour, with
-
News ArticleA firm which reviews healthcare apps for several NHS trusts says 80% of them do not meet its standards. Failings include poor information, lack of security updates and insufficient awareness of regulatory requirements, said Orcha chief executive Liz Ashall-Payne. The firm's reviews help determine whether an app should be recommended to patients by NHS staff. There are about 370,000 health-related apps available online, Orcha said. App developers can categorise their apps themselves and the ones reviewed by the firm include those tagged health, fitness and medical. So far, t
-
News ArticleAn average of 10 pre-teen children are admitted to hospital for self-harm each week, it has been revealed, in an apparent doubling of rates. Between 2019 and 2020 there were 508 recorded hospital admissions for self-injury, such as cutting oneself, within the 9-12 age group in the UK, compared to 221 between 2013 and 2014, suggesting rates have doubled in the past six years, according to an analysis of the data from BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme. “The increase in the data that you've looked at is in keeping with what we're finding from our research databases,” Keith Hawton CBE, a
-
News ArticleA campaign has started to prevent children and young people receiving cancer treatment alone in the pandemic. Charities behind the #Hand2Hold campaign want to enable all young people aged 16 to 25 to be allowed a chaperone, instead of only some. Mikaela Forrester, 18, from Somerset had some of her cancer treatments alone and said she did not want other young people to have that experience. She said without her mother she found it "scary" and "lonely". Miss Forrester lives in Frome and was diagnosed in July 2019 with Stage 2 Hodgkin Lymphoma, an uncommon cancer that develops
-
News ArticleAvailability of inpatient child and adolescent mental health services beds — particularly for eating disorders — has reached ‘crisis point’, with young people left waiting on a standard paediatric ward or at home as demand surged during the covid pandemic. A report to Surrey Heartlands Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in January read: “Availability of tier four beds [inpatient mental health beds for children and adolescents, commissioned centrally by NHS England] in the South East and across the country is at crisis point and providers have to compete for the small pool of beds." “
-
News ArticleThe World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries to prioritise rehabilitation for the medium and long term consequences of covid-19 and to gather information on “long covid” more systematically. WHO has produced a standardised form to report clinical data from individual patients after hospital discharge or after their acute illness to examine the medium and long term consequences of COVID-19.1 It has also set up technical working groups to build a consensus on the clinical description of what WHO now calls “the post-covid-19 condition” and to define research priorities. Speak
-
News ArticleElective activity levels were significantly lower in January than were achieved before Christmas, according to provisional NHS data seen by HSJ. In the three weeks to 20 December, the NHS was reporting around 110,000 day cases and 18,000 ordinary admissions each week. But during January these totals dropped to around 85,000 day cases and 10,000 ordinary admissions per week. This equates to a reduction of 23% and 44%, respectively. Regions that were more severely impacted by the third wave of coronavirus saw steeper reductions as covid pressures forced staff working in routine care se
-
News ArticleCare home staff were without personal protective equipment (PPE) early in the pandemic because the government prioritised the NHS, MPs have said. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said care homes received only a fraction of the PPE needed compared with the health service. It said social care "was only taken seriously after the high mortality rate in care homes became apparent". The government said it worked "tirelessly" to provide PPE. The report from the Public Accounts Committee said many healthcare workers were put in an "appalling situation" where they had to care f
-
News ArticleA hospital A&E department has been downgraded by regulators amid fears of “significant risk of harm” to patients after inspectors found some were crammed “head to toe” on trolleys during a surge in coronavirus cases. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told bosses at the Royal Oldham Hospital to urgently improve its A&E service after the November inspection found staff were not following infection rules and patients were at risk of catching the virus. The inspection confirms reports, revealed by The Independent last year, that patients in the A&E unit were being forced
-
News ArticleMaking maternity wards safer for mothers and babies will need £400m of extra spending every year, hospital leaders have told The Independent. They warn that without increased funding, the NHS will not be able to fully implement recommendations made by an inquiry into poor maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust – where dozens of babies died or were left brain damaged in the largest maternity scandal in NHS history. Multiple maternity care failings at hospitals across the country in the past 12 months have sparked concerns over the safety of mothers and their babi
-
News ArticleDespite being one of the world's oldest known medical conditions, public fear and misunderstanding about epilepsy persists, making many people reluctant to talk about it. That reluctance leads to lives lived in the shadows, lack of understanding about individual risk, discrimination in workplaces and communities, and a lack of funding for new therapies research. People with epilepsy die prematurely at a higher rate compared to the general population. The most common cause of death from epilepsy is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, known as SUDEP. For many people living with epilepsy, the mi
