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Sam

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  1. News Article
    Ahead of the 5th Global Ministerial Patient Safety Summit 2023 in Switzerland, the World Patient Safety Epicentre shares three messages and one challenge to the participants attending. 1. Please think about changing the term Patient Safety to Safety in Healthcare. 2. Please consider creating a World Patient Safety Epicentre Safety, People Solutions – Network and Center(s) of Safety in Healthcare Change, 3. Please invite two people to the discussion. 4. One challenge - Let’s save 155 patients by 17 September 2023 in each country. Read full story
  2. News Article
    The national dentistry budget is set to be underspent by a record £400m this year, due to a shortage of dentists willing to take on NHS work, HSJ has learned. The situation is understood to have prompted major concerns in the senior ranks of NHS England, and calls for a “fundamental rethink” of the much-maligned primary dental care contract. The unspent funding is due to be used to plug budget deficits in other services and comes as patients in many areas struggle to access NHS dentistry. Healthwatch England described the estimated underspend as an “absolute scandal”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 February 2023
  3. News Article
    The UK risks a shrinking workforce caused by long-term sickness, a new report warns. Pensions and health consultants Lane, Clark and Peacock (LCP) says there has been a sharp increase in "economic inactivity" - working-age adults who are not in work or looking for jobs. The figure has risen by 516,000 since Covid hit, and early retirement does not appear to explain it. The total of long-term sick, meanwhile, has gone up by 353,000, says LCP. It means there are now nearly 2.5 million adults of working age who are long-term sick, official data from the Labour Force survey reveals. The LCP says pressure on the NHS can account for some of the increase in long-term sickness. Delays getting non-urgent operations and mental health treatment are possible explanations. Others who would otherwise have had a chronic condition better managed may be in poorer health. One of the report authors, Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, said: "The pandemic made clear the links between health and economic prosperity, yet policy does not yet invest in health, to keeping living in better health for longer. NHS pressures have led to disruption of patient care which is likely to be impacting on people's ability to work now and in the future." Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 February 2023
  4. News Article
    Hundreds of thousands of operations and medical appointments will be cancelled in England next month and progress in tackling the huge care backlog will be derailed as the NHS prepares to face the most widespread industrial action in its history. Junior doctors are poised to join nurses and ambulance workers in mass continuous walkouts in March after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action. In only the second such action in the 74-year-history of the NHS, junior doctors will walk out for 72 hours – continuously across three days, on dates yet to be confirmed – after 98% of those who voted favoured strike action. Amid an increasingly bitter row between health unions and the government, NHS leaders expressed alarm at the enormous disruption now expected next month. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 February 2023
  5. News Article
    Children's services could be forced to close at a hospital that is accused of leaving young patients traumatised and sick through poor care. The care regulator said it had taken action to "ensure people are safe" on Skylark ward at Kettering General Hospital (KGH) in Northamptonshire. Thirteen parents with serious concerns after their children died or became seriously ill have spoken to the BBC. A BBC Look East investigation has heard allegations spanning more than 20 years about the treatment of patients on Skylark ward, a 26-bed children's unit. The BBC discovered: An independent report found staff left a 12-year-old boy - who died at KGH in December 2019 - for four hours suffering seizures, and suggests little effort was made to obtain critical care support. In April 2019, nurses allegedly dragged a "traumatised" four-year-old girl down a corridor in agony, insisting that she could walk. Medics are accused of refusing to carry out an MRI scan, which would have detected a dangerous cyst on her spine. Mothers claim to have been threatened with safeguarding referrals, with one stating a referral was made against her after she complained her son was struggling to breathe, while another likened it to blackmail. Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 February 2023
  6. News Article
    Striking ambulance workers in two regions have said for the first time that they will only answer immediately life-threatening calls — abandoning previous agreements to cover some Category 2 incidents. Agreed exemptions (derogations) from ambulance strike action so far this winter have varied regionally and across different unions; but all have so far included some Category 2 cover. However, GMB told HSJ its members in the North East and North West today would cover only Category 1 calls – defined as “immediately life threatening” – during their action today. Category 2 includes more than any other category, and covers a wide range of incidents including suspected heart attacks and strokes. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 20 February 2023
