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Showing results for tags 'Leadership'.
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Content ArticleThis report provides a snapshot of the NHS Confederation's work over the last year. It outlines how the NHS Confederation has challenged the government for a fair funding settlement for the NHS, pressed ministers for a long-term workforce strategy, urged the government and unions to end the industrial dispute and made the case for more autonomy for healthcare leaders.
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Content ArticleStatement from Maria Caulfield, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Mental Health and Women's Health Strategy) on the Government’s initial response to the report of the independent review into the maternity and neonatal services at East Kent University NHS Foundation Trust that was published on the 19 October 2022. NHS England commissioned Dr Bill Kirkup to undertake this review following concerns about the quality and outcomes of care.
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Content ArticleIn this National Health Executive article, Dr Tom Milligan, Clinical Lead for Diabetes in Humber and North Yorkshire, discusses how ICB-led text messaging could dramatically increase patients' participation in programmes where other methods of patient outreach have already been tried.
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Content ArticleThe Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is a national quality improvement programme that aims to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm. Since the launch of SPSP in 2008, the programme has expanded to support improvements in safety across a wide range of care settings including Acute and Primary Care, Mental Health, Maternity, Neonatal, Paediatric services and medicines safety. Underpinned by the robust application of quality improvement methodology SPSP has brought about significant change in outcomes for people across Scotland.
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Content ArticleVictoria Vallance, Director of Secondary and Specialist Care, provides an update on the Care Quality Commission (CQC)’s ongoing national maternity inspection programme and offers early insight into the emerging themes, including good practice examples to support wider learning across all trusts.
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Content ArticleThis study from Jones et al. identified wide variability in the implementation of the Guardian role and concluded that optimal implementation has six components.
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Content Article
An understanding of the social sciences within infection prevention and control (IPC) is important for those working in health and social care. This new book positions the specialty of IPC as more than a technical discipline concerned with microbes. It is about people and their behaviour in context and the book therefore explores a number of relevant social sciences and their relationship to IPC across different contexts and cultures. IPC is relevant to every person who works in, and accesses health care and it remains a global challenge. Exploring novel approaches and perspectives that expand our collective horizons in an ever changing and evolving IPC landscape therefore makes sense. -
Content ArticleDr Henrietta Hughes, Patient Safety Commissioner for England, sheds light on the disconnect between the executive corridor and what patients experience.
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Content ArticleThis episode of the Health Service Journal's Health Check podcast features NHS Providers’ new chief executive Sir Julian Hartley, who cautions against creating provider trusts which are extremely large. Sir Julian talks about his fears that leaders could lose touch with the front line. He also answers questions about the role of collaboratives, as well as the shift from competition to system working, the risks of reintroducing a payment by results-style tariff, the importance of the promised long-term NHS workforce plan and the growing voices questioning the future of the NHS model.
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Content ArticleThe National Guardian’s Office has published Listening to Workers – the report following its Speak Up review of NHS ambulance trusts in England. The review found the culture in ambulance trusts did not support workers to speak up and that this was having an impact on worker wellbeing and ultimately patient safety.
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Content Article
WHO: Introducing the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in WHO
The Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative (PSFHI) aims to address the burden of unsafe care in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. It helps institutions in countries of the Region to launch comprehensive patient safety programmes, with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO). -
Content ArticleThis report from the King's Fund looks at the reality of caring for acutely ill medical patients at the NHS front line and asks how care in hospitals can be improved. It comprises a series of essays by frontline clinicians, managers, quality improvement champions and patients, and provides vivid and frank detail about how clinical care is currently provided and how it could be improved. The essays are introduced and summarised by Chris Ham and Don Berwick and the report serves as the starting point of an ongoing appreciative inquiry into improving care processes, particularly for acutely ill medical patients.
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Content ArticleThe guardian of safe working hours ensures that issues of compliance with safe working hours are addressed by the doctor and the employer or host organisation as appropriate. It provides assurance to the board of the employing organisation that doctors' working hours are safe. Access the resources that guardians of safe working hours will need in order to fulfil their roles. It includes, a job role specification, checklist of things to do, templates for annual reports and more.
