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Found 253 results
  1. News Article
    A trust has been issued with a warning notice after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) raised concerns about parts of its maternity services. Following a focused inspection at University Hospitals Dorset Foundation Trust in September and November last year, the CQC has rated maternity services at Poole Hospital “inadequate”, down from “good”. The service was also rated “inadequate” in the safety and well-led domains. The CQC report warned that Poole Hospital’s maternity unit did not always have enough midwifery or medical staff to keep mothers and babies safe. The inspectors noted this had led to delays to induction of labour and caesarian sections, including emergency sections. A warning notice was also issued over concerns about the unit’s emergency call bell system, which worked “intermittently” due to poor wireless signal, and processes used to summon help during an emergency. The trust said it had since “taken action to address this risk”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 March 2023
  2. News Article
    A staffing crisis in children’s dentistry has prompted the urgent removal of junior doctors from Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH. GOSH has struggled to recruit consultants for its paediatric dentistry services for at least two years, which has led to trainee doctors going unsupervised, according to a new report by regulator Health Education England. A report seen by The Independent said the service was running with just one part-time consultant but needed at least two. The news comes amid a national “crisis” in dentistry, with the latest data from the government showing that half of all children’s tooth extractions in 2021-22 were due to “preventable tooth decay”. GOSH told The Independent it was struggling with a “limited pool” of paediatric dentists and, as a result of shortages, many patients were waiting longer than the 18-week standard. Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 February 2023
  3. News Article
    Nursing shortages are contributing to children waiting up to three times longer for spinal surgery than pre-pandemic, a top surgeon has claimed. Chris Adams says up to one in four operations are cancelled at NHS Lothian, with staffing the main reason. Mr Adams also claims that some children are not being put on waiting lists as early as they should be. NHS Lothian disputes some of Mr Adams' statements but says "significant pressures" are affecting waiting times. The senior clinician, one of Scotland's three paediatric spinal surgeons, said he was speaking out of behalf of spinal patients and their families The surgeon's claims appear in a new BBC Disclosure investigation into Scotland's NHS, which reveals that some children are waiting up to three times longer than pre-pandemic for spinal surgery, with some waiting more than a year. At least 51 out of a possible 190 planned spinal surgeries at RHCYP were cancelled at short notice in 2022, with nursing shortages understood to be the main cause Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 March 2023
  4. News Article
    A struggling acute trust says its failure to hit its elective care targets is directly linked to doctors’ demanding overtime rates in line with the British Medical Association’s rate cards, as national tensions around the issue intensify. University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust’s January performance report said its elective activity was down by around 1,000 cases over a two-month period, due to the issue. Last summer, the BMA published a “rate card” outlining the “minimum” hourly pay consultants should receive for additional work, such as waiting list initiatives and weekend shifts. Some accused the union of “acting like football agents” by trying to inflate their members’ pay. NHS chiefs have long been warning of the risk the rate card poses to elective recovery. But there are few examples of a trust making such an explicit link between their struggle to staff overtime shifts because of the rate card and subsequent failure to hit their elective targets, and placing a number on how many patients they were forced to add to the list because of the issue. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 March 2023
  5. News Article
    A criticised maternity service needs 37 more midwives, about a fifth of its total midwifery workforce. The Care Quality Commission has said Northampton General Hospital did not always have enough qualified and experienced staff to keep women safe from avoidable harm. Figures obtained by the BBC show that 49 serious incidents have occurred in its maternity services in four years. The hospital said it had undertaken "a lot of work" in the past 18 months and a recruitment process was under way. According to a Freedom of Information Act response, between November 2018 and November 2022, the hospital had 278 serious incidents, with the highest level coming across maternity services, including gynaecology and obstetrics. There are currently 37 vacancies for midwives but the trust said it manages staffing levels "closely and ensure that all shifts are covered by bank or midwives working altered shift patterns, to ensure that we are able to provide a safe maternity experience". Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 February 2023
  6. News Article