  7. Event
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    What can you share for April's #ExpOfCare week 2023? #expofcare week is a chance to learn share and celebrate everything about patient, carer and staff experience. 'We Communities' are delighted once again to support the Heads of Patient Experience Network, tweeting as @HoPENetworkNHS, to learn more about how we can all learn from, and support, the improvement of patients' experience of care they receive from us as AHPs, Midwives, Nurses etc. In February and March 'We Communities' want to hear about the projects you have delivered and work with you to find the best way to share them via the WeCommunities' 250,000 healthcare professional followers in April for #ExpOfCare week happening from the 24th to the 28th of April. The week has a daily focus covering a whole life journey view of needing and receiving care from birth to end of life and even beyond to bereavement, as below: Monday 24th Maternity & Children’s Services Tuesday 25th Young People & Transition to Adults Wednesday 26th Person & Family Centred Care Thursday 27th Older People & Frailty Services Friday 28th Palliative End of Life & Bereavement Care There's a really quick and easy form to help collate and share your projects during #ExpOfCare week. Submissions close 10 March 2023. Further information
  8. Event
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    In this webinar, you'll hear from professionals across the NHS about how their speciality areas interact with urgent care, and how digital health can be used to relieve pressure in relevant areas. Orcha will also launch a new report, which highlights how digital health can support urgent care patient pathways. Discover: The five high-volume areas where digital is best placed to help. Safety levels of digital health products in these areas. Engagement levels with digital health amongst patients and clinicians. Example products, alongside evidence for and impact of those products. How many A&E attendances can be prevented with digital health. You'll hear from: Dr Tom Micklewright, Medical Director at ORCHA and NHS GP Helen Hughes, Chief Executive at Patient Safety Learning Chris Efford, Clinical Lead Physiotherapist and Digital Fellow, University Hospitals Dorset and DNHS Dorset Digital Services at Home Team Dr Simon Leigh, Health Economist and Director of Research, ORCHA. Register
  9. News Article
    A high court judge has expressed her “deep frustration” at NHS delays and bureaucracy that mean a suicidal 12-year-old girl has been held on her own, in a locked, windowless room with no access to the outdoors for three weeks. In a hearing on Thursday, Mrs Justice Lieven told North Staffordshire combined healthcare NHS trust “you are testing my patience”, after she heard that a proposal to move Becky (not her real name), could not progress until a planning meeting that would not be held until next week, and that a move was not anticipated until 2 March. Three sets of doctors at the hospital trust have disagreed as to Becky’s diagnosis; at her most recent assessment doctors said she was not eligible to be sectioned, which would trigger the protections provided by the Mental Health Act, because her mental disorder was not of the “nature and degree” as to warrant her detention. In a robust exchange, the judge demanded: “Where’s the urgency in this … I cannot believe that the life and health of a 12-year-old girl is hanging on an issue of NHS procurement, when you cannot tell me what it is you’re trying to procure. “If the delay is procurement, I’m not having it,” Lieven continued. “I will use the inherent jurisdiction to make an order. We have a 12-year-old child in a completely inappropriate NHS unit for about three weeks, and it’s suddenly dawned on your client that ‘actually we’ll put her in a Tier 4 unit and we might have to do some [building] work.’” Sometimes, the judge said, “public bodies have to move faster”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 February 2023
  10. News Article
    Women suffering from chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) are facing mental health crises after being “dismissed and gaslighted” by health professionals for years, according to a leading specialist. Daily debilitating pain has left patients feeling suicidal, with those in recovery describing lingering mental health problems “akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)”, said Dr Rajvinder Khasriya, an NHS consultant urogynaecologist at the Whittington Hospital in London. Patients have said they feel crippling anxiety over planning ahead to ensure there is always a toilet around, even after their condition has been controlled with treatment. Vicky Matthews, who searched for a diagnosis for three years after a recurrent UTI became chronic, said the condition caused a “gradual decline” in her mental health as medical professionals were unable to pinpoint what was causing her pain. "I questioned my pain. I questioned what was going on. I questioned whether it was actually real and that was a pretty awful thing to be dealing with on top of having physical pain,” the 43-year-old said, describing what she felt was “mental torture”. Read full story Source: I News, 12 February Further reading on the hub The clinical implications of bacterial pathogenesis and mucosal immunity in chronic urinary track infection
