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Found 1,217 results
  1. News Article
    Coleen McSorley, who has been deaf from birth, was left upset and struggling to understand the details of her cancer diagnosis. Now one care centre is hoping to offer more support to others facing a similar challenge. Coleen was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2020. At the time, Covid restrictions meant she was unable to bring an interpreter or her hearing parents to hospital appointments. The 56-year-old said she was given wads of literature about her cancer - but like many people who have been deaf from birth, she struggles to read. "English is my second language after British Sign Language," said the cleaner, from Stirling. "At the hospital a big barrier was they were wearing too many masks. They were all talking at me but I didn't understand what they were saying, it was horrendous. "I felt frustrated because I wanted them to pull down their masks so I could try to lip read a little bit, but they wouldn't and it was very confusing." Coleen, who had stage three cancer, was treated with chemotherapy and had a mastectomy, found a local Maggie centre who supported her. Yvonne McIntosh, an oncology nurse and centre head at the Maggie's Forth Valley cancer care drop-in centre, says that even with an interpreter, a lot of information could be lost in translation. "A lot of sense and meaning is lost and things can land differently so they don't come across with the same context," she said. "When Coleen came to us she didn't know what the pills were that she was taking. "She didn't understand about her treatment and didn't know how her medication worked for her." Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 February 2022
  2. News Article
    Research by Garmin finds 40% of young women say they have been accused of over-exaggerating symptoms of UTIs. While it’s clear that already strained services and a lack of funding contributed to the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare system, health inequality isn’t something that’s unique to Covid-19. Instead, it’s often the result of commonly misunderstood, misrepresented and mistreated conditions that disproportionately affect women, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis and urinary tract infections (UTIs). New research from fitness company Garmin, published by The Independent, found that 40% of young women say they have been accused of over-exaggerating symptoms of UTIs or being “overdramatic” about their wellbeing when seeing a doctor. 45% also said they’ve had their UTI symptoms written off as “part of being a woman”. According to the Chronic Urinary Tract Infection Campaign (CUTIC), 50% of all women will suffer at least one UTI episode in their lifetime, one third of these by the age of 24. “Statistics show that UTI is the most common infection seen by GPs,” says CUTIC. “In fact, doctors are so familiar with UTIs that they are frequently dismissed as merely a woman’s problem, rooted in the ‘flawed female anatomy’. “With little training in UTI management, GPs and urologists rely heavily on discredited laboratory tests which miss up to 60% of infections." “The medical training for UTI diagnosis is inadequate and most doctors are not aware of the complexity of this illness. They are trained to accept the test results and look no further,” CUTIC suggests. “It is clear from the recent government probe into menopause that women’s health has not been an area of priority. Conditions which primarily affect women are underfunded and under researched – this includes UTIs. Women are frequently patronised and not believed when they describe symptoms relating to UTIs, peri-menopause, menopause and vaginal atrophy. Medical training fails to include proper diagnosis and effective treatment for such conditions. Change is needed now.” Read full story Source: The Stylist, 2 February 2022 Have you attempted to access treatment for a urinary tract infection (UTI), or recurrent UTIs? We'd love you to share your experiences with us? Share your experience on the hub.
