In June 2019, the Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), established by NHS England in 2013 and re-licensed from April 2018 to operate as the key innovation arm of the NHS, invited comment on its proposed patient safety strategy. The strategy aims to demonstrate the added value that AHSNs and Patient Safety Collaboratives can bring to patient safety by working much more collaboratively.
Chief Executive of Patient Safety Learning, Helen Hughes, has responded to the strategy. Helen comments: "We see the potential of the AHSNs: the capability and expertise, the desire to make a real difference and a belief in collaboration. We want to see this potential realised, and Patient Safety Learning wants to help."
See Helen's response in full
AHSN will launch its strategy at NHS Expo in September.
The NHS has teamed up with Amazon to allow elderly people, blind people and other patients who cannot easily search for health advice on the internet to access the information through the AI-powered voice assistant Alexa. The health service hopes patients asking Alexa for health advice will ease pressure on the NHS, with Amazon’s algorithm using information from the NHS website to provide answers to health questions. Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, said the move will help patients, especially the elderly, blind and those who are unable to access the internet in other ways, take more control of their healthcare and help reduce the burden on the NHS.
However, despite welcoming the move, the Royal College of GPs warned that independent research must be carried out to ensure the advice given is safe. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, Chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “This idea is certainly interesting and it has the potential to help some patients work out what kind of care they need before considering whether to seek face-to-face medical help... However, it is vital that independent research is done to ensure that the advice given is safe, otherwise it could prevent people seeking proper medical help and create even more pressure on our overstretched GP service.”
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Source: The Independent, 10 July 2019
Researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered that patients who had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes were up to 50 per cent less likely to die within a decade if their doctor showed empathy. In healthcare, empathy is defined as understanding the patient’s perspective, shared decision making between patient and doctor, and consideration how the illness may impact other areas of their life. But with financial and time pressures plaguing the NHS, doctors increasingly complain they do not have enough time to carry out the softer side of medicine. Now research, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, shows that showing care for a patient can be far more effective at prolonging life than giving drugs to lower cholesterol or blood pressure and so should be prioritised.
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Source: The Telegraph, 8 July 2019
Hospitals are having to cancel operations and cancer scans are going unread for weeks because consultant doctors have suddenly begun working to rule in a standoff over NHS pensions. Doctors say the dispute is escalating so quickly that it will send NHS services “into meltdown” and is so serious that it poses “an existential threat” to the health service’s survival.
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Source: The Guardian, 8 July 2019
A clinical commissioning group accused of having a “toxic” culture will bring forward a review of its whistleblowing policy and give “even more support” to staff pursuing bullying and harassment cases, an improvement plan has recommended.
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Source: HSJ, 5 July 2019
Accident and emergency has become the top source of negligence claims by patients. Delays, misdiagnosis and poor treatment in accident and emergency (A&E) departments are now the top cause of NHS negligence claims, overtaking orthopaedic surgery for the first time. Bungled operations on backs, bones, joints, ligaments, nerves and muscles usually lead to the most claims, but a 41-page NHS strategy document for the next 12 months reveals that emergency units have become the main source of litigation against the service.
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Source: The Times, 7 July 2019
Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has said he hopes NHSX will "provide the leadership to transform the use of digital technology" across the health service. Speaking exclusively to Digital Health News at the launch of NHSX in London on 3 July, Matt Hancock added that he ultimately hopes NHSX “will save clinician’s time and patient’s lives”.
NHSX, which will oversee technology across health and social care, was confirmed by Digital Health News in February 2019 and brings together teams from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement.
Source: Digital Health News, 4 July 2019
Plans to cap legal costs for NHS mistakes that lead to deaths of newborns could leave the bereaved at the mercy of 'ambulance-chasing' claims firms, a former Lord Chancellor has warned. Health officials have drawn up plans to limit spending in cases where damages are worth less than £25,000. This covers around eight in ten medical negligence claims, including the deaths of newborns, and stillbirths - where Britain’s record is among the worst in the developed world. Ministers have said the changes will stop “unscrupulous law firms” receiving excessive legal costs that dwarf the damages received by victims. However, Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, raised fears that the measures could see established law firms leave the market and be replaced by unregulated claim management companies.
