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Patient_Safety_Learning

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News posted by Patient_Safety_Learning

  1. Patient_Safety_Learning
    An inquiry into traumatic childbirths has called for an overhaul of the UK's maternity and postnatal care after hearing "harrowing" stories from parents.
    The Birth Trauma Inquiry heard evidence from more than 1,300 women - some said they were left in blood-soaked sheets while others said their children had suffered life-changing injuries due to medical negligence.
    A new maternity commissioner who would report directly to the prime minister is a key recommendation in the group's report, along with ensuring safe levels of staffing.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 13 May 2024
  2. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Dementia could cost the UK almost £91bn a year by 2040, as the number of people affected rises inexorably, a study has found.
    The “colossal” costs of the disease are likely to more than double from an already “staggering” £42.5bn today to £90.6bn, according to research undertaken for the Alzheimer’s Society.
    That projected rise will happen in line with an expected increase in the number of diagnosed cases from 981,575 to 1,402,010, related to an ageing and growing population.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 13 May 2024
  3. Patient_Safety_Learning
    The chair of the major inquiry into rogue surgeon Ian Paterson has raised concerns over a separate patient recall process conducted by Salford Royal Hospital, and suggested NHS England should intervene.
    Leaders in Salford have been resisting pressure to expand a review of patients treated by the former head of its spinal division, John Williamson, over his 23-year career at the hospital.
    A review of his last five years established clear problems with his surgical techniques and found multiple cases of avoidable harm.
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ, 7 May 2024
  4. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Parts of ceilings have fallen in at two key units of a decrepit NHS hospital, forcing it to evacuate patients and cancel X-rays and scans, the Guardian can reveal.
    The problems at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, which is plagued by leaks and major structural defects, have prompted claims it is “dangerous for both patients and staff”.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 3 May
  5. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Dr Martyn Pitman claimed retaliatory victimisation after raising morale concerns but tribunal says it was his manner that cost him his job.
    A doctor has said raising whistleblowing concerns about maternity care at his hospital “cost me very dearly” after he lost his employment tribunal.
    Consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Martyn Pitman was dismissed earlier this year from his job at the Royal Hampshire county hospital (RHCH) in Winchester, where he had worked for 20 years.
    He told the Southampton tribunal, which concluded earlier this month, that he had been “subjected to brutal retaliatory victimisation” after exercising his rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
    A tribunal judgment released on Friday said there had been “unanimous” agreement that the arguments behind the whistleblowing claim “fail and are dismissed”.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 29 October 2023
  6. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Perinatal mental illness affects more than a quarter (27%) of new and expectant mothers across England and covers a range of conditions including postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. A Guardian analysis of NHS figures has shown that for instances of perinatal mental illness that result in hospital admissions, black patients are more than twice as likely to be admitted than their white counterparts.
    Part of the reason why black mothers are more at risk of perinatal mental illness is because black people are more at risk of experiencing mental illness in general.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 6 May 2024
  7. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Twenty one serious security failures at hospital mortuaries were discovered by the Human Tissues Authority between April 2022 and March 2024, HSJ can reveal.
    These included seven cases where unauthorised people gained entry to the facilities, 13 other breaches in “mortuary security processes” and one case in which there was unrestricted access to post-mortem images.
    Last month, the HTA issued new guidance for mortuaries that carry out post-mortems after what it described as “an increase in both the severity and frequency of reported incidents”.
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ, 7 May 2024
  8. Patient_Safety_Learning
    A coroner has issued a warning over a hospital’s new computer system after the death of a 31-year-old woman.
    Emily Harkleroad collapsed on 18 December 2022 and was taken to the University Hospital of North Durham, where she died the next morning from a pulmonary embolism – a clot on the lung.
    The assistant coroner for County Durham and Darlington concluded, on balance, that Ms Harkleroad’s death could have been prevented, external. She also noted computer system concerns had been raised by a number of clinicians.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 February 2024
  9. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Ministers are preparing to announce a compensation package of at least £10 billion for contaminated blood victims after a Sunday Times campaign for justice was backed across the political divide.
    The announcement is expected to be made within hours of the public inquiry’s report into the scandal later this month and will establish a hierarchy of payments, with priority given to those with infectious diseases, including hepatitis C and HIV.
    The money, promised to be “northwards of £10 billion”, is yet to be signed off by Rishi Sunak but has the support of the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. It is expected to be funded through government borrowing.
    Read full story
    Source: The Times, 5 May 2024
  10. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Hospitals are being forced to cut medical staff, threatening their ability to care for patients, senior health leaders have warned.
    NHS trusts are reporting budget deficits after the chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave England’s health service £2.5bn extra funding, which only covers inflation and pay increases.
