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Showing results for tags 'Pandemic'.
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Content ArticleIn this blog for the Nursing Times, Fiona Hibberts, head of the Nightingale Academy and consultant nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, discusses the importance of huddles in improving patient safety and care, and in providing emotional support for staff. The author describes a huddle as "a gathering of key individuals, at a given time, to briefly discuss safety aspects of care of a group of patients in real time, escalate concerns and make plans," and highlights their importance for staff morale during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Content ArticleEarly in the pandemic, the UK government recognised that certain patients with complex medical conditions, or who were immuno-suppressed through disease or medication, would be most at risk from the complications of COVID-19. These patients were advised to take careful infection control precautions, and were classed as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV). Among the advice given to them was to “shield” and to facilitate this, they were added to a “Shielding Patients List” (SPL) at their GP practices. Despite GP practices having robust disease registers and arranging seasonal flu vaccine recalls annually for mostly similar patients, NHS England decided to create centrally generated lists for CEV, and sent out letters to these patients. Unfortunately, NHS Digital wrote to many patients who probably should not have been included as CEV (for example those with a history of glandular fever; or with long resolved and fully treated cancers in full remission), and also failed to include many patients who should have been classed as CEV. Simon Hodes and Azeem Majeed look at the UK government's communication of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.
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Content ArticleWhen the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, it is likely to show that the mental models held by scientists sometimes facilitated their thinking, thereby leading to lives saved, and at other times constrained their thinking, thereby leading to lives lost. This paper from Trisha Greenhalgh explores some competing mental models of how infectious diseases spread and shows how these models influenced the scientific process and the kinds of facts that were generated, legitimised and used to support policy.
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Content ArticleA new report from two House of Commons committees highlights the UK’s failed pandemic response. Martin McKee, professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, unpicks the findings.
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Content ArticleFollowing the major disruption to postgraduate medical education during the last year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Health Education England (HEE) has worked with NHS England & NHS Improvement, NHS Employers, the Department of Health and Social Care, the General Medical Council, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, and others to support training recovery as an urgent priority and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on doctors in training.
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Content ArticleThis guide provides guidance for hospital clinical staff and managers in the secondary care of COVID-19 patients, based on the experience of hospital trusts that performed well during the early phase of the pandemic. It summarises the challenges faced by, and responses of, several high performing trusts visited as part of the GIRFT cross-specialty COVID-19 deep dives, as well as identifying successful innovations they implemented.
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Content ArticleA major report from a year-long joint inquiry by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee has now been published and offers a forensic analysis of six aspects of the government’s response to covid. Chris Ham is chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care System, Co-Chair of the NHS Assembly and non-executive director of the Royal Free London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and gave evidence to the inquiry. In this BMJ Opinion article, Chris discusses the report, the recommendations and the omissions.
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The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and Health and Social Care Committee have published their Report following a joint inquiry, which began in October 2020, examining six key areas of the UK's response to COVID-19: the country's preparedness for a pandemic; the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as border controls, social distancing and lockdowns to control the pandemic; the use of test, trace and isolate strategies; the impact of the pandemic on social care; the impact of the pandemic on specific communities; and the procurement and roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines. The 150-page Report contains 38 recommendations to the Government and public bodies, and draws on evidence from over 50 witnesses as well as over 400 written submissions. The inquiry concluded that some initiatives were examples of global best practice but others represented mistakes. Both must be reflected on to ensure that lessons are applied to better inform future responses to emergencies. -
Content ArticleThis video presents some highlights of the HSJ Patient Safety Awards on 20 September 2021 at Manchester Central, and includes short interviews with some of the judges and award winners. The HSJ Patient Safety Awards were set up to recognise and celebrate projects that improve patient safety and quality of care. This year, the judges commented that nominees across 23 categories were all of a very high quality and presented innovative projects that made real improvements to patient safety in the NHS. "The quality of this year was quite phenomenal - we were really impressed at how inventive people had been in coming up with solutions to COVID as part of safety strategies," said Lesley Durham, President of the International Society of Rapid Response Systems and member of the awards judging panel. The awards showcase excellent projects and ways of working that have potential to be replicated in other areas. A team from Devon Partnership Trust/Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust won the award for Mental Health Initiative of the Year for their project 'Connecting physical and mental health services in Gastroenterology'. A representative from the team said, "What we want to do now is take this, shout about it and make it happen elsewhere." Many award winners commented on the importance of teamwork across services and trusts and recognised that collaboration was a key part of the success of their projects. View the full list of award winners
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Content ArticleThis systematic review published in BMJ Global Health looks to identify the nature, frequency and causes of long-COVID symptoms by reviewing data from existing research studies into long-COVID. It aims to regularly synthesise evidence on long-COVID characteristics to help improve long-term outcomes. From the data provided by 39 studies, the review found that: long-COVID affects both patients who were hospitalised and those managed in the community patients with long-COVID display a wide range of symptoms including weakness, general malaise, fatigue, concentration impairment and breathlessness research currently available on long-COVID is vulnerable to bias, so caution should be used when interpreting data. The authors also identify areas where further research is needed to help define long-COVID symptoms, identify risk factors for different populations and assess the impact of variants of concern and vaccination on long-term outcomes.