  11. News Article
    A rapid test that can help preserve the hearing of newborn babies is set to be used by NHS hospitals. For some babies, commonly used antibiotics can become toxic. The drugs damage sensory cells inside the ear leading to permanent hearing loss. The test - which analyses babies' DNA - can quickly spot those who are vulnerable. It means they can be given a different type of antibiotic and avoid having a lifetime of damaged hearing. Gentamicin is the first-choice antibiotic if a newborn develops a serious bacterial infection. It is life-saving and safe for the majority of people. However, it has a rare side effect. About 1,250 babies in England and Wales are born with a subtle change in their genetic code that allows the antibiotic to bind more strongly to the hair cells in their ears, where it becomes toxic. These tiny hairs help convert sounds into the electrical signals that are understood by the brain. If they are damaged, it results in hearing loss. The side effect is well known, but until now there was no test that could get the results fast enough. It would be dangerous to delay treatment, and alternative antibiotics are not used as they have their own side effects and because of concerns about antibiotic resistance. The new genedrive kit analyses a sample taken from inside the baby's cheek. Tests at two neonatal intensive care units in Manchester and Liverpool showed it could spot who was susceptible to hearing loss in 26 minutes, and using it did not delay treatment. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 February 2023
  12. News Article
    Mental health sick days cost the NHS almost half a million pounds as staff anxiety and stress levels haved skyrocketed. Costs have almost doubled compared to before the pandemic from £279 million to £468 million. The sickness data shared with The Independent by GoodShape, an employee well-being and performance analysis company, shows the number of staff sick days increased in 2022 to 12 million from 7.21 million in 2019. That is despite the overall number of people working in the NHS increasing from 1.2 to 1.3 million. The overall cost to the NHS of absences for the five most common reasons – which includes mental health – increased to a “staggering” £1.85 billion from £1.01 billion between 2019 to 2022, according to figures from GoodShape. Covid was still the most common reason for staff sickness last year, according to the analysis, accounting for 4.4 million lost days, while mental health was a close second driving 3 million days off due to illness. Pat Cullen, chief executive and general secretary for the Royal College of Nursing said in response: “These figures are shocking but not surprising. With 47,000 vacant nurse posts in England alone, the pressures on staff are unrelenting. Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  13. News Article
    The ‘optimal layout’ for an isolation room to contain the spread of Covid has been created following tests at a London hospital. The room was designed by researchers at Imperial College London to reduce the risk of infection for health care staff as far as possible. Researchers used a state-of-the-art fluid model to simulate the transmission of the virus within an isolation room at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, west London. They found that the area of highest risk of infection is above a patient’s bed at a height of 0.7 to two metres, where the highest concentration of Covid is found. After the virus is expelled from a patient’s mouth, the research team explained that it gets driven vertically by wind forces within the room. The research, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, is based on data collected from the room during a Covid patient’s stay. The work centred on the location of the room’s air extractor and filtration rates, the location of the bed, and the health and safety of the hospital staff working within the area. Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  14. News Article
    Vulnerable female patients have been sexually “exposed” on a mixed gender ward deemed not “fit for purpose”, the NHS watchdog has warned. The Care Quality Commission found that sexual incidents had occured at Hill Crest, a 25-bed mixed gender mental health unit in Redditch, as male and female were being put at risk. It found male patients are able to walk into female bathrooms and bedrooms, leading to risks of sexual assault and relationships. It found that sexual incidents had taken on the unit because of the risks. The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards is significantly higher than on single-sex wards, data has shown. According to the CQC, the trust graded sexual incidents between patients as “low harm” but did not fully consider them or follow up actions to keep patients safe. Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  15. News Article