  3. News Article
    The NHS is "riddled with racism", the chair of the British Medical Association's council has told the BBC. Dr Chaand Nagpaul has spoken out in response to a survey by the BMA, shared exclusively with BBC News. At least 75% of ethnic minority doctors experienced racism more than once in the last two years, while 17.4% said they regularly faced racism at work, the survey said. NHS England said it takes a "zero-tolerance approach" to racism. Racism affects patients as well as doctors' wellbeing, by stopping talented people from progressing fairly and affecting doctors' mental health, Dr Nagpaul warned. "This is about a moral right for anyone who works for the NHS to be treated fairly," he said. Around 40% of the NHS's 123,000 doctors are from minority backgrounds, compared to about 13.8% of the general population. But despite this diversity, doctors told the BBC that there was a toxic "us versus them" culture in NHS trusts across the UK. They said they had faced bogus or disproportionate complaints from colleagues, racist comments from superiors, and even physical assault in the workplace. Some said they had tried to lodge complaints which were then ignored or dismissed without investigation. One consultant, from a black African background, told the BMA that after reporting previous incidents "no action was taken... I feel uncomfortable and anxious of reprisals". Read full story Source: BBC News, 2 February 2022
  4. News Article
    The number of people who try suicide has risen steadily in the U.S. But despite gains in health coverage, nearly half are not getting mental health treatment. Suicide attempts in the United States showed a “substantial and alarming increase” over the last decade, but one number remained the same, a new study has found: Year in and year out, about 40% of people who had recently tried suicide said they were not receiving mental health services. The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, traces a rise in the incidence of suicide attempts, defined as “self-reported attempts to kill one’s self in the last 12 months,” from 2008 to 2019. During that period, the incidence rose to 564 in every 100,000 adults from 481. The researchers drew on data from 484,732 responses to the federal government’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which includes people who lack insurance and have little contact with the health care system. They found the largest increase in suicide attempts among women; young adults between 18 and 25; unmarried people; people with less education; and people who regularly use substances like alcohol or cannabis. Only one group, adults 50 to 64 years old, saw a significant decrease in suicide attempts during that time. Among the major findings was that there was no significant change in the use of mental health services by people who had tried suicide, despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and receding stigma around mental health care. Over the 11-year period, a steady rate of about 40%t of people who tried suicide in the previous year said they were not receiving mental health care, said Greg Rhee, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study. The Affordable Care Act, which took effect fully in 2014, required all health plans to cover mental health and substance abuse services, and also sharply reduced the number of uninsured people in the U.S. However, many respondents to the survey in the new report said the cost of mental health care was prohibitive; others said they were uncertain where to go for treatment or had no transportation. “It is a huge public health problem,” Dr. Rhee said. “We know that mental health care in the U.S. is really fragmented and complicated, and we also know not everybody has equal access to mental health care. So, it’s somewhat not surprising.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: New York Times,19 January 2022
  5. News Article
    Lawmakers say minorities may disproportionately suffer from long-term symptoms of coronavirus infection. A pair of Democratic House members asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a letter Tuesday to release data on the number of Americans who suffer lingering symptoms of coronavirus infection, including breakdowns along race, gender and age. The National Institutes of Health and the CDC have launched detailed studies of Long Covid, but those examinations are expected to take years. In the meantime, policymakers lack good information about how many people in the United States and worldwide suffer from long-term, debilitating effects of the disease. “People suffering from Long Covid have been ignored and overlooked for far too long. Collecting and publishing robust, disaggregated demographic data will help us better understand this illness and ensure that we are targeting lifesaving resources to those who need them most,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who co-signed the letter Tuesday to the CDC.“We’re calling on the CDC to publicly report this data because that which gets measured gets done — and we can’t have an equitable recovery from this pandemic without it.” Read full story Source: The Washington Post, 25 January 2022
  6. News Article