    Only half the recommended number of medical staff were on duty at the O2 Brixton Academy on the night of a crush at the south-west London venue. Industry guidelines suggest there should have been medical cover of at least 10 people, including a paramedic and a nurse, but no paramedics or nurses were present. Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and security guard Gaby Hutchinson, 23, died in hospital following the crowd surge on 15 December 2022 at the concert. The medical provider, Collingwood Services Ltd, said it was "fully confident" its team had "responded speedily, efficiently and with best practice". Two whistleblowers who regularly work for Collingwood Services Ltd at Brixton told BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme that medical cover at the south London gig had been "inadequate". Neither of them was there when the crush happened, but one said he had spoken to colleagues who were. "[They] had two student paramedics, so they're basically unqualified," said one whistleblower. "They have to be supervised by a paramedic, not by anybody of a lower grade. They didn't have appropriate supervision." Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 February 2023
  7. News Article
    Britain could double the number of doctors and nurses it trains under NHS plans to tackle a deepening staffing crisis, according to reports. The proposal to increase the number of places in UK medical schools from 7,500 to 15,000 is contained in a draft of NHS England’s long-awaited workforce plan, which is expected to be published next month. Labour has already announced this policy as a key element of its plans to revive the NHS. However, it could face opposition from the Treasury because of how much it would cost, according to the Times, which reported on the plan. The NHS in England alone is short of 133,000 staff – equating to about a tenth of its workforce – including 47,000 nurses and 9,000 doctors, according to the most recent official figures. There are also shortages of midwives, paramedics and operating theatre staff. Staff groups say routine gaps in NHS care providers’ rotas are endangering patients’ safety, increasing workload and costing the service money. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 February 2023
  8. News Article
    Millions of people in England with mental ill-health are not seeking NHS help, and many who get it face long delays and a “poor experience”, a report says. Long waits for care will persist for years because soaring demand, exacerbated by Covid, will continue to outstrip the ability of severely understaffed mental health services to provide speedy treatment, the National Audit Office (NAO) found. The report found that “NHS mental health services are under continued and increasing pressure and many people using services are reporting poor experiences”. Under-18s, the LGBT+ community, minority ethnic groups and people with more complex needs are most likely to find the system inadequate. “While funding and the workforce for mental health services have increased and more people have been treated, many people still cannot access services or have lengthy waits for treatment,” the NAO said. It found: An estimated 8 million people with mental health needs are not in contact with NHS services. There are 1.2 million people waiting for help from community-based mental health services. While the mental health workforce grew by 22% between 2016-17 and 2021-22, the NHS recorded a 44% increase in referrals over the same period. In 2021-22, 13% of mental health staff quit. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 February 2023
  9. News Article
    The NHS faces an alarming mass exodus of doctors and dental professionals, health chiefs have said, as a report reveals 4 in 10 are likely to quit over “intolerable” pressures. Intense workloads, rapidly soaring demand for urgent and emergency healthcare and the record high backlog of operations are causing burnout and exhaustion and straining relationships between medics and patients, according to the report by the Medical Defence Union (MDU), which provides legal support to about 200,000 doctors, dental professionals and other healthcare workers in the UK. In an MDU survey of more than 800 doctors and dental professionals across the UK, conducted within the last month and seen by the Guardian, 40% agreed or strongly agreed they were likely to resign or retire within the next five years as a direct result of “workplace pressures”. Medical leaders called the report “deeply concerning”. There are already 133,000 NHS vacancies in England alone. NHS chiefs said it laid bare the impact of the crisis in the health service on staff, and MPs said it should serve as a “wake-up call” to ministers on the urgent need to take action to persuade thousands of NHS staff heading for the exit door to stay. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 January 2023
  10. News Article
    Thousands of extra hospital beds and hundreds of ambulances will be rolled out in England this year in a bid to tackle the long emergency care delays. The 5,000 new beds will boost capacity by 5%, while the ambulance fleet will increase by 10% with 800 new vehicles. Details of the £1bn investment will be set out later in a joint government and NHS England two-year blueprint. Questions have also been raised about how the extra resources will be staffed - 1 in 10 posts in the NHS is vacant. The government believes the measures, which will be introduced from April, will help the NHS to start getting closer to its waiting time targets. It has set goals that by March 2024: 76% of A&E patients will be dealt with in four hours. Currently fewer than 70% are. The official target is 95% An average response time of 30 minutes for emergency calls such as heart attacks and strokes. In December patients waited over 90. The official target is 18. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said cutting NHS waiting times was one of his five main priorities. Read full story Source: BBC News, 30 January 2023