    Nurses could refuse to carry out any further strikes alongside other health workers because of fears over patient safety, The Independent has learnt. A mass walkout billed as the largest strike in NHS history is due to take place on Monday as tens of thousands of nurses, paramedics and 999 call handlers walk out in a bid to force ministers to the negotiating table. But the coordinated strikes could be a one-off if nurses feel that the decision to take part in direct action compromises patient safety, The Independent has been told. One union source said walkouts are not carried out on a “come what may” basis, and that the unions would have to assess whether striking together was “helpful” or not. Unions have been escalating their industrial action in recent weeks in an attempt to secure higher pay rises. Any de-escalation in tactics will be seen as a blow to their campaign and a boost to Rishi Sunak’s hopes of riding out the wave of protests. With patient safety the priority, sources insisted there are strong local controls that will pull nurses from picket lines if they think there is an issue. Read full story Source: The Independent, 5 February 2023
  16. News Article
    Free HIV tests that can be done at home are being offered this week to people in England. It is part of a government drive to improve diagnosis, which dropped off during the Covid pandemic. The kit is small enough to fit through the letterbox and arrives in plain packaging through the post. It gives a result within 15 minutes by testing a drop of blood from a finger prick. A "reactive" result means HIV is possible and a clinic check is needed. Support and help is available to arrange this. About 4,400 people in England are living with undiagnosed HIV, which comes with serious health risks. HIV medication can keep the virus at undetectable levels, meaning you cannot pass HIV on and your health is protected. Most people get the virus from someone who is unaware they have it, according to the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) charity which campaigns about and provides services relating to HIV and sexual health. HIV testing rates remain a fifth lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic - with heterosexual men in particular now testing far less than in 2019. Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 February 2023
  17. News Article
    “Frustration with the system was why I went off in the end,” said Conor Calby, 26, a paramedic and Unison rep in southwest England, who was recently off work for a month with burnout. “I felt like I couldn’t do my job and was letting patients down. After a difficult few years it was challenging.” While he usually manages to keep a distinct divide between work and home life, burnout eroded that line. He also lost his sleep pattern and appetite. The final straw came when what should have been a 15-minute call resulted in three hours on the phone trying to persuade the services that were supposed to help a suicidal patient to come out. “I was on a knife edge. That was due to the system being broken. That’s the trigger.” Doctors and nurses are struggling under the strain too. After her third time with burnout - the last resulting in her taking six months off work – Amy Attwater, an A&E doctor, considered leaving the profession altogether. Attwater, 36, said in the Covid crisis, during which a colleague killed himself, she started having suicidal thoughts and doubting her own abilities. She twice reported that she was being bullied but said no action was taken. “The only thing I was left with was to take time off work. I ended up having therapy, seeing a psychiatrist and being on two antidepressants,” said Attwater, the Midlands-based committee member for Doctors’ Association UK. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 February 2023
  18. News Article
    A little boy whose headaches turned out to be a brain tumour died in his parent’s arms just four months after his diagnosis. Rayhan Majid, aged four, died after doctors discovered an aggressive grade three medulloblastoma tumour touching his brainstem. His mother Nadia, 45, took Rayhan to see four different GPs on six separate occasions after he started having bad headaches and being sick in October 2017. No one thought anything was seriously wrong, but when his headaches didn’t clear up Nadia rushed him to A&E at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. An MRI scan revealed a 3cm x 4cm mass in Rayhan’s brain. Rayhan underwent surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible and was told he would need six weeks of radiotherapy and four months of chemotherapy. But before the treatment even started another MRI scan revealed the devastating news that the cancer has spread. Read full story Source: The Independent, 30 January 2023
  19. Event
    The SHARE conference (Sustainable Healthcare Academic Research and Enterprise) is an annual event co-hosted by the University of Brighton, Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. The SHARE 2023 conference is a free online event, on 12 May 2023. It is an opportunity to share your research, quality improvement, education or any other type of project related to improving the sustainability of healthcare. Register
  20. Event
