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Content Article
Pieces: Claudia's story of a serious incident
Patient_Safety_Learning posted an article in Maternity
This digital story produced by Patient Voices, hears from Claudia who reflects on the unexpected death of a baby she helped care for in hospital. Claudia describes her own and her team's emotions as they debriefed and embarked on their serious incident report. -
Content ArticleThis debate was requested by Barbara Keeley MP of Worsley and Eccles South, following the death of Emily Chesterton, the daughter of her constituents Marion and Brendan Chesterton. Emily died in November 2022 after suffering a pulmonary embolism. She was just 30 years old when she died. The conclusion of the coroner was: “Emily Chesterton died from a pulmonary embolism, a natural cause of death. She attended her general practitioner surgery on the mornings of 31 October and 7 November 2022 with calf pain and shortness of breath, and was seen by the same physician associate on both occasions. She should have been immediately referred to a hospital emergency unit. If she had been on either occasion, the likelihood is that she would have been treated for pulmonary embolism and would have survived.”
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Content ArticleThis is an oral statement given to the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Steve Barclay MP, to update on the Lucy Letby statutory inquiry.
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Content ArticleTwo years after his 13-year-old child died needlessly in hospital, Paul Laity reflects on life without her. Martha Mills died of septic shock due to a series of serious failures in her care after she injured her pancreas in a cycling accident. Her father Paul talks about the ongoing pain of grief, and the additional burden of knowing that Martha's death was preventable, caused by the complacency of her doctors and a culture in the hospital that meant consultants were reluctant to ask expert advice from paediatric ICU. "Martha’s avoidable death was unusual in that the prime causes weren’t overwork or a lack of resources, but complacency, overconfidence and the culture on the ward. What upsets me most was that the consultants – a different one most days – took a punt that she was going to be OK over the weekend. No one assumed responsibility; they hoped for the best rather than playing safe. Was everything done for Martha that could have been done? Emphatically not. It’s very hard to live with this knowledge. But just as hard is the recognition that I, too, didn’t do enough." Further reading ‘We had such trust, we feel such fools’: how shocking hospital mistakes led to our daughter’s death (The Guardian, 3 September 2022) Prevention of Future Deaths Report: Martha Mills (28 February 2022)
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Content ArticleIn this letter, Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, calls on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Steve Barclay MP, to prioritise improving patient safety in the wake of the Lucy Letby trial.
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Content Article
On 18 August 2023, Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Looking ahead to the forthcoming independent inquiry into this case, Patient Safety Learning, reflecting on the inquiries of the past, sets out some key patient safety themes and issues that should be considered as part of this.- Posted
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Content ArticleFollowing the Lucy Letby case, letters to the Times discuss workplace rights and safety in hospitals. Keith Conradi, former chief investigator, Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, highlights a current NHS workforce too frightened to raise safety concerns, working in a toxic and bullying culture, where the predominance of HR approaches undermine the culture of safety. And Andrew Harris, professor of coronial law, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Marys University London, writes that there is a duty on medical practitioners to report the circumstances of a death and not to limit disclosure to avoid investigation. In his letter he questions whether medical examiners across the country are acting independently of their trusts and properly notifying such cases.
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Content ArticleWe now know that Lucy Letby is a murderer, responsible for the deaths of seven babies and the attempted murders of six more. But as unimaginable as her crimes were, this verdict raises as many questions as it answers. Letby was not working in a vacuum. Could the killings at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have been stopped sooner? Did organisational failures cost the lives of babies who could have been protected? The timeline gives us a clue, writes Minh Alexander, a retired consultant psychiatrist and NHS whistleblower, in this Guardian opinion piece. In June 2016, Letby’s hospital trust commissioned a review of neonatal care by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health after “concerns about increasing neonatal mortality”, which oddly did not feature a case-note review. This prevented detailed examination of the deaths, which should have been the prime objective. The college reported “extremely positive relationships” among staff but “remote” relationships with executives. Astonishingly, the college’s report seemingly did not explicitly acknowledge a possibility of deliberate harm. Nevertheless, the college raised concern that not all deaths were followed by postmortem investigations – as they should have been, according to guidelines – and that where postmortems did take place, they did not include systematic blood tests and toxicology. It noted concerns from obstetrics staff about four unexpected deaths. In the coming days, there will be many questions. Why did it take so long for the hospital to refer matters to the police? Were doctors pressured not to persist with their concerns about Letby? How many trust board members knew there was a possibility of deliberate harm but failed to act?
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Content ArticleThis study in the Journal of Medical Virology aimed to assess the extent and the disparity in excess acute myocardial infarction (AMI)-associated mortality during the pandemic, focusing on the outbreak of the Omicron strain. Using data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Vital Statistics System, the authors found that excess death, defined as the difference between the observed and the predicted mortality rates, was most pronounced for the 25–44 years age group. Excess deaths ranged from 23%–34% for the youngest compared to 13%–18% for the oldest age groups. The trend of mortality suggests that age and sex disparities have persisted even through the Omicron surge, with excess AMI-associated mortality being most pronounced in younger-aged adults.
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Content ArticlePublicly available data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) shows a persistently high number of excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease (CVD) in England since the beginning of the pandemic. This analysis of by the British Heart Foundation looks at this situation in more detail.
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Content ArticleOn the 20 February 2019 an investigation commenced into the death of Bethan Naomi Harris who was born on the 16 November 2018 at the St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Bethan Naomi Harris died at Shooting Star Hospice on the 26 November 2018. Her mother's pregnancy had been uneventful. After admission to labour ward labour progressed very quickly indeed and Bethan sustained severe brain injury during delivery. Despite best efforts by the neonatal team she succumbed to her injuries. The Investigation concluded at the end of the Inquest on the 19 November 2019. The conclusion of the inquest was that the medical cause of Bethan's death was (1a) hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy.
