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Content ArticleThis article describes how Never Events (NE) are serious clinical incidents that cause harm to patients. The authors analysed data from NHS England to categorise themes and identify common NE. Their results revealed 51 common NE themes in four main categories out of a total of 3247 between 2012 and 2020, identifying wrong-site surgery as the most common category. The authors conclude that with this research, awareness may help to reduce the amount of incidences in the future.
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Content ArticleIn February 2021, the list of never events was updated to exclude wrong tooth extraction, as the systemic barriers to prevent these incidents were not considered ‘strong enough.’ In this article, published in the British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, authors discuss the matter, and provide some recommendations to minimise the risk of wrong tooth extraction.
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Content ArticleNever Events are defined by the NHS as patient safety incidents that are wholly preventable where guidance or safety recommendations that provide strong systemic protective barriers are available at a national level and have been implemented by healthcare providers. This study considers how effective using of the absolute number of Never Events that take place at English hospital trusts, without accounting for hospital workload, is for judging their underlying safety performance and safety culture. In its conclusions the authors suggest that there are flaws in the current approach regulators take to using Never Events data to judge hospital performance.
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Content ArticleDespite widespread recognition and known harms, serious surgical errors, known as surgical never events, endure. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has developed an oversight system to capture never events and a platform for process improvement that has not yet been critically appraised. This study examined surgical never events occurring in hospitals in California and summarize recommendations to prevent future events.
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Content ArticleA surgical fire is one that occurs in, on or around a patient undergoing a surgical procedure and is an internationally recognised patient safety issue. On 16 December 2021, Members of Parliament held a general debate on preventing surgical fires in Westminster Hall. In this article, the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) sets out its response to issues raised in the debate.
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Content ArticleThis is a debate from the House of Commons on 16 December 2021 on the issue of preventing surgical fires in the NHS.
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Event
Human factors in operating theatres
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
Understanding human factors will allow surgical teams to enhance performance, culture and organisation of operating theatres. This one day masterclass will concentrate on human factors within the operating room. This is aimed at all theatre staff. It will look at why things go wrong and how to implement change to prevent it from happening again or mitigate the risks. This Masterclass will focus on systems to improve patient safety as well as looking at never events and how to learn from them using a human factors approach. Key learning objectives: Safety culture Human factors Leadership Never events This masterclass is aimed at all theatre staff. Register hub members receive 20% discount using code hcuk20kh.- Posted
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Learning from Never Events
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
Never events are defined as “serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if healthcare providers have implemented existing national guidance or safety recommendations.” They are designed to act as a red flag for improvement by NHS organisations. This one day masterclass will focus on safety culture around Never Events within healthcare organisations. There were 364 never events in 2020/21 and 349 between April 2021 and Jan 2022. The masterclass will look at how Never Events have been investigated and at Human Factors approaches to improving learning and the systems to reduce harm. It will compare our experiences with learning from serious incidents from other countries. For further information and to book your place visit https://www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/conferences-masterclasses/learning-from-never-events or email kate@hc-uk.org.uk. hub members receive a 20% discount, Email info@pslhub.org for discount code.- Posted
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Champion clinicians in building AI for surgical safety
Yesh posted a topic in Artificial Intelligence
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Subject: Looking for Clinical Champions (Patient Safety Managers, Risk Managers, Nurses, Frontline clinical staff) to join AI startup Hello colleagues, I am Yesh. I am the founder and CEO of Scalpel. <www.scalpel.ai> We are on a mission to make surgery safer and more efficient with ZERO preventable incidents across the globe. We are building an AI (artificially intelligent) assistant for surgical teams so that they can perform safer and more efficient operations. (I know AI is vaguely used everywhere these days, to be very specific, we use a sensor fusion approach and deploy Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and Data Analytics in the operating room to address preventable patient safety incidents in surgery.) We have been working for multiple NHS trusts including Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow for the past two years. For a successful adoption of our technology into the wider healthcare ecosystem, we are looking for champion clinicians who have a deeper understanding of the pitfalls in the current surgical safety protocols, innovation process in healthcare and would like to make a true difference with cutting edge technology. You will be part of a collaborative and growing team of engineers and data scientists based in our central London office. This role is an opportunity for you to collaborate in making a difference in billions of lives that lack access to safe surgery. Please contact me for further details. Thank you Yesh yesh@scalpel.ai- Posted
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Content ArticleWales' national policy on patient safety incident reporting and management.