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Source: The Telegraph, 6 July 2019
National bodies can provide systems and policies for the NHS, but safety is improved at the point of care. Lauren Mosley, Head of Patient Safety Implementation, and Donna Forsyth, Head of Investigation, describe the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF).
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Source: NHS Improvement, 2 July 2019
Challenging the NHS’ workplace culture is key to improving patient safety says NHS Resolution in their latest guidance: Being fair: supporting a just and learning culture for staff and patients following incidents in the NHS. The paper draws on NHS Resolution’s unique dataset to explore best practice in response to incidents resulting from claims from across the system. The guidance aims to help the NHS to create an environment to better support staff when things go wrong and to encourage learning from incidents.
Hospitals throughout the NHS are in such a poor state of repair that patient safety and care is being put at risk, according to an investigation by the Labour Party. A freedom of information requests sent to every hospital trust in England highlighted problems such as sewage and water leaking on to hospital wards, broken lifts and ceilings collapsing. The incidents have affected patient care, often leading to the cancellation of appointments and leaving people waiting longer for vital treatment. It is speculated that these issues are not just confined to secondary care.
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Source: Nursing Notes, 5 July 2019
Following the publication of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy this week, which argues that new technologies have the potential to transform improvements in keeping patients from harm, Sarah Scobie, Nuffield Trust's Deputy Director of Research, takes a closer look at what the possibilities are.
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Source: Nuffield Trust, 2 July 2019
Patients' lives are being put at risk because of delays giving them treatment for sepsis, experts are warning. Hospitals are meant to put patients on an antibiotic drip within an hour when sepsis is suspected, but research by BBC News suggests a quarter of patients in England wait longer. However, NHS England said there were signs performance was improving and that hospitals were getting better at spotting those at risk sooner.
Dr Ron Daniels, of the UK Sepsis Trust, said the "concerning" figures showed patients were being put at risk. In some hospitals, over half of patients face delays. Dr Daniels said the one-hour window was "essential to increase the chances of surviving". "There is no reason really why it should take longer," he added.
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Source: BBC News, 4 July 2019
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) member Tara Matare has won the coveted title of RCN Nurse of the Year 2019. She scooped the leadership category at the RCNi Nurse Awards before being crowned the overall winner. Tara has tackled short staffing, improved workplace culture and enhanced patient care at her ophthalmology unit at Whipps Cross Hospital in London. Over a 14-year mission to overhaul the unit, there have been a steady stream of challenges, including fighting ophthalmology’s corner to ensure it wasn’t overlooked in favour of higher-profile inpatient services and tackling an ingrained culture of bullying.
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Source: Royal College of Nursing, 4 July 2019
NHSX has just completed a major review of NHS tech spending. They have agreed to reducing the burden on clinicians and staff, so they can focus on patients; giving people the tools to access information and services directly; ensuring clinical information can be safely accessed, wherever it is needed; aiding the improvement of patient safety across the NHS; and improving NHS productivity with digital technology.
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The Social Partnership Forum (SPF)’s collective call to action tasks employers and trade unions in all NHS organisations to work in partnership to create positive workplace cultures and tackle bullying. To support this work, the SPF is publicising the views of NHS leaders and experts on this topic and signposting information, tools and resources and case studies which can help partnership initiatives.
Creating positive workplace cultures and tackling bullying in the NHS - a collective call to action
Traditionally, as a group, surgeons are not well known for their bedside manner. While poor manners aren't commonly accepted in most professional circles, representations of surgeons in popular culture often link technical prowess with rude behavior, and some surgeons have even argued that insensitivity can be helpful in such an emotionally strenuous profession. However, a study published in JAMA Surgery challenges these ideas. The study, which looked at interactions between surgeons and their teams, found that patients of surgeons who behaved unprofessionally around their colleagues tended to have more complications after surgery. Surgeons who model unprofessional behavior can undermine the performance of their teams, the authors write, potentially threatening patients' safety.