  11. News Article
    Experienced emergency department nurses are “leaving in droves” because they feel unable to do their jobs properly under the current conditions, a doctor has warned. Giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Select Committee yesterday, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, raised concern about nurse retention and morale in emergency departments. “We are haemorrhaging experienced emergency nurses because they are finding it very frustrating" He said: “What I'm also seeing is that a lot of nurses, particularly the experienced nurses, they're almost like the [non-commissioned officers] of the health service, the sergeants who know how to get things done, are leaving in droves.” Dr Boyle added: “We are haemorrhaging experienced emergency nurses because they are finding it very frustrating. “The problem is not because there's too much work but they're unable to do the work that they're trained to do." Read full story Source: Nursing Times, 25 January 2023
  12. News Article
    Pressures on emergency health services are so bad that the UK government should declare a “national emergency” and call a meeting of the Civil Contingencies Committee (COBRA)—the body summoned periodically to deal with matters of major disruption—peers have said. The cross party House of Lords Public Services Committee said in a report that the government needed to respond with an emergency approach and steps to remedy the situation in the longer term. A recurring theme of the report is the substantial delays highlighted by the media in recent months, which peers said were caused by a “broken” model of primary and community care. This was driving unmet need in directing patients to hospitals where many remained longer than clinically necessary because of inadequate social care. The report recommended that the Department of Health and Social Care should mandate a greater presence of clinical staff in NHS 111 control centres to help boost numbers of clinicians in the 999 and 111 services. This would mean that patients were directed to the right services more quickly thanks to better triaging of calls, which could mean fewer patients being passed to emergency or urgent care services. Another suggestion was for the government to introduce more incentives for faster safe discharges from hospitals, with more capacity in hospitals and social care to help people move through the health system more quickly. Read full story Source: BMJ, 19 January 2023 Further reading on the hub: Patient safety impact of hospital bed shortages – A Patient Safety Learning blog
  13. News Article
    NHS trusts in England lost more than a million working days to long-Covid absences last year, analysis suggests. Thousands of doctors, nurses and other health professionals have been forced to take long periods off work because of the lingering effects of coronavirus infection. Data released to the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus suggests that long-Covid absences are now higher than they were a year ago. Layla Moran, who chairs the group, said: “Long Covid has upended the lives of millions and these figures suggest that the deeply damaging impact it is having on our economy and public services is only getting worse.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 19 December 2022
  14. News Article
    Elderly people who fall may only be sent an ambulance after they have spent four hours on the floor, and some category 2 calls may not be responded to under one of the first agreements with ambulance unions about next week’s strikes. But the deal between South East Coast Ambulance Service and the GMB union will see many union staff continue to work on ambulances and in control rooms – and others may be asked to come off the picket line if operational pressures escalate. HSJ has seen the details of the deal – thought to be one of the first agreed before next Wednesday’s strike. Some other trusts are hoping to conclude negotiations shortly, but for several — such as in the North West and London — it is thought no strike “derogations” (exceptions) have so far been agreed, and managers are concerned that unions are resistant. Trusts have been pushing for more cover on strike days – especially around category 2 calls. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 December 2022
  15. News Article
    Medics and nurses have been urgently called upon to support London Ambulance Service during next week’s strike action, as it will otherwise have to rely on staff only able to provide ‘first aid’. The North East London primary care team has sent out a request for clinical staff working for integrated care boards to be released from duties ahead of industrial action on 21 December. Unison members are preparing to walk out, alongside thousands of other staff at nine other ambulance trusts across the country, in a dispute over pay. The letter, seen by HSJ, was sent yesterday afternoon. It said: “LAS are keen to have experienced medics and nurses, who have current urgent and emergency clinical exposure, have knowledge of how to navigate the system and can operate as a senior clinical decision maker. Medical Practitioners would ideally be from general practice and emergency medicine. “Advanced Paramedics and Advanced Care Practitioners with urgent care or IUC CAS experience are also required. A knowledge of ambulance services is preferred as it removes the need to learn very quickly the significant differences in ambulance services and LAS control rooms." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 December 2022