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Content ArticleOn Monday 10 July 2023 the Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) and Patient Safety Learning jointly hosted a webinar on the new National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures 2 (NatSSIPs 2). This article contains links to video recordings of this webinar.
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Community Post
The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework
Jon Holt posted a topic in Investigations, risk management and legal issues
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Hi The new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework is due for publication this month for early adopters and as 'introductory guidance' for everyone else: https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/about-new-patient-safety-incident-response-framework/ I wondered if there is anyone who is involved in an organisation that is an early adopter who can share what has happened so far and also would be willing to share any local learning as the new framework is implemented? Also, more generally wondered if anyone has any initial comments on the proposals which were mentioned in the NHS patient safety strategy and any things in particular which they think will bring benefit or could represent significant challenges or issues?- Posted
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Content ArticleThe extent to which postintensive care unit (ICU) clinics may improve patient safety for those discharged after receiving intensive care remains unclear. This observational cohort study from Karlick et al., conducted at an academic, tertiary care medical centre, used qualitative survey data analysed via conventional content analysis to describe patient safety threats encountered in the post-ICU clinic. For 83 included patients, safety threats were identified for 60 patients resulting in 96 separate safety threats. These were categorised into 7 themes: medication errors (27%); inadequate medical follow-up (25%); inadequate patient support (16%); high-risk behaviours (5%); medical complications (5%); equipment/supplies failures (4%); and other (18%). Of the 96 safety threats, 41% were preventable, 27% ameliorable, and 32% were neither preventable nor ameliorable. Nearly 3 out of 4 patients within a post-ICU clinic had an identifiable safety threat. Medication errors and delayed medical follow-up were the most common safety threats identified; most were either preventable or ameliorable.
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Content Article
PIT stop (prosthesis/implant timeout) checklist
Nigel Roberts posted an article in Surgery
The PIT stop (prosthesis/implant timeout) checklist is Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Trust's visual and aid memoir. It was launched to limit 'human error' and thus preventing never events (wrong implant/prosthesis). The four steps cover the intra-operative stages when implants are required. It works by recording what is requested on a small, hand held white board, and works in harness with the NatSSIPs 8, specifically step 5 of the infographic that has been previously developed.- Posted
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Content ArticleTony Clarke suffered from a chronic inflammatory skin disease, hidradenitis suppurativa. In September 2020, Tony underwent surgery to remove infected tissue on one side of his body. When he entered the operating theatre, Tony’s surgical team first covered part of his body with an alcohol-based solution, to keep the area clean. Then, when the operation began, the surgeons began cutting off the infected tissue using a diathermy pen, a device that targets electrically-induced heat to stop wounds from bleeding. However, shortly into the surgery, disaster struck: heat from the surgical pen had ignited the alcohol on Tony’s body. “But because alcohol burns so hot, no fire was seen,” says Tony, recalling an explanation he later received from the hospital. “The surgeons were concentrating on the right side of my body. The left side was left burning for about 20 minutes.” For the next four months, Tony travelled back to the hospital every three days, to get his injuries checked and bandages changed. During that time, Tony describes himself as ‘totally disabled.’ In September this year, Tony, as a patient ambassador for prevention of surgical fires, spoke at a conference held in York by the Association for Perioperative Practice (AFPP). There, perioperative practitioners from across the country gathered to listen to Tony’s experience. “I was speaking to lots and lots of different professionals in the medical service and they'd never heard of it [being set on fire during surgery]. It was a rarity for them,” Tony says. Tony’s now working with different health agencies, with the aim of stopping preventable surgical burns entirely.