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Content ArticleMajor new reform of the NHS will not work until Government addresses multiple chronic issues in the service, says the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in a new report. The case has not been made for what improvements Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) will bring to patients, and by when. ICSs are the latest attempt to bring NHS and local government services together to join up services and focus on prevention. But the Committee says the reforms will founder if the major systemic problems in the NHS are not addressed by Government at a national level: the elective care backlog has breached seven million cases for the first time; major workforce issues have hamstrung both the NHS and social care; constantly increasing demand; a crumbling NHS estate; and limits on funding. These challenges require national leadership but there is a worrying lack of oversight in the new system, and crucial national projects like the NHS Workforce Plan and capital funding strategy are repeatedly delayed – what the Committee calls 'paralysis by analysis'. The cost of overdue maintenance has reached £9 billion - £4.5 billion classed as high or significant risk - and there are questions about who gets to keep proceeds of any assets sold under ICSs. Not enough is being done to focus on preventing ill-health, and not enough joint working between government departments to tackle the causes of ill-health. The failure to ensure adequate NHS funded dental care risks creating more acute dental health problems.
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Content ArticleIn this opinion piece for the BMJ, Partha Kar, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology, argues that in spite of extensive research and discussion around the need to tackle race inequalities in the medical workforce, little progress has been made at a system level. He highlights the importance of ensuring the Medical Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) Action Plan is implemented effectively, with special attention being paid to tracking GMC referrals and competency reviews that appear to be based on ethnicity.
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News Article
Three investigations launched into trust beset by bullying and safety scandals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Three “major” reviews are being launched into a struggling teaching trust in response to growing concerns over bullying and poor workplace culture. Birmingham and Solihull integrated care board has begun a series of investigations into University Hospitals Birmingham, whose chief executive announced he was standing down last month. The first review will get under way immediately and will focus on specific allegations made recently on BBC Newsnight. These include patient safety concerns, the “bullying” of clinicians and the issues raised by a review of 12 patient deaths undertaken by former consultant Dr Manos Nikolousis in 2017. It will be led by an “experienced senior independent clinician” from outside the local health system who is expected to report by the end of January. The second and third investigations will review the trust’s leadership and broader cultural issues respectively. The probes will be carried out with UHB and NHS England. Both are expected to report in the first half of 2023. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 December 2022 -
News Article
USA: House Bill establishes Federal Agency dedicated to patient safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Nanette Barragán, US representative for California’s 44th Congressional District, has announced the introduction of new legislation intended to establish a National Patient Safety Board (NPSB) as a non-punitive, collaborative, independent agency to address safety in healthcare. This landmark legislation is a critical step to improve safety for patients and healthcare providers by coordinating existing efforts within a single independent agency solely focused on addressing safety in health care through data-driven solutions. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, medical error was the third leading cause of death in the United States, with conservative estimates of more than 250,000 patients dying annually from preventable medical harm and costs of more than $17 billion to the U.S. healthcare system. Recent data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that patient safety worsened during the pandemic. The NPSB’s solutions would focus on problems like medication errors, wrong-site surgeries, hospital-acquired infections, errors in pathology labs, and issues in transition from acute to long-term care. By leveraging interdisciplinary teams of researchers and new technology, including automated systems with AI algorithms, the NPSB’s solutions would help relieve the burden of data collection at the frontline, while also detecting precursors to harm. A coalition of leaders in health care, technology, business, academia, and other industries has united to call for the establishment of an NPSB. “We have seen many valiant efforts to reduce the problem of preventable medical error, but most of these have relied on the frontline workforce to do the work or take extraordinary precautions,” said Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative and spokesperson for the NPSB Advocacy Coalition. “The pandemic has now made things worse as weary, frustrated, and stressed nurses, doctors, and technicians leave clinical care, resulting in a cycle where harm becomes more prevalent. Many organizations have united to advance a national home for patient safety to promote substantive solutions, including those that deploy modern technologies to make safety as autonomous as possible.” Read full story Source: Business Wire, 8 December 2022 -