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Content ArticleBabies would have survived if hospital executives had acted earlier on concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, a senior doctor who raised the alarm has said. In an exclusive Guardian interview, Dr Stephen Brearey accused the Countess of Chester hospital trust of being “negligent” and failing to properly address concerns he and other doctors raised about Letby as she carried out her killings. Brearey was the first to alert a hospital executive to the fact that Letby was present at unusual deaths and collapses of babies in June 2015. The paediatrician and his consultant colleagues raised concerns multiple times over months before Letby, then 26, was finally removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016. The police were contacted almost a year later, in May 2017. Speaking publicly for the first time, Brearey told the Guardian that executives should have contacted the police in February 2016 when he escalated concerns about Letby and asked for an urgent meeting.
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Content ArticleThis procedure describes the Trust wide process of retrospective case review that is to be implemented following an in-hospital death. The document outlines roles and responsibilities and provides guidance on the process of identifying, reviewing, sharing and escalating mortality case reviews.
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Content ArticleThis policy sets out a framework describing how the Trust and its staff will respond to and learn from deaths that occur under their care.It will provide guidance for all staff involved in the mortality review process ensuring clarity on roles, responsibilities and expectations. Reviewing mortality can help make improvements to the quality of care received by patients at the Trust by identifying care related issues. This enables the identification of learning themes and provides evidence of a high standard of care. Mortality is a fundamental component of clinical effectiveness, one of the three dimensions of quality described by Lord Darzi in High Quality Care for all (2008). The Trusts aims are to: Have continuous improvement of our Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios (HSMR) and the Trusts Standardised Hospital-Level Mortality Index (SHMI) Achieve a year-on-year reduction in avoidable mortality Improve learning from mortality reviews Ensure robust and timely governance processes regarding mortality outcomes and reviews Provide assurance of mortality processes in the Trust.
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Content ArticleThe objective of this study, published in the BMJ, was to determine the proportion of avoidable deaths (due to acts of omission and commission) in acute hospital trusts in England and to determine the association with the trust’s hospital-wide standardised mortality ratio assessed using the two commonly used methods - the hospital standardised mortality ratio (HSMR) and the summary hospital level mortality indicator (SHMI). Authors conclude that reviews of individual deaths should focus on identifying ways of improving the quality of care, whereas the use of standardised mortality ratios should be restricted to assessing the quality of care for conditions with high case fatality for which good quality clinical data exist.
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Content ArticleAt the time of her death, Heather Findlay, aged 28 years, was in the care of the East London Foundation Trust (ELFT), detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act at Mile End Hospital. At approximately 3pm on 11 June 2020, she was on s17 escorted leave, standing with a healthcare assistant (HCA) at the front gates of the hospital having a cigarette, when she turned to the HCA, said “I’m sorry I have to do this to you” and ran away. ELFT contacted the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at 3.17pm, but by 3.58pm, Ms Findlay had been found by a member of the public in a nearby park. At inquest, the jury came to a conclusion of death by suicide and giving a medical cause of death of: 1a hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy 1b sodium nitrate toxicity.
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Content ArticleWales' national policy on patient safety incident reporting and management.
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A vision for improving the care and support available to families when baby loss occurs before 24 weeks' gestation. -
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This policy paper from the Department of Health and Social Care sets out the Government’s response to the recommendations of the Independent Investigation into East Kent Maternity services. -
Community PostI’ve just been listening to the 10 o’clock news tonight and it has been covering the report into Paterson, the breast surgeon who may have needlessly operated on thousands on women. One of the recommendations is that patient safety should be a ‘top priority’ across the NHS (again!!). Another interesting recommendation is that the NHS (and private healthcare providers) need to be better at sharing information about medical staff. Currently, medical staff seem to be able to be investigated in one hospital, and then move to another without any of their history following them. Maybe we need some sort of central system, like Doctify for employers? What do you think?
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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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Community Post
Unexpected deaths in patients known to Mental Health Services
Catherine Evans posted a topic in Investigations, risk management and legal issues
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Does anyone have examples of templates they use for reviewing unexpected deaths in the community of patients known to mental health services?- Posted
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Content ArticleFood allergy affects around 7-8% of children worldwide, or about two children in an average-sized classroom. As children spend at least 20% of their waking hours in school, it is not surprising that data show that 18% of food allergy reactions and 25% of first-time anaphylactic reactions occur at school. This report by the Benedict Blythe Foundations looks at the prevalence and seriousness of allergies in school-aged children, and the devastating consequences when things go wrong at school.
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Content ArticleNHS England commissioned a limited scope independent review into patient safety concerns and governance processes related to the North East Ambulance Service. Chaired by Dame Marianne Griffiths DBE, the review considered the facts surrounding a number of individual cases, reviewed the processes surrounding coronial investigations and reviewed the seven previous investigations and reviews undertaken by the ambulance service to determine if they were sufficient to fully understand and resolve issues.
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Content ArticleGloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust introduced a policy for reviewing deaths in 2017 based on the structured judgement review (SJR) methodology, which identified triggers for which deaths to review. To support implementation, the Datix system was modified to report deaths. The new tool required a culture change in how mortality was reviewed and raised concerns regarding responsibilities, workload and resource. This webpage and poster describe the quality improvement process and how these issues were overcome.