    To share the learning and resources from the award-winning (The Royal Society of Public Health - Arts in Health 2022) community partnership programme between Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS FT, Made By Mortals CIC (arts organisation) and over 50 patients with a broad range of lived experience- including mental ill health, learning disability, autism, English not as their first language, and people that identify as non-binary. The project used immersive audio case studies coproduced by patients, including the use of music, sound effects, and drama, together with an interactive workshop that challenged volunteers and staff at the hospital to take a walk in the patient’s shoes. The experiential community-led training raised awareness of the challenges that people with protected characteristics and additional needs face. This work supported Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS FT ongoing approach to quality and diversity and supported attendees to adapt their behaviours to create an empathetic and person-centred environment. Register
  21. Event
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    Josh Cawley was 22 when he finally died from catastrophic injuries inflicted on him by his birth parents. These resulted in his inability to speak or to move from his wheelchair, but it didn’t dampen his positive and cheeky spirit. This is his story. Josh was adopted by Lynn Cawley, a campaigning Methodist Minister whose devotion to Josh ensured that he lived his short life as positively and ‘normally’ as possible. Lynn couldn’t just be his loving mum though. She was expected to be his palliative care consultant, his nurse, his campaigner for compensation and she had to fight the ongoing battles with the system .The play explores their real story: having to accept that Josh’s needs were too ‘complex’ for the hospice; and dealing with Josh’s transition from boy, to teenager to adult - and being his full-time interpreter. .Professional actor Joseph Daniel-Taylor performs the play and gives the voice to Josh - the voice that he never had. Register
  22. Event
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    A peer-led digital patient storytelling model. 'Stories place patients at the heart of our work to discover what truly matters most'. In 2020, the patient and public engagement team at Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals recruited patients, staff and volunteers to take part in digital patient storytelling training. At this session, you will meet this pioneering peer team who, starting as absolute beginners, lead this work, their motivation, and their training experience. How recording of a patient's experience can be transformed into video stories that celebrates great care, can provide vital learnings, and highlight potential future improvements. Register
  23. Event
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    Everyone makes stories during sleep that can metaphorically depict our waking life experiences and concerns. Have you wondered what waking life memories have led to a dream? Discuss a recent or important or intriguing dream you have had. While you discuss it, Julia Lockheart captures your dream narrative in a work of art drawn and painted onto pages taken from the first English translation of Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams. After the session the dreamer will receive a high quality mounted Giclée print of the artwork to display at home and discuss with family and friends. The event is part of the DreamsID (Dreams Illustrated and Discussed, Dreams Interpreted and Drawn) art science collaboration. Dr Julia Lockheart is Associate Professor at Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. Professor Mark Blagrove is Professor of Psychology at Swansea University and researches the science of sleep and dreaming. Register
  24. News Article
    An acute trust has been fined a record sum by the Care Quality Commission for failing to provide safe maternity care, which resulted in the death of a baby after 23 minutes. Nottingham University Hospitals must pay a fine of £800,000 within two years. It is only the second time the regulator has brought a case against a NHS maternity service, and the highest fine ever given for failings of this nature. The trust pleaded guilty earlier this week to two charges of failing to provide safe care and treatment to Sarah Andrews and her baby daughter Wynter Andrews at Queen’s Medical Centre in 2019, a short time after her birth by Caesarean section. This guilty plea saw the fine reduced from £1.2m. An inquest in 2020 found the death was a “clear and obvious case of neglect”. It was also found there was “an unsafe culture prevailing within maternity services”, including a “failure to listen and respond to staff safety concerns”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 January 2023
  25. News Article
    “Pointless” bureaucracy is helping hospitals grind to a halt, a leading doctor has warned. Dr Gordon Caldwell, who has just retired after 40 years as an NHS hospital consultant, said “horribly inefficient” paperwork around patients moving in and out of wards is fuelling record delays. The senior doctor took a photograph of all the forms required for one medical admission to an NHS hospital, laid against his 5ft 10in frame. Dr Caldwell said promises by the NHS to “digitise” the health service had simply seen needless bureaucracy transferred on to poor computer systems that were often incompatible with each other. The specialist in general medicine and diabetes endocrinology said: “A few years ago there were estimates that nurses were spending around 50 per cent of their time on paperwork; now I’d say it’s closer to 70 per cent.” “It’s bureaucratic and it’s very slow and horribly inefficient,” he said. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 21 January 2023
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