    The significantly longer waiting times suffered by patients from minority ethnic groups and in more deprived areas for a range of elective procedures have been laid bare in NHS analysis shared with HSJ. The problem of waiting time disparities between different patient groups has been highlighted by health leaders for several years. But the NHS chief who oversaw this new work quantifies the issue for a local NHS trust, provides a template for others to follow, and has led to an improvement in waiting times disparities in response. The analysis of elective waiting lists by Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust found that in October last year patients from a minority ethnic background were waiting three weeks longer on average than white patients for a “priority two” operation – which must be done within a month. It also found patients from the most deprived communities were waiting 2.5 weeks longer than those from the least deprived areas. However, Owen Williams, who led the trust when the analysis was carried out, said the analysis, which began early last year, contributed to these disparities being cut significantly over the course of 2021. In May last year the trust’s patients from the most deprived areas were waiting 8.5 weeks longer on average for priority two operations than those from more affluent areas, while patients from minority ethnic groups were waiting 7.8 weeks longer than white patients. Mr Williams said NHS trusts boards must be proactive in undertaking similar analysis to reduce health inequalities. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Guardian, 24 January 2022
  7. News Article
    Women are being forced to wait longer for operations and healthcare appointments in the wake of the pandemic, according to a new report. Research carried out by the Care Quality Commission, England’s regulator of health and social care, found 53% of women experienced longer waiting times for appointments or healthcare procedures during the Covid crisis. The report also found 3 in 10 women experienced appointment cancellations. More women report grappling with these issues than men – with some 44% of men saying they have experienced longer waiting times for appointments or procedures. Helena Mckeown, a GP who previously specialised in women’s health at the British Medical Association (BMA), told The Independent she is not surprised by the findings. "Our world is full of sexism and we know of other examples of sexism and biases in healthcare. Some of them are racial biases. To stop unconscious biases, they need to be recognised and addressed. Ms Mckeown, one of the directors of the Menopause Expert Group, a non-profit which provides education about menopause, said female patients are treated differently to men. She added: “We need to make sure we are not taking women saying they are in pain differently to men saying they are in pain. It is really important that we address this problem of women waiting longer for operations and appointments.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 22 January 2022
  8. News Article
    A GP’s ethnicity has an impact on the level of leadership support it gets from regulators and external bodies, a new Care Quality Commission (CQC) report has suggested. In 2021, the CQC conducted research looking at concerns raised by some doctors that ethnic minority-led GP practices were “more likely to have a poorer experience or outcomes” from regulation. In a final report, the CQC has admitted ethnic minority-led practices are “not operating on a level playing field”, due to several factors including the fact they are more likely to care for populations with higher levels of socio-economic deprivation and poorer health. This can affect their ability to achieve some national targets used in assessments of quality, and increase challenges around recruitment and funding. The evidence gathered by the CQC also suggested that practices led by ethnic minority doctors “often lacked leadership support from other bodies and suffered from low morale”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 19 January 2022
  9. News Article
    Endemic ill-health in England’s “left behind” neighbourhoods costs the country almost £30bn a year because people are often too ill to work and die earlier, a report claims. The cost of lost productivity results directly from those very deprived areas having much worse health than the rest of the country, according to parliamentarians and academics. Experts from the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) have calculated that the economy would grow by that amount if health in those areas was improved to such an extent that local people began to enjoy the same health as those in better-off places. The report, by the NHSA and all-party parliamentary group for left behind neighbourhoods (LBNs), highlights the scale of the challenge Boris Johnson faces in meeting his pledge to level up England’s poorest and richest areas. “The health of people living in left behind neighbourhoods is considerably worse than the health of people living in the rest of the country,” said Dr Luke Munford, the report’s lead author and a lecturer in health economics at the University of Manchester. “This is true across all measures of health.” The report shows rates of obesity, lung conditions, high blood pressure, mental health problems and other diseases are much higher than the national average in the 225 LBNs. This means people there have less “healthy life expectancy” and also shorter lives and thus are less productive over their lifespan than those elsewhere. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2022
  10. News Article
    Women who are operated on by a male surgeon are much more likely to die, experience complications and be readmitted to hospital than when a woman performs the procedure, research reveals. Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients. The findings have sparked a debate about the fact that surgery in the UK remains a hugely male-dominated area of medicine and claims that “implicit sex biases” among male surgeons may help explain why women are at such greater risk when they have an operation. “In our 1.3 million patient sample involving nearly 3,000 surgeons we found that female patients treated by male surgeons had 15% greater odds of worse outcomes than female patients treated by female surgeons,” said Dr Angela Jerath, an associate professor and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Toronto in Canada and a co-author of the findings. “This result has real-world medical consequences for female patients and manifests itself in more complications, readmissions to hospital and death for females compared with males. “We have demonstrated in our paper that we are failing some female patients and that some are unnecessarily falling through the cracks with adverse, and sometimes fatal, consequences.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 4 January 2022