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Content ArticleThis study in Jama Network Open examines the health outcomes of patients who were hospitalised with COVID-19 in two Wuhan hospitals between February and April 2020. The authors found that: 45 percent of patients reported at least one symptom one year after hospitalisation the most common symptoms that patients reported were fatigue, sweating, chest tightness, anxiety and muscle pain patients who experienced severe disease during hospitalisation were more likely to experience more symptoms of long-COVID one year on patients who experienced severe disease were likely to have higher chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) assessment test scores that patients with less severe disease.
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Content ArticleThis report by Charles River Laboratories looks at the results of a survey of more than 1,500 Americans conducted in May 2021 by The Harris Poll. The survey showed that 64% respondents believed that closer collaboration between industry organisations would lead to higher quality healthcare. The report contains data on: patient views about the state of the US healthcare system how much patients know about drug and vaccine development processes patient attitudes towards the US Food & Drugs Administration (FDA) how the COVID-19 pandemic has increased collaboration in healthcare.
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Content ArticleThis report by The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust identifies successes and areas for improvement in the Trust's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic resulted in rapid and large-scale changes to ways of working and this report recognises that staff were largely responsive and adaptable to these changes in challenging circumstances. The report looks at learning and recommendations from: the Duty of Candour exercise carried out for patients who contracted COVID-19 in hospital the Trust's clinical teams.
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Content ArticleA new analysis of the risks and benefits of offering two doses of COVID-19 vaccination to all 12-17 year olds in England shows that the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, given the current high case rates. In the UK currently a single dose of vaccine is recommended for all 12-17 year olds. The research, which is in press with the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, estimates hospital and ICU admissions, deaths and cases of long COVID averted over a 16-week period by vaccinating all 12-17 year olds in England. The analysis includes high and low case rate scenarios.
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Content ArticleThis study, published online by Cambridge University Press, looks at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on incidences of healthcare-associated infection in hospitals in the United States of America. The authors analyse events reported to the National Healthcare Safety Network for 2019 and 2020 by acute-care hospitals.
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Content ArticleOn 24 March 2021, an investigation into the death of Hazel Fleur Wiltshire was opened. The conclusion of the inquest was that Mrs Wiltshire died from pneumonia caused by a fall and by COVID-19 that she acquired in hospital. The fall was caused by her trying to relieve herself without assistance in the context of long delays in answering calls bells at the time.
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Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed the respiratory isolation capacity in hospitals; many wards lacking high-frequency air changes have been repurposed for managing patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 requiring either standard or intensive care. Hospital-acquired COVID-19 is a recognised problem amongst both patients and staff, with growing evidence for the relevance of airborne transmission. This study from Conway-Morris et al. examined the effect of air filtration and ultra-violet (UV) light sterilisation on detectable airborne SARS-CoV-2 and other microbial bioaerosols.
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Content ArticleUK prime minister Boris Johnson recently announced a fuzzy blueprint for his “winter plan”, in which further lockdowns and compulsory mask-wearing were not being introduced but could not be ruled out. In a blog to the Conversation, Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, offers an alternative blueprint.
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Content ArticleThis whitepaper takes a deeper look at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on mental health services, outlining some immediate actions taken as a result of increased needs to meet mental health demands. These are further broken down according to distinct stakeholders across the spectrum of mental healthcare. Importantly, the research that backs SilverCloud’s digital mental health solution is presented, as providing an evidence-backed solution is key to offering and implementing treatments. Further, this whitepaper explains some of the key considerations that are essential for integrating internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (iCBT) within a wider delivery of mental health support in the future. A series of recommendations is made for reshaping the delivery of digital mental health therapy to create technology-enabled mental health services and processes, addressing current inequalities, and with built-in flexibility to withstand those challenges.
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Content ArticleThe coronavirus has a high incidence of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Many patients infected with COVID-19 need to be admitted to the ICU for invasive ventilation. They are also at a high risk of developing secondary, ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
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Content ArticleThe primary objective of this multicenter, observational, retrospective study from Giacobbe et al. was to assess the incidence rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in intensive care units (ICU). The secondary objective was to assess predictors of 30-day case-fatality of VAP.
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In this video, Helen Hughes, Chief Executive of Patient Safety Learning, speaks to Phil Taylor, Chief Product Officer at RLDatix, about the importance of culture in achieving high reliability in healthcare. They discuss the impact of culture on incident reporting, examples of where safety culture is key to making improvements and consider what is needed to create the right safety culture. -
Content ArticleTwo new factsheets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are intended to help healthcare workers, managers and purchase agents ensure the safe handling and disposal of sharps during the US's COVID-19 mass vaccination effort.
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Content ArticleWhile COVID-19 has worsened patient waiting times across the NHS, patients with pelvic disorders have long been an under-served population experiencing unacceptable delays in care. Pelvic floor disorders are varied and can be complex, but treatment is available. However, patients, particularly those requiring surgery, can wait years from presentation before receiving the treatment they need.
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Content ArticleREACT-1 is the largest population surveillance study being undertaken in England that examines the prevalence of the virus causing COVID-19 in the general population. It uses test results and feedback from over 150,000 participants each month. The findings will provide the government with a better understanding of the virus’s transmission and the risks associated with different population subgroups throughout England. This will inform government policies to protect health and save lives.