News Article
NHSE cuts £1bn from cancer, maternity and primary care funds
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England is raiding a national fund earmarked for improvements in cancer, maternity care and other priority services by up to £1bn this year, to pay for deficits elsewhere, and will cut it by a similar amount in 2023-24, HSJ has learned. The “service development fund” is allocated at the beginning of the year for priority service areas also including primary care, community health, mental health, learning disabilities and health inequalities. Several NHSE directors said it was being tightly squeezed this year, amid major cost pressures from inflation, a pay deal unfunded by government, and higher than expected covid-related costs. One well-placed source said the fund this year was required to underspend by about £1bn against what had been planned, which will help balance overspends elsewhere in the NHS. The cuts are likely to be linked to ministers’ view that the NHS should focus on “core” priorities and cut other activities, including reducing NHSE national programme work which is typically linked to SDF budgets. Patricia Hewitt is looking into giving integrated care systems more “autonomy” from NHSE to set their own priorities. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 December 2022 -
News Article
‘Rubbish’ government Strep A comms blamed for flooding services
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
‘Rubbish’ communications on Group A Strep from government agencies made A&Es more ‘risky’ over the weekend, after services were flooded with the ‘worried well’, several senior provider sources have told HSJ. On Friday the UK Health Security Agency, successor to Public Health England, issued a warning on a higher than usual number of cases after the deaths of five children under 10 in a week. Several senior sources in hospital, 111/ambulance, urgent care and primary care providers, told HSJ they were not warned UKHSA were making an announcement that would also see services flooded by the worried well. NHS England’s clinical lead for integrated urgent care issued a letter, seen by HSJ, saying a “considerable increase” in 111 demand over the weekend was “in part due to Group A Strep concerns”. Sources in the sector said the increase in demand was “heavily” Strep-related. One senior accident and emergency leader told HSJ that when parents could not get through on 111 they brought their children to emergency departments. “The media messaging has been handled terribly”, they added. They added: “Huge numbers of ‘worried well’ makes the A&E a much more dangerous place. We are just not equipped to deal with the volume of patients. [There is a] much greater chance we would miss one seriously unwell child when we are wading through a six-hour queue of viral, but otherwise well, kids.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 December 2022 -
News Article
Dr Ted Baker announced as the new Chair of HSSIB
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Dr Ted Baker has been formally appointed as the new chair of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB). The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP, made the announcement today (1 December 2022). Dr Baker is a retired consultant paediatric cardiologist, and most recently was Chief Inspector of Hospitals at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) between 2017 and 2022. Dr Baker says: “I am delighted to be joining such a ground-breaking organisation. I have been impressed by the quality of the work coming from the HSIB and I am excited to be joining the organisation at such an important time in its history." Source: HSIB, 1 December 2022 -
News Article
NHSE director demands maternity consultants work nights
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The deputy chair of NHS England has said it should be as ‘demanding’ of medical cover in obstetrics and neonatal care as it is for emergency departments, to improve safety in the wake of repeated care scandals. Sir Andrew Morris, who was the long-serving chief executive officer of the well-regarded Frimley Health Foundation Trust, said the service would “expect a consultant to be on duty in an emergency department [from] 8am till 10pm, or midnight, seven days a week”. Speaking at NHS England’s public board meeting yesterday, Sir Andrew said: “We haven’t set that similar expectation out for [maternity care]. I know we’re saying we’re expecting that two ward rounds are undertaken, each day, seven days a week, but that is very different to the service I think is appropriate for this type of semi-emergency operation, that most trusts run. “I’d like us to be as demanding of organisations [in relation to obstetrics and neonatal] as we are for the emergency department.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 December 2022 -
News Article