  11. News Article
    Ministers have pledged to “reset the dial” on women’s health to tackle decades of gender inequality in England, with plans to appoint a women’s health tsar, eradicate medical taboos, boost menopause support and ban harmful “virginity repair” operations. The Department of Health and Social Care has published its Vision for Women’s Health strategy after 100,000 women came forward to share their healthcare concerns. Maria Caulfield, the minister for women’s health, described some of their experiences as “shocking”. The vision document sets out initial government commitments on women’s health, recognising that “systemwide changes” are needed to tackle “decades of gender health inequality”. The final plan – the Women’s Health Strategy – will be published in spring 2022. On Wednesday night, ministers pledged to introduce legislation criminalising hymenoplasty or any procedure to rebuild or repair the hymen. Such surgery creates scar tissue so that a woman will bleed the next time she has intercourse, making it appear she has never had sex. Young women can be forced to prove they are “pure” on their wedding night. Doctors have called for a ban on the surgery for years, saying it can never be justified on health grounds and is harmful. Separately, the government will appoint a women’s health ambassador to raise the profile of key issues and boost awareness of taboo topics. Ministers will also establish a UK-wide menopause taskforce to investigate how women going through the menopause can be better supported. The cost of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) prescriptions will also be cut by implementing longer prescribing cycles so women will need fewer prescriptions and therefore pay less. The consultation provided “stark and sobering insights” into women’s experiences of health and care and highlighted entrenched problems within the NHS, officials said. Ministers are also considering compulsory training for GPs on women’s health after the idea was raised by women who came forward. The vision document said: “We also heard about a lack of awareness amongst some GPs of the causes of infertility, miscarriages and their relationship with infertility, and the reasons for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) failure.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 December 2021 Related reading Gender bias: A threat to women’s health (August 2020) Dangerous exclusions: The risk to patient safety of sex and gender bias Patient Safety Learning: Women’s Health Strategy Consultation Response
  12. News Article
    “Protect the NHS” sounds like the team name for an illegal Downing Street quiz, but it won’t be winning any prizes for patient safety, writes Dr Phil Hammond in The Times. The fact is, the NHS, as was the case long before the pandemic, is woefully understaffed. Even more billions have been thrown at the system, but, as ever, so little of it finds its way to the frontline carers we all clapped for. The NHS is always fighting a losing battle. When the government first asked us to protect the NHS, it may as well have said: “Stay at home, die alone, protect the NHS.” Thousands of people have done just that since the pandemic started, for reasons not fully understood. They may have had Covid or non-Covid diseases, or both. They didn’t ask for, or couldn’t find, help when they were seriously ill. They followed their “stay at home” orders. Many died. "The NHS does some amazing things but the truth is it has never had the staff nor capacity — and sometimes not the culture — to provide safe, effective and timely care to all its citizens," says Hammond. "We also have appalling levels of public health inequality. The rich live a decade longer than the poor, and the poor suffer 20 more years of chronic disease and NHS dependency. No health service can cope with such high demands, many of them avoidable." Today, many people can’t even access care, never mind the quality of it. But we don’t need to dismantle the NHS, we need to staff it safely. We need to start with a proper, costed workforce plan for now and the future. If we put even more money into healthcare, we need to prove it’s being spent on frontline care that is proven to work. Just as we didn’t plan properly for Covid, we have never had a proper workforce plan for the NHS to estimate what staff increases we need to cope with an ageing, anxious and increasingly isolated population chock full of chronic diseases. How did we get in this mess? There is good evidence that safe staffing levels deliver better care, and that continuity of care and a long-standing relationship with your GP or nurse is hugely beneficial to your health. It’s much more rewarding for health professionals too. Alas, they don’t grow on trees and there’s a global shortage. There’s a limit to how many we can steal from countries who may need them more. No matter how much money we throw at the NHS in a pandemic panic, this tanker won’t be turned around quickly. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 18 December 2021
  13. News Article