  16. News Article
    More than half of UK doctors have seen or experienced abuse by patients or their relatives in the last year, including incidents in which they have been spat at and threatened. Doctors have variously had their hair ripped out, been backed up against a wall and been racially abused, a survey and dossier of testimonies collated by a medical organisation has revealed. Long delays for care and staff shortages are cited as the main triggers for what NHS leaders say is an increased readiness by the public to be aggressive towards frontline staff. The research by the Medical Protection Society (MPS) found that 56% of the doctors questioned had experienced or witnessed a situation involving verbal or physical abuse over the last year. Almost half said incidents had occurred because of a lack of staff, while 45% blamed it on patients’ frustration at having to wait a long time to be treated. One doctor told the MPS how a “patient’s partner threatened to kill me as he felt his wife had waited too long to be seen”, while another said: “I had a handful of my hair ripped out despite the patient being in handcuffs and with the police.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 June 2023
  17. News Article
    Retired doctors will have an option to “keep caring” and re-join the NHS to carry out outpatient appointments in a new initiative to help reduce waiting lists. From autumn, newly-retired doctors will be able to sign up to a new digital platform where they will be able to offer their availability to trusts across England to perform outpatient appointments, either virtually or in person. NHS hospitals will choose the consultant whose skillset and availability best matches the appointments they need covered, which are scheduled and arranged with patients in the normal way. More than four-fifths of people on the waiting list require an outpatient appointment such as a follow-up for cardiology or rheumatology – rather than a surgical procedure. Consultants carrying out remote appointments could be based anywhere in England, which can help those hospitals in areas with higher demand. Those requiring a face-to-face appointment or follow-up will be seen in the usual way. Speaking at NHS Confed Expo, Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive, said: “Ahead of the NHS 75th birthday in July, this new platform is an innovative example of how we are constantly adapting the way we work to benefit patients by helping to reduce waiting times as well as supporting staff. “Using this digital tool will help us to match patients with retired doctors who we know are keen to stay working in a flexible way so they can keep caring for patients, as well as allowing us to expand capacity to see even more patients – and faster. “NHS staff have already made excellent progress against our Elective Recovery Plan – and this platform will not only help us continue to reduce the longest waits but it will also help us slash agency spend, using the existing capacity of experienced doctors who still have so much to offer the NHS”. Read full story Source: NHS England, 14 June 2023
  18. News Article
    Health leaders have blamed staff shortages for waiting lists reaching another record high, with 7.4 million people in England waiting to start treatment as of the end of April. One NHS leader said the figures showed that unsustainable “pressure continues to pile on an overstretched NHS”, and urged the government to speed up publication of its long-awaited workforce plan, which has been repeatedly postponed. Waiting list figures in England have crept up again after showing signs of improvement in recent months, despite Rishi Sunak citing bringing numbers down as one of the government’s top five priorities for 2023. Downing Street on Thursday insisted the NHS was “continuing to make progress to ensure patients are seen more quickly”, pointing to record numbers of doctors and nurses in the NHS. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 June 2023
  19. News Article
    Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) — the government’s flagship policy for recovering cancer testing after Covid — will have up to 6,500 fewer staff than they need by 2025, according to NHS England projections seen by HSJ. The workforce “gap analysis” modelling highlights large and sustained staffing shortfalls across most professional groups required to run the CDCs until at least 2025. It was released after a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Health and Social Care, which said it was given the analysis by NHSE. The total gap between demand and supply for the programme by 2025 is estimated at 6,663, out of a total demand of 61,152 (about 1 in 10 staff). Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 June 2023
  20. News Article
    The Royal College of Radiologists is warning that all four UK nations are facing "chronic staff shortages", with cancer patients waiting too long for vital tests and treatments. Half of all cancer units are now reporting frequent delays for both radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Ministers say a workforce strategy for the NHS in England is due shortly. The plan, which is meant to spell out how the government will plug staffing gaps over the next 15 years, has been repeatedly delayed, to the frustration of some in the health service. In June 2022, Carol Fletcher, from South Wales, finally had her routine screening appointment for breast cancer, which was itself overdue. "It took another eight weeks after my mammogram before I was told there might be something wrong," she said. Since her cancer diagnosis, there have been more waits - for scans, tests, surgery and then chemo. "I was told that I might not get results back [quickly] after my mastectomy because they haven't got enough pathologists, so there was another eight-week delay for chemotherapy," she said. "I can't plan for the future and it's had a huge impact on my family." Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 June 2023