Doctors raise safety fears at Birmingham hospitals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Whistleblowers at one of England's worst performing hospital trusts have said a climate of fear among staff is putting patients at risk. Former and current clinicians at University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Trust allege they were punished by management for raising safety concerns, a BBC Newsnight investigation found. One insider said the trust was "a bit like the mafia". The trust said it took "patient safety very seriously". It said it had a "high reporting culture of incidents" to ensure accountability and learning. Staff concerns included a dangerous shortage of nurses and a lack of communication leading to some haematology patients dying without receiving treatment. The deaths of 20 patients in the haematology department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is run by the trust, led to a review in 2017 by consultant Emmanouil Nikolousis. Mr Nikolousis, who left the trust in 2020, told the BBC he was shocked by the failings he found and believes patients' lives could have been saved. A report by Mr Nikolousis criticised a lack of "ownership" of patients and a lack of communication among senior clinicians. In some cases this led to patients dying without having received treatment, he said. "Certainly there should have been different actions done," he said. "They could be saved. Certainly, when you don't have an action done, then you don't really know the outcome." Mr Nikolousis said he felt he had no option but to quit after his findings were ignored and his position was made "untenable". He left the NHS after 18 years. "They were trying, as they did with other colleagues, to completely sort of ruin your career," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022 -
News Article
Former vaccines chief sounds warning about UK pandemic readiness
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The UK is not in a significantly better place to deal with a new pandemic, the former vaccine taskforce chief has said, as a leading public health expert suggested Covid infections may be on the rise again. Dame Kate Bingham, the managing partner at the life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors, headed the UK’s vaccine taskforce between May and December 2020. Speaking to a joint session of the Commons health and social care committee and the science and technology committee, about lessons learned during the pandemic, Bingham said many of the initiatives set up by the taskforce had been dismantled, while key recommendations it had provided had not been acted upon. “To begin with, I thought it was lack of experience of officials since we don’t have a lot of people within Whitehall who understand vaccines, relationships with industry, all of that, but actually, I’m beginning to think this is deliberate government policy, just not to invest or not to support the sector,” she said. Among her concerns, Bingham cited the failure to create bulk antibody-manufacturing capabilities in the UK and the proposed termination of the NHS Covid vaccine research registry through which the public could indicate their willingness to participate in clinical trials for Covid vaccines. The decision by the National Institute for Health and Care Research to close the registry was eventually reversed after Robert Jenrick, then a health minister, stepped in. “I am baffled as to the decisions that are being made,” she said. Bingham also raised concerns about the length of time it is taking to agree a contract with Moderna – a US-based company that produces mRNA Covid vaccines – to create a research and development, and manufacturing, facility in the UK. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 November 2022 -
News Article
Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals. The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians. Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust. In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The dropoff has left four major types of medical specialities that have longstanding doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment – failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an ageing population. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2022 -
News Article
Pritchard admits NHS behind on elective catch up
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England’s chief executive has admitted the service is behind on its commitment to increase elective activity to 130% of pre-covid levels by 2025, saying the recovery would need to be ‘reprofiled’ to catch up after this year. Amanda Pritchard told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee that NHS England would need to “re-profile some of the [elective recovery] trajectories”, as progress this year was being hampered by a combination of higher than expected covid rates, flu, workforce challenges and industrial action. She later added that the 2025 target could “theoretically” be missed, but stressed “we are a very long way from that” and indicated she believed the NHS could catch up in future years. Elective recovery plans agreed between NHSE and government last autumn said activity would recover to 110% of pre-covid levels in 2022-23. Yet published data shows many systems have so far been carrying out fewer procedures than before covid in most months. Asked by the committee’s chair Meg Hillier if she was confident the NHS would hit the 2025 activity target, first agreed for the 2021 spending settlement, Ms Pritchard replied: “I think at the moment we are absolutely aiming [to hit the target] at the end of that period of time, but we do recognise that we are going to need to re-profile trajectories to get there.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 November 2022