    Lessons learnt in relation to increasing uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine among ethnic minority groups should now be applied to the booster programme, a government progress report recommends. This includes continuing to use respected local voices to build trust and to help tackle misinformation, the report from the government’s Race Disparity Unit says. Such approaches should also be carried over to the winter flu and childhood immunisation programmes and be applied to the work to tackle longer standing health disparities. In June 2020 the minister for equalities was asked to look at why COVID-19 was having a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups and to consider how the government response to this could be improved. This latest report is the final one of four. Taken together the reports identified that the main factors behind the higher risk of COVIDd-19 infection for ethnic minority groups include occupation, living in multigenerational households, and living in densely populated urban areas with poor air quality and high levels of deprivations. Read full story Source: BMJ, 3 December 2021
  14. News Article
    Deaf people are twice as likely to suffer mental health problems than those with hearing, a report has found. The All Wales Deaf Mental Health and Wellbeing Group said help in Wales was behind the rest of the UK and it wants to see significant improvements. It also described the inequalities faced by deaf people trying to access mental health support as "really frustrating". The Welsh government said it would consider the findings of the report. Ffion Griffiths, 23, from Neath, has been deaf since birth, and accessing child and adolescent mental health services in Wales has been a problem over the years. She had to travel to England to get the support she needed. "It's really frustrating because deaf people in England have more opportunities," she said. It means they can be treated and get better quicker but for us, how can we do that?" "How can we expect to recover if we don't have access to the services or any pathways for us to follow to get the treatment that we need in Wales?" Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 December 2021
  15. News Article
    Efforts to end health inequalities should be ‘in the mix’ of metrics used to determine the NHS’ progress against key performance targets, say race inequality experts. In an exclusive interview with HSJ, NHS Race and Health Observatory (RHO) director Habib Naqvi said organisations’ performance on the issue should be scrutinised by an external body to ensure they are held accountable and “not marking their own exam answer”. It comes as the RHO publishes a report that warns the appointment of health inequalities leads across the NHS risks becoming “tokenistic” if they are not adequately supported and held accountable. The report by The King’s Fund think tank has recommended several actions to prevent the introduction of board-level leads from becoming a “hollow gesture”. In August 2020, NHS England asked all NHS organisations to have a named executive board member responsible for tackling inequalities by October that year. The RHO estimates there to be more than 450 of these named leads across the country. The report welcomed this but added “frameworks” of support and accountability should exist to “empower individuals and motivate change”. The recommendations include putting inequalities on an “equal footing” with key performance metrics, as well as a long-term policy focus that puts addressing inequalities “at the heart of system development”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 December 2021
  16. News Article
    The British Red Cross have found that that 367,000 people, which equates to around one percent of the population in England attend A&E up to 346 times a year. These figures accounted for nearly one in three ambulance call outs and over one in six A&E visits. The research analysis found that a fifth of those repeatedly attending A&E lived alone and also often lived in deprived areas of the country. Frequent users also accounted for 29% of all ambulance call outs and 16% of non-minor-injury A&E visits. The data also revealed that people in their twenties were more likely to repeatedly visit A&E than any other age category. Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: 'High intensity use of A&E is closely associated with deprivation and inequalities - if you overlay a map of frequent A&E use and a map of deprivation, they're essentially the same.' Read full story Source: National Health Executive, 29 November 2021
  17. News Article
    An independent body set up by the NHS to tackle health inequalities has formally committed to never use blanket acronyms such as “BAME” after feedback that they are not representative. The NHS Race and Health Observatory launched a four-week consultation with the public in July on how best to collectively refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. The Observatory said it has become the norm in public policy to use initialisms to refer to a “hugely diverse” group of people, but that renewed scrutiny has been spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement. It said terminology that “crudely conflates” different groups “does not just erase identities; it can also lead to broad brush policy decisions that fail to appreciate the nuance of ethnic inequality in the UK”. Generic collective terms such as “BAME”, “BME” and “ethnic minority” are “not representative or universally popular”, the Observatory said after receiving responses from 5,104 people. It found no single, collective umbrella term to describe ethnic groups was agreed by the majority of respondents. The body had previously said it was committed to avoiding the use of acronyms and initialisms, but has now formalised this as one of five key principles it is adopting in its communications. Where possible it will be specific about the ethnic groups it is referring to, but where collective terminology is necessary it will “always be guided by context and not adopt a blanket term”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 26 November 2021
  18. News Article
