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Found 290 results
  1. News Article
    A leading consultant has warned that poor care is at the root of a growing outcry over an invasive medical test that has left women in agony. Dr Helgi Johannsson, vice-president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, has spoken out about the hysteroscopy after the Sunday Mail revealed the suffering of a series of female patients. His intervention comes amid a growing backlash around the procedure used to investigate and treat problems in the womb, with more than 3000 women now reporting being left with post-traumatic stress and excruciating pain. The test involves a long scope being inserted into the womb, often without anaesthetic, leaving one in three in pain. Dr Johannsson, a consultant anaesthetist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, said: “It sounds like a lot of this is poor care and badly handled, and emotionally badly handled, and (they) didn’t stop when they were supposed to. “Stories of being held down to finish the procedure are just awful. It’s important that we make the OH as good as we can possibly make it, including some sort of inhalation sedation, but having the ability to say stop when you need to is so important and a measure of good care.” Read full story Source: Daily Record, 7 May 2023 Further reading on the hub: Women share their experiences of painful hysteroscopy in the hub community. My experience of an outpatient hysteroscopy procedure Hysteroscopy: 6 calls for action to prevent avoidable harm
  2. News Article
    Patients are developing cancers and enduring so much pain that they cannot climb stairs because of the 7.2 million-strong waiting list for NHS scans and treatment, Britain’s top GP has said. Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the record delays for care and the uncertainty for patients about when they would finally be seen was leaving people feeling “helpless and forgotten”. These included people with heart problems, those awaiting a hip or knee replacement, and people with potential signs of cancer whom GPs have said need to be seen urgently, she said. In an interview with the Guardian, she voiced serious concern that some of these patients saw their health deteriorate as a direct result of the delay in accessing hospital care. “Patients getting sicker while they are on the waiting list is something GPs see and worry about, because the risk to the patient is so much greater. It’s inevitable that some people stuck will get sicker, because that’s the nature of illness,” she said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 May 2023
  3. News Article
    A "dire" lack of dentists has led to people "self-medicating every night", an MP has said. Barrow and Furness MP Simon Fell said his constituents included seven-year-olds who had never seen a dentist and pregnant women who could not get an appointment. “That simply is not good enough," he said. "I now have constituents who have not seen a dentist in years," he said. “There are pregnant mothers who are unable to make their appointments, constituents who are self-medicating every night because they cannot find care, seven-year-olds who have never seen a dentist and constituents performing their own dental care with packs they buy from Boots the Chemist." Mr Fell told Parliament dental practices had told him they were unable to recruit enough dentists, especially in "rural, isolated areas such as mine". He had been told the process for bringing in dentists from overseas "does not meet demand" and the administration for recording patient care, and the resulting payment to dentists, was "long-winded and overly complex", he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 3 May 2023
  4. News Article
    The watchdog responsible for investigating unresolved healthcare complaints has been warned repeatedly for nine months about problems with Sciensus, a private company paid millions to deliver vital medicines to NHS patients, the Guardian can reveal. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has received 18 official requests to examine grievances against Sciensus since August last year, but has not begun any investigations, according to a person familiar with the matter. The revelation comes after a Guardian investigation exposed serious and significant concerns raised by patients, clinicians and health groups about Sciensus. The investigation revealed that the company has struggled to provide a safe or reliable service. Patients persistently complain about delayed or missed home deliveries of medication, the Guardian found, with clinicians warning that the health of some has deteriorated as a result. The investigation also uncovered how some NHS staff experience “daily issues” with Sciensus. Others reported an increase in patients “flaring” as a result of missed or delayed medication. Some have seen a rise in hospital admissions. In the wake of the investigation, the Care Quality Commission, the care regulator, said it was “aware of concerns raised” about Sciensus, and was reviewing them. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 May 2023
  5. Content Article
    In this blog, Patient Safety Learning considers key patient safety issues relating to complications from surgical mesh implants, highlighting further sources of opinion and research on the hub.