    The UK’s ageing population and the impact of having more than 6 million patients waiting for more than 7.5m treatments means that demand on the health service has increased substantially.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian, 5 May 2024
  11. Patient_Safety_Learning
    A 999 call handler incorrectly categorised a call made by the wife of a man who died from a heart attack, an inquest has heard. The Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST) handler should have escalated the call for Robert Weekley, 75, who died in his flat in Barry, to the most urgent level of 'red', which requires an ambulance to be sent within eight minutes.
    Instead they wrongly categorised it as the second-highest level, 'amber one', which has no set response time, an inquest into Mr Weekley's death at Pontypridd Coroners' Court was told. 
    Read full story
    Source: Wales Online, 3 May 2024
  12. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Sajid Javid has revealed details of his young relative’s “brave battle” against myalgic encephalomyelitis, warning that patients with the condition are being “dismissed entirely” by doctors.
    During a debate held in Westminster Hall on Wednesday, the former health secretary spoke of the distressing experience of his cousin’s “amazing” daughter who developed the debilitating illness seven years ago, aged 13.
    ME is a complex neurological disorder that affects about 250,000 people in the UK and leads to symptoms including exhaustion and pain. Severe cases can be fatal, with patients bedridden and unable to eat or drink, and care held back by a lack of specialist NHS services.
    Read full story
    Source: The Times, 2 May 2024
  13. Patient_Safety_Learning
    More than 150,000 patients had to wait a day in A&E before getting a hospital bed last year, according to new data.
    Freedom of information data compiled by the Liberal Democrats from 73 hospital trusts – about half the total – found that the number of patients forced to wait more than 24 hours in A&E before a bed could be found for them has increased by tenfold since 2019. The majority of those forced to wait were elderly or frail, with two-thirds of the patients over the age of 65.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian 8 April 2024
  14. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Virtual wards, set up to relieve pressure on A&E departments, could create extra NHS demand as some are only staffed for 12 hours a day, the country’s top emergency doctor has warned.
    The service allows patients to be monitored remotely from their own homes, freeing up hospital beds and capacity in emergency departments.
    Patients are given devices to track their vital signs, such as blood pressure and oxygen levels, with readings sent back to doctors via smartphone apps.
    Dr Boyle, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that virtual wards “must not be seen as a silver bullet for all the problems in urgent and emergency care”.
    “We’re very wary of virtual ward beds being used to say that there are increased beds within hospitals because that’s simply not true,” he said. “The plan for 7,000 or 5,000 extra beds need to be actual beds, with pillows, sheets and staff looking after them.”
    Source: Telegraph, 11 February 2023
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  15. Patient_Safety_Learning
    A hospital trust has apologised to families after dozens of children suffered hearing loss following failures in their care.
    Croydon Health Services Trust had already revealed three children “may have been at risk of serious hearing loss or a delay to their speech development”, but it has now confirmed to HSJ that a further 49 “incurred mild to moderate hearing loss or impairment”.
    The south London trust would not disclose the results of its internal review that begun after it declared a serious incident in March 2021, saying it was “ongoing”, but said it had acted on all the “immediate recommendations”.
    The incident was declared after more than 1,400 children were found not to have been followed up by the trust. 
    There was also an external review carried out by an audiologist from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust. It is unclear which review uncovered the incidents of harm. 
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ 1 August 2023
  16. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Groundbreaking treatments for Alzheimer’s disease that work by removing a toxic protein called beta amyloid from the brain may benefit whites more than Black Americans, whose disease may be driven by other factors, leading Alzheimer’s experts told Reuters.
    The two drugs - Leqembi, from partner biotech firms Eisai (4523.T) and Biogen (BIIB.O), and an experimental treatment developed by Eli Lilly (LLY.N), donanemab — are the first to offer real hope of slowing the fatal disease for the 6.5 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s.
    Although older Black Americans have twice the rate of dementia as their white peers, they were screened out of clinical trials of these drugs at a higher rate, according to interviews with 10 researchers as well as four Eisai and Lilly executives.
    Prospective Black volunteers with early disease symptoms did not have enough amyloid in their brain to qualify for the trials, the 10 researchers explained.
    Read full story
    Source: NBC 31 July 2023
  17. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Desperately ill people with eating disorders are being refused NHS treatment for “not being thin enough”, as new figures reveal the health service is in the grips of a growing eating disorder crisis.
    Shocking figures obtained by The Independent show at least 5,385 patients – the overwhelming majority, 3,896, of whom are children – were admitted to general wards for conditions such as anorexia and bulimia in 2021-22, more than double the number in 2017-18.
    It comes as separate analysis of NHS figures suggests the number of children being treated for eating disorders more than doubled from 5,240 in 2016-17 to 11,800 in 2022-23.