    The system for assessing who should be asked to pay for NHS services “incentivises racial profiling”, an investigation has found. A study by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that overstretched NHS staff sometimes racially profile patients in order to determine who is not “ordinarily resident” in the UK, and therefore must pay for their care. The report is critical of the more stringent charging regime introduced by NHS England over the past decade as part of a series of measures devised to create a hostile environment for people living in the UK without the correct immigration status. Overseas visitors officers have been appointed by NHS trusts, responsible for identifying chargeable patients, as part of a cost recovery programme launched in 2014. One of the officers told the IPPR study they had felt forced to discriminate between patients based on their name. “If you’ve got a, I don’t know, Mohammed Khan and a Fred Cooper, you’re obviously going to go for [investigating] the Mohammed Khan … Even for someone who’s, you know, well I’d like to think hopefully open-minded, like myself, you’re just trying to save yourself time because there’s not enough hours in the day,” the officer said. A hospital employee also reported that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity was used to determine who should be billed for treatment. “It’s a system that is designed to benefit [white] people like me, not people like … the patient on intensive care who is black and British and was unconscious and sent a bill. So why did someone think he was not eligible for care? Given he was unconscious most of the admission, significantly unwell, probably not his accent, more likely his skin colour,” the health worker said. Under the rules, anyone “not ordinarily resident” in the UK should be charged 150% of the NHS national tariff for most secondary (non-urgent) healthcare, but the report found that processes varied across the country, with a lack of consistent training and widespread confusion over the 130-page rules for the charging system. Some healthcare staff told IPPR researchers that they disliked the extra burden of having to consider whether to refer a patient for charging, which they felt distracted them from their core medical responsibilities. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 November 2021
  19. News Article
    A review into whether medical devices are equally effective regardless of the patient's ethnicity has been ordered by Health Secretary Sajid Javid. Research suggests oximeters, which are clipped to a person's finger, can overstate the level of oxygen in the blood of people from ethnic minorities. Ministers want to know whether bias could have prevented patients receiving appropriate Covid treatment. Mr Javid said any bias was "totally unacceptable". But the doctors' union the British Medical Association (BMA) said the review should not simply look at equipment, but also "structural issues" within healthcare that affect ethnic minorities. Mr Javid announced the review in the Sunday Times, saying he was determined to "close the chasms that the pandemic has exposed". Asked later on the BBC's Andrew Marr show whether he thought people had died of Covid because of pulse oximeters, Mr Javid said: "I think possibly yes, yes. I don't have the full facts." He said there was racial bias in some medical instruments, adding: "It's unintentional but it exists." "And the reason is that a lot of these medical devices, even some of the drugs, some of the procedures, some of the textbooks, most of them are put together in majority white countries and I think this is a systemic issue around this," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 November 2021
  20. News Article
    The increased risk of black and minority ethnic women dying during pregnancy needs to be seen as a whole system problem and not limited to just maternity departments, according to experts on an exclusive panel hosted by The Independent. Professor Marian Knight, from Oxford University told the virtual event on Wednesday night that the health service needed to change its approach to caring for ethnic minority women in a wider context. Campaigners Tinuke Awe and Clotilde Rebecca Abe, from the Fivexmore campaign, called for changes to the way midwives were trained and demanded it was time to “decolonise the curriculum” so it recognised the physiological differences between some ethnic minority women and white women. Dr Mary Ross-Davie, from the Royal College of Midwives, said work was underway to ensure the voices of black women and other minorities were represented in its work and it was examining how it could deliver better training to midwives. The data on maternity deaths in the UK show black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy in the UK than white women. For Asian women, they are twice as likely to die. Read full story and watch video of event Source: The Independent, 18 November 2021
  21. News Article
    Researchers are to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the hope of reducing risk to pregnant black women. Loughborough University experts are to work with the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) to identify patterns in its recent investigations. Research has suggested black women are more than four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women in the UK. The researchers plan to look at more than 600 of HSIB's recent investigations into adverse outcomes during pregnancy and birth. The research team will develop a machine learning system capable of identifying factors, based on a set of codes, that contribute to harm during pregnancy and birth experienced by black families. These include biological factors, such as obesity or birth history; social and economic factors such as language barriers and unemployment; and the quality of care and communication with the mother. It will look at how these elements interact with and influence each other, and help researchers design ways to improve the care of black mothers and babies. Dr Patrick Waterson, from the university, who is helping to lead the project, said: "Ultimately, we believe the outcomes from our research have the potential to transform the NHS's ability to reduce maternal harm amongst mothers from black ethnic groups." He added that in the longer term, the research could improve patient safety for all mothers. Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 November 2021