  6. News Article
    Four carers have been found guilty of ill-treating patients at a secure hospital, following a BBC Panorama investigation. Nine former staff at Whorlton Hall, near Barnard Castle, County Durham, had faced a total of 27 charges. Five of those on trial have been cleared. Jurors heard vulnerable patients were mocked and treated with "contempt". Lawyers for the defendants argued their clients had been doing their best in very challenging circumstances. The men found guilty have been bailed and will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court in July. Speaking after the verdicts, Christopher Atkinson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the four men had a "duty of care for patients who, due to significant mental health issues, were wholly dependent on their support every day of their lives". He said it was "clear" there were times when the care provided was "not only devoid of the appropriate respect and kindness required but also crossed the line into criminal offending". Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 April 2023
  7. News Article
    Two former senior managers at a large mental healthcare provider have told the BBC they had concerns about the safety of patients and staff. The whistleblowers claim they felt pressure to cut costs and fill beds. The Priory Group, which receives more than £600m of public money each year, is the biggest single private provider of mental health services to the NHS. The company denies the claims and says it successfully treats tens of thousands of patients each year. It adds its services "remain amongst the safest in the UK". The former members of the Priory Group's senior management said that, when they were working for the company, they found it difficult to recruit or retain staff, due to poor pay and conditions. They believe this resulted in patients being placed on wards that did not have staff equipped with the right skills to handle their conditions. Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 April 2023
  8. News Article
    A care home manager said it had become an "impossibility" to get NHS dentists to visit her elderly residents when they needed treatment. Liz Wynn, of Southminster Residential Home, near Maldon in Essex, said she had battled for years for site visits. It comes as a health watchdog revealed that 25% of care home providers said their patients were denied dental care. NHS Mid and South Essex said it was considering a number of approaches to improve access for housebound patients. Ms Wynn said the shortage of NHS community dentists available to come into the home to carry out check-ups and treatment had been an "on-going concern" for almost 10 years. Ms Wynn said the home relied on its oral care home procedures - such as checking residents' mouths daily - to prevent problems from escalating. However, she said while its residents were "our family", conditions such as dementia made it difficult to spot when patients were in pain. She also said poor dental hygiene in the elderly could result in a number of potentially life-threatening infections. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 April 2023
  9. News Article
    Seven million people in England are currently waiting for treatment on the NHS. That's more than the entire populations of some countries, including Denmark and New Zealand. Just under half of those referred to a specialist will have been in the queue for longer than 18 weeks — the maximum target set in 2004 by the Government. And more than 360,000 of them will have been waiting a year or more. It's a deeply troubling state of affairs that has been thrown into sharp focus by the impact of the junior doctors' strike. However, 'treatment delays existed long before the doctors' strike — and also the Covid-19 pandemic,' Danielle Jefferies, a senior analyst with independent think-tank The King's Fund, told Good Health. Indeed, while the impact of the virus may have worsened the bottlenecks, the problem of rising patient demand is of longer standing. And the potential consequences are terrifying. Studies show that for each month patients with breast, bowel or head and neck cancers have their treatment delayed, the chances of them dying from the disease increase by 6 to 13%. Meanwhile, eye specialists fear some people may suffer permanent sight loss because they cannot get to a specialist in time to prevent the worsening of serious conditions such as glaucoma, which affects around 700,000 people in Britain. Read full story Source: MailOnline, 19 April 2023
  10. News Article
    Trust in care homes has slumped, leaving half of the British public lacking confidence that friends or family would be well looked after. Nationwide polling for the Guardian revealed 9 out of 10 older people believe there are not enough care staff, and half have lost confidence in the standard of care homes since the start of the pandemic. The survey conducted by Ipsos this month follows a doubling in public dissatisfaction in the NHS and exposes deepening fears about the fitness of a social care sector that had its weaknesses exposed by Covid-19, which claimed 36,000 lives in care homes in England alone. The Relatives and Residents Association (RRA) said the polling tallied with calls to its helpline about the “harm and anguish caused by poor care and frustration at the inconsistency in standards”. “We must weed out the poor providers and invest in skills – care workers must become our most valued workers, not the least,” said Helen Wildbore, the RRA’s chief executive. “Tomorrow, any one of us could need them.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 April 2023
  11. News Article
    Chronically ill patients across the UK allege they've had to go without vital medication amid delays by a private company contracted by the NHS to deliver drugs. In the last year alone, Sciensus was awarded NHS contracts worth more than £5 million, despite being placed into special measures by health regulators in 2021 following widespread delivery failings. ITV News has revealed that the CQC is currently reviewing whether to take further regulatory action against Sciensus, having been made aware of concerns about the company’s performance. The company, which is based in Burton-on-Trent and says it "works with every NHS Trust in the country", should provide a lifeline for those who rely on specialised medications. These include those with long-term conditions - like cancer, HIV, and haemophilia - which often require drugs that can't be collected from high street or hospital pharmacies. One new mother with rheumatoid arthritis said she was taken to A&E after Sciensus left her without medication for three weeks. The 37-year-old, who wishes to remain anonymous, told ITV News: "I was unable walk with a small baby... it was such a chronic flare that I couldn't walk, which I've never, ever had before in my life." Read full story Source: ITV News, 21 April 2023
  12. News Article
    The backlog for ophthalmology appointments in England is the second-largest in the NHS, with UK eye doctors concerned about the number of patients losing sight unnecessarily. Their shock is palpable. How this could be happening in a rich country such as Britain? There are treatments for common blindness-causing conditions such as macular degeneration, but to get them patients must be able to access the service. And right now the NHS doesn’t have the capacity to deliver them in a timely way. As junior doctors’ unions – and possibly those of consultants and nurses – proceed with strike action, it’s easy to attack medical professionals with the question: “How many people are dying because of your actions?” The truth is that the entire system has been struggling, and people have been dying anyway because of system failures. Now add to this people living with disabilities that were preventable, such as going blind. When Labour was in power, it made a real effort, including with financial allocation, to reduce waiting-list times for non-emergency care. But since the Tories were elected in 2010, years of austerity and public-sector neglect – and the shifting of resources and wealthy patients into a lucrative and growing private sector – has meant that the NHS has been transformed from a robust, preventive healthcare service into an acute one. Its basic offering is now: “If you’re dying, we will save you.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 19 April 2023
  13. Content Article
    The occupational therapy (OT) workforce is under huge pressure. Increased