    Read full story
    Source: Independent 1 August 2023
  18. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Coroners have warned of increasing numbers of deaths caused by problems in the emergency pathway, with some citing ‘severe’ staffing shortages.
    HSJ has identified that at least 24 “prevention of future death” reports were sent to NHS organisations in England and Wales in the first half of 2023, which noted shortcomings within emergency services.
    In six of the 24 cases, coroners found ambulance, emergency room and other delays caused or contributed to patient deaths.
    Read full story
    Source: HSJ 1 August 2023
  19. Patient_Safety_Learning
    A&E waiting times have deteriorated so much this winter that at some hospitals in England more than half of patients have had to wait more than four hours.
    BBC analysis of data for December and January shows Hull University Hospitals, Wye Valley and Shrewsbury and Telford were worst for A&E waits.
    The best trust out of the 107 providing data, Northumbria Healthcare, had fewer than 10% waiting more than four hours.
    NHS England said plans were being put in place to support struggling trusts.
    Source: BBC, 13 February 2023
    Read full story
  20. Patient_Safety_Learning
    GPs are attempting to deal with up to 3,000 patients each, amid worsening staff shortages, according to new analysis.
    The research shows that the number of patients per GP has risen sharply, as rising numbers of doctors reduce their hours, or opt for early retirement.
    Daisy Cooper, spokeswoman for Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care, said:
    “This ever-worsening GP shortage is having a terrible human cost, as people face delayed or missed diagnoses and A&Es fill up with desperate patients looking for treatment."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: Telegraph, 14 February 
  21. Patient_Safety_Learning
    A third of those with a women’s health condition have been made to wait three years or longer for a diagnosis, damning new research has revealed.
    The same study found half of those women took a year or more to be given their diagnosis.
    Srdjan Saso, a consultant gynaecologist and surgeon who works with King Edward VII’s Hospital, told The Independent: “A delayed diagnosis can mean a severe impact on quality of life both professionally and personally.
    “It can have a significant impact on a woman’s day-to-day life and hence needs to be addressed properly and seriously. From a more sinister perspective, in certain cases, it can be cancer and we are picking it up late.”
    Source: Independent, 14 February 2023
    Read full story 
  22. Patient_Safety_Learning
    The author of a Parliamentary report into ‘failing’ eating disorder services in 2017 says the number of concerning deaths still being reported five years on is ‘very distressing’.
    In the five years since ombudsman Rob Behrens warned of major shortcomings around adult eating disorder services, HSJ has identified at least 19 women whose deaths sparked concerns from coroners about their care (see list below). At least 15 of these were deemed avoidable, and resulted in formal warnings being issued to mental health chiefs.
    Source: HSJ, 14 February 2023
    Read full story
  23. Patient_Safety_Learning
    Capitalizing on the pandemic explosion in telehealth and therapy apps that collect details of your mental health needs, data brokers are packaging that information for resale, a new study finds. There’s no law stopping them.
    In a study published Monday, a research team at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy outlines how expansive the market for people’s health data has become.
    After contacting data brokers to ask what kinds of mental health information she could buy, researcher Joanne Kim reported that she ultimately found 11 companies willing to sell bundles of data that included information on what antidepressants people were taking, whether they struggled with insomnia or attention issues, and details on other medical ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease or bladder-control difficulties.
    Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke who ran the research team, says that mental health data should be treated especially carefully, given that it could pertain to people in vulnerable situations — and that, if shared publicly or rendered inaccurately, could lead to devastating results.
    Source: Washington Post, 13 February 2023
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  24. Patient_Safety_Learning
    The use of artificial intelligence in breast cancer screening is safe and can almost halve the workload of radiologists, according to the world’s most comprehensive trial of its kind.
    Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer globally, according to the World Health Organization, with more than 2.3 million women developing the disease every year.
    Screening can improve prognosis and reduce mortality by spotting breast cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage. Preliminary results from a large study suggest AI screening is as good as two radiologists working together, does not increase false positives and almost halves the workload.
    The interim safety analysis results of the first randomised controlled trial of its kind involving more than 80,000 women were published in the Lancet Oncology journal.
    Read full story
    Source: Guardian 2 August 2023
  25. Patient_Safety_Learning
    GPs have raised concern about a new colorectal cancer pathway aimed at reducing referrals into one of England’s largest acute hospital trusts.
    The pathway was implemented in December 2022 to tackle long waiting lists at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) by reducing the number of referrals from primary care. 
    But the Lincolnshire LMC and Primary Care Network Association both raised concerns about the pathway and its impact on general practice in a letter to their ICB earlier this month.
    Read full story
    Source: Pulse, 13 February 
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