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Content ArticleThis paper from Roberts et al. examines the application of the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) within NHS hospital operating theatres England. The aim of the study, through a combination of open-ended questions, was to solicit specific information including views and opinions from operating theatre experts to establish from how the World Health Organisations (WHO) SSC is being applied, and therefore and why intraoperative ‘Never Events’ continue to occur more than a decade after the SSC was introduced. Participants were from the seven regions identified by NHS England. The intention of this paper is not to establish definitively whether the quantitatively identified themes; including a lack of training and engagement with human factors explains the increased presence of intraoperative ‘Never Events’. However, these themes, when subjected to methodological triangulation with the current literature, do appear consistent, and therefore provide an exploratory approach to inform research intended to improve safety in the operating theatre by informing policy and its application to safe practice ultimately towards quality improvements.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, After Action Review (AAR) specialist Judy Walker shares an account of a successful AAR that took place amongst a surgical team. The AAR was called after a near-miss where the anaesthetist was prevented from injecting spinal block medication into the wrong side of a patient's spine by an operating department practitioner (ODP). The story demonstrates the benefits of AAR, including accelerated learning, a no-blame approach, flattening staff hierarchy and a significant reduction in the time it takes to investigate an incident.
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News Article
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust told it must improve
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Changes must be made across services at one of England's biggest NHS trusts following its first wide-ranging inspection, a health watchdog said. Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust - which runs Basildon, Southend and Broomfield hospitals - has been rated as "requires improvement". The Care Quality Commission (CQC) turned up unannounced after concerns over standards were raised. Philippa Styles, the CQC's head of hospital inspection, said they "found a mixed picture" of positive improvements and areas of concern. "Following the trust's formation in 2020, leaders should now be able to work together effectively to ensure care is consistent across all services," she said. "I recognise the enormous pressure NHS services are under... and that usual expectations cannot always be maintained, especially in the urgent and emergency department, but it is important they do all they can to mitigate risks to patient safety." The report said: Patients had not always been protected from harm. Staff had not all received mandatory training. There had been nine "never-should-happen" medical events. Records were sometimes inaccurate and not kept securely. Nursing and medical staffing was a "challenge across the trust", with shifts regularly below planned staffing numbers. There had been a high number of whistle-blowers raising concerns. Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2021- Posted
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News ArticleNHS guidance ‘too long to read,’ say hospital staff as safety watchdog exposes systemic risks to patients. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) revealed some NHS staff had admitted not reading official guidance on how to avoid the ‘never event’ error as part of a new report identifying deeper systemic problems that it said left patients at an increased risk. The independent body warned patients across the NHS remained vulnerable to being injured or even killed by the error that keeps happening in hospitals despite warnings and safety alerts over the last 15 years. HSIB launched a national investigation into the problem of misplaced nasogastric (NG) tubes after a 26-year-old man had 1,450ml of liquid feed fed into his lungs in December 2018 after a bike accident. The patient recovered but the error was not spotted, even after an X-ray. Read full story Source: The Independent, 17 December 2020
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News Article
Trusts warned they are being ‘complacent’ on A&E over-crowding
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Emergency medics are writing to hospital chief executives warning them that some trusts are being ‘complacent’ about crowding in A&E, they have told HSJ. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) is sending a letter to trust chiefs today calling on them to urgently plan for how they will stop corridor waits and exit blocking ahead of January and February, typically the busiest months. It says some trusts were not treating emergency department crowding as a “high priority”, despite covid risks and pressures. It is also calling for overcrowding in the emergency department (ED) to be classed as a “never event” — a set of major safety risks. RCEM’s concern comes amid apprehension over long ambulance queues at hospitals across the UK, and difficulties enabling social distancing between patients in many EDs. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 3 November 2020- Posted
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News Article
Cluster of never events has sparked ‘great deal of soul searching’ says trust CEO
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An acute trust’s record of eight never events in the last six months has raised concerns that quality standards have slipped since it was taken out of special measures. The never events occurred at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust. They included three wrong site surgeries within the same speciality and an extremely rare incident in which a 30cm (15 inch) wire was left in a cardiology patient. Kate Shields, chief executive of the trust, said the incidents have led to a “great deal of soul searching”. Prior to the incidents the trust had gone 13 months without recording a never event, and Ms Shield acknowledged that pressure created by the pandemic was likely to have been a contributing factor behind the cluster of never events. She stressed that none of the patients affected had suffered physical harm. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 November 2020- Posted