  21. News Article
    Plans to procure more district nursing courses to start this September have been paused because of the merger of Health Education England into NHS England, HSJ understands. An email sent last month from a commissioning officer at NHSE’s workforce, training and education directorate – the new HEE – said procurement of new district nursing courses from universities would be paused “until further notice”, due to the “ongoing merger”. Since 2009, the number of district nurses working in the English NHS has fallen drastically, from around 7,000 to around 3,900. Steph Lawrence, executive director of nursing and allied health professionals at Leeds Community Healthcare Trust, said the decision to pause the expansion of courses was a “huge concern” as numbers of district nurses need to grow “at a much faster rate”. “This is a major safety issue for safe and effective care in the community if we don’t have the appropriate numbers of nurses trained. We may also lose nurses as well who want to progress and expand their knowledge,” Ms Lawrence said. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 June 2023
  22. News Article
    The NHS in England faces an uphill struggle to improve productivity as it confronts record waiting lists, with data suggesting that an increase in staff numbers alone will not transform its performance. Creaking infrastructure, a sicker population and a reliance on less experienced staff are hampering the health service’s attempts to treat people in greater numbers than before the pandemic, according to health experts. This difficult context is casting a shadow over the government’s goal that hospital waiting lists should be falling by the next election. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Financial Times, 1 June 2023
  23. News Article
    NHS England has expanded its drive to increase overseas recruitment, introducing funding for trusts to hire more types of health professionals from abroad. Employers are now able to use national NHS England funding to recruit physiotherapists, therapeutic radiographers and operating department practitioners from overseas. Until now, within allied health professionals, the scheme has only covered diagnostic radiographers, occupational therapists and podiatrists. None of the professions are on the government’s shortage occupation list. NHSE said it decided to expand the AHP scheme to more staff groups where it had decided there were NHS shortages, and others where it had identified there was global availability of staff. For example, it said other groups such as prosthetics professionals still could not be recruited from abroad as there is limited international supply. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 May 2023
  24. News Article
    NHS leaders have raised concerns about the delay to the long-awaited workforce plan, after the health secretary, Steve Barclay, refused to give a deadline for its publication and with rumours suggesting it is considered too costly. The plan, which was expected to be published on Tuesday, appears to have been delayed, according to the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery. Barclay blamed the pandemic and “various things that have been happening in recent years” for the delay during broadcast interviews over the weekend. He had previously promised that the plan to increase the number of doctors and nurses would be published before the next general election. Cordery said the plan, which aims to fix the UK’s crumbling healthcare system by plugging chronic staff shortages but which has already been postponed from last year, was needed “as quickly as possible”. Until this weekend NHS Providers – which represents all England’s hospital, ambulance, community and mental health trusts – had believed publication of the plan was “imminent”. Cordery suggested that the failure to release it could be linked to the need for funding. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 May 2023
  25. News Article
    Britain’s reliance on foreign nurses has reached “unsustainable” levels, the government has been warned as new analysis reveals that international recruits has accounted for two thirds of the rise in numbers since 2019. Ministers have repeatedly promised to boost the domestic supply of health staff amid warnings that reliance on international workers leaves the NHS at the mercy of global labour markets. Overall, a fifth of the UK’s nursing, midwifery and nursing associate workforce originally trained overseas. The figures will reignite concerns that nations such as the Philippines, traditionally a key source for the NHS, are being increasingly targeted by countries including Germany and Canada. Senior NHS leaders fear the health service could be left in a precarious position if increased competition results in nurses choosing alternative destinations, resulting in a shortfall for the UK. The health service in England already has one post in ten vacant. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 18 May 2023
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