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Source: NPR, 19 June 2019
The culture of working without breaks is dangerous to doctors’ and patients’ wellbeing and only a cultural shift can change things, argues Heidi Edmundson.
Heidi, Consultant for Emergency Medicine at Whittington Health NHS Trust, discusses in BMJ Opinion how it has become impossible to ignore the huge cost of burnout to both individual doctors and the medical workforce. Breaks are no longer being viewed as a luxury, but as an integral part of physician wellbeing, patient safety, and workforce sustainability. However exceptional reporting and the costs associated with recruitment and retention issues mean that they are becoming a financial issue as well. Heidi ran her own departmental “public health” campaign entitled “take a break” to see if she could change this culture.
"I started this project with a desire to try and change culture and I have come to realize that changing the culture around taking breaks is really just the tip of the iceberg. What we really need is a huge cultural shift in our attitudes and behaviours towards staff wellness. This will require imagination, innovation, and investment at all levels."
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Source: BMJ Opinion, 28 June 2019
Doctors in Northern Ireland feel increasingly "vulnerable" to criminal proceedings in the workplace, forcing them to consider abandoning the profession, senior medic, Dr Tom Black, warns. Dr Black, chairperson of the British Medical Association Northern Ireland, says that consultants in Northern Ireland are operating in a "hostile working culture" as a result of the situation. He explains that medics are increasingly fearful of the professional repercussions if they make a medical error amid pressured case loads: "Doctors feel vulnerable to criminal and regulatory proceedings, and this creates a hostile training environment for our medical students, young doctors... This blame and sanction culture creates disrespect and mistrust. This has a price - it encourages risk avoidance behaviours in professionals, inefficient and ineffective management, increased cost for the system and deteriorating services for patients."
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Source: Belfast Telegraph, 25 June 2019
Patients will be able to anonymously log concerns about their NHS treatment, via a phone app, as part of efforts to boost safety. The new strategy will see the creation of a centralised portal, allowing patients, their families and staff to record problems with medical devices, errors in medicines administration, or difficulties in spotting a patient’s condition deteriorating. Officials said that swift recording of such information would enable them to alert the rest of the NHS more quickly to risks of serious harm, and prevent tragedies being repeated.
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Source: The Telegraph, 29 June 2019
NHS Improvement and NHS England have published their NHS Patient Safety Strategy. The publication out today describes how the NHS will continuously improve patient safety, building on the foundations of a safer culture and safer systems. The strategy sets out what the NHS will do to achieve its vision to continuously improve patient safety.
After many months of development and several user workshops, we are delighted and proud to present the hub at Patient Safety Congress 2019.
the hub is one of the actions proposed by Patient Safety Learning's A Blueprint for Action. The report identifies six foundations of safe care: shared learning, leadership, professionalising patient safety, patient engagement, data and insight, and culture, and proposes a range of actions to address these foundations. the hub is Patient Safety Learning's share online learning platform, which encourages and facilitates knowledge sharing, collaboration and conversation in patient safety across the whole of health and social care. It is a platform for health and social professionals, patients and their families to share and learn from one another.
the hub is free for everyone to use. Have a browse and you will find the latest news, research, resources and events in patient safety, and lively conversations and debates. Members can share content, comment on posts and start conversations in our communities. Please use the hub, share content and let us know what you think and how we can continue to develop it.
We would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed this far in the development of the hub. Your thoughts, ideas and critique have been invaluable. the hub is still in development and we continue to seek out user testing and feedback. Please contact us at feedback@pslhub.org with your ideas or if you would like to be a part of our user testing group.