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News ArticleA trust which had four ‘never events’ where patients were connected to air rather than an oxygen supply could have avoided them if it had been more proactive when a national patient safety alert was sent out several years earlier, a report has found. In one case, a baby being investigated for sepsis had oxygen saturation levels of just 75% before the mistake was realised. In another, a woman with COPD and pneumonia had oxygen saturation at 80% when she was connected to the air outlet. Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust asked the Royal College of Physicians to carry out an invited review after the four never events at Calderdale Royal Hospital in 2018 and 2019. The earliest incident happened in February 2018 but was not identified until a retrospective audit nearly a year later. The RCP’s report said that, had this been identified earlier, “steps could have been put in place to avoid such incidents from subsequently occurring”. But it added: “All four never events could have been avoided if the trust had responded more proactively to the previous NHS Improvement patient safety alert about the dangers of erroneously connecting patients to air instead of oxygen and had subsequently restricted access to air outlets.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 November 2020
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News ArticleAn external review has been launched at a leading children’s hospital after a series of “never events”. According to local commissioners, a review by the Association for Perioperative Practitioners will look into seven incidents at Alder Hey Children’s Foundation Trust over the last two years. The probe had been delayed by the pandemic and began this month. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children FT and Sheffield Children’s FT, the two other dedicated children’s trusts in England, reported one and four never events respectively, between April 2018 and July 2020, according to national data. In a statement, Alder Hey claimed it could not provide further details of the incidents. But most have been described in its board papers over the past year. They include a 15-year-old who had the wrong tooth removed by the surgical division, a patient who had the wrong eye operated on, a swab that was left inside a patient having their adenoids and tonsils removed, and an incorrect implant being inserted into an orthopaedics patient. Liverpool Clinical Commissioning’s group’s board papers for September said: “The trust has had a series of seven never events and there is a plan to undertake an external review that has been delayed due to the pandemic response. The trust has approached the Association for Perioperative Practitioners and have agreed the process." “The trust also plans to work with Imperial College London on a peer review and bespoke human factors training to include simulation training and coaching. The trust also plans to produce an overarching action plan to bring together the themes and learning from the seven never events. This work is still underway and NHSE/I and CCG had requested a copy of this plan.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 24 September 2020
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News Article
Trust warned by regulator after cluster of never events
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The Care Quality Commission has ordered immediate improvements to a trust after it reported six never events inside eight months. The watchdog has issued a warning notice to Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust after it carried out an announced inspection which focused on the trust’s surgical care group – where six never events had occurred between February and October last year. In November, HSJ reported that a total of eight never events had been recorded in 2020, with trust chief executive Kate Shields saying it had raised fears the trust had not fully embedded safety improvements initiated as part of the special measures regime. The inspectors visited three of the trust’s sites where the never events had happened. These were: Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, St Michael’s Hospital in Hayle and West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance. The inspectors reported that governance processes were “not effective enough” to ensure that changes were made across the trust, and that lessons from incidents and near misses were “not shared with the whole team and wider service to ensure patient safety”. Their report also stated the trust’s safety checklist for surgical procedures had improved but was not fully compliant with the World Health Organisation’s standards. However, the CQC found staff apologised and provided patients with information when things had gone wrong, and that there was an open culture in which staff felt able to raise concerns. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 February 2021- Posted
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Multiple whistleblowers flag ‘heartbreaking’ incidents at major trust
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Clinicians within a major teaching hospital’s cancer services have raised multiple concerns over patient safety, which they believe have resulted from badly planned service changes in response to the covid crisis. HSJ has spoken to several staff members who have worked in the haematology speciality at University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust since last June, when the services underwent significant changes to free up capacity for coronavirus patients. This involved most haematology services at Heartlands Hospital in east Birmingham moving to the trust’s main Queen Elizabeth Hospital site in Edgbaston. The staff, who all wished to remain anonymous, told HSJ the transfer happened at just one week’s notice and was poorly planned. Once implemented, they said QEH’s newly enlarged service suffered from extreme staffing shortages, leading to several “never events”, such as patients being given the wrong blood type. In one resignation letter, a nurse who had transferred to QEH told managers patients’ “basic care needs are not being met”. The nurse said most shifts were understaffed, with examples of three nurses looking after 30 patients and added in the resignation letter: “I am witnessing strong and knowledgeable colleagues breaking down on each shift. “Furthermore, never events are happening at an alarming rate, necessary resources are commonly unavailable and communication between all levels of seniority is poor…" Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 February 2021- Posted
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