  22. News Article
    A groundbreaking inquiry into sickle cell disease has found “serious care failings” in acute services and evidence of attitudes underpinned by racism. The report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia, led by Pat McFadden MP, found evidence of sub-standard care for sickle cell patients admitted to general wards or attending A&E departments. The inquiry also found widespread lack of adherence to national care standards, low awareness of sickle cell among healthcare professionals and clear examples of inadequate training and insufficient investment in sickle cell care. The report notes frequent disclosures of negative attitudes towards sickle cell patients, who are more likely to be people with an African or Caribbean background, and evidence to suggest that such attitudes are often underpinned by racism. The inquiry also found that these concerns have led to a fear and avoidance of hospitals for many people living with sickle cell. Care failings have led to patient deaths and “near misses” are not uncommon, leading to a cross-party call for urgent changes into care for sickle cell patients. Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 November 2021
  23. News Article
    Black women are more than four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women in the UK, a review of 2017-2019 deaths shows. The MBRRACE-UK report found women from Asian backgrounds are almost twice as likely to die as white women. Some 495 individuals died during pregnancy or up to a year after birth, out of 2,173,810 having a child. The charity Birthrights is concerned that overall "this bleak picture has not changed in over a decade". University of Oxford researchers say for the vast majority of people, pregnancy remains very safe in the UK. But despite slight decreases in the maternal death rate in recent years, there have been no significant improvements to these rates since the 2010 to 2012 period. Their current report shows heart disease, epilepsy and stroke continue to be the most common causes of death. And they say in some 37% of cases, improvements in care may have made a difference to the outcome. Lead researcher, Prof Marian Knight, said: "Pregnant women get inequitable care for several reasons. "Healthcare professionals often attribute their symptoms to pregnancy alone and they do not always end up getting the treatment they need because people can be incorrectly concerned about giving them medication. "On top of that is the unconscious bias that black and Asian women can experience. It all adds up. "We know from other studies that the disparity in death rates cannot be fully explained by socio-economic factors and other medical conditions for example. We need to look for other reasons." Read full story Source: BBC News, 11 November 2021
  24. News Article
    Artificial intelligence (AI) systems being developed to diagnose skin cancer run the risk of being less accurate for people with dark skin, research suggests. The potential of AI has led to developments in healthcare, with some studies suggesting image recognition technology based on machine learning algorithms can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts. NHS trusts have begun exploring AI to help dermatologists triage patients with skin lesions. But researchers say more needs to be done to ensure the technology benefits all patients, after finding that few freely available image databases that could be used to develop or “train” AI systems for skin cancer diagnosis contain information on ethnicity or skin type. Those that do have very few images of people with dark skin. Dr David Wen, first author of the study from the University of Oxford, said: “You could have a situation where the regulatory authorities say that because this algorithm has only been trained on images in fair-skinned people, you’re only allowed to use it for fair-skinned individuals, and therefore that could lead to certain populations being excluded from algorithms that are approved for clinical use." “Alternatively, if the regulators are a bit more relaxed and say: ‘OK, you can use it [on all patients]’, the algorithms may not perform as accurately on populations who don’t have that many images involved in training.” That could bring other problems including risking avoidable surgery, missing treatable cancers and causing unnecessary anxiety, the team said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 November 2021
  25. News Article
    Socioeconomic inequalities account for an estimated quarter of stillbirths, fifth of preterm births, and a third of births with fetal growth restriction, according to a study published in the Lancet of over one million births in England The nationwide study across England’s NHS was carried out by the National Maternity and Perinatal Audit team, who analysed birth records between April 2015 and March 2017 to quantify socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in pregnancy outcomes. They found that an estimated two thirds (63.7%) of stillbirths and half (55.0%) of births with fetal growth restriction in black women from the most deprived neighbourhoods could be avoided if this population had the same risks as white women living in the most affluent 20% of neighbourhoods. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 2 November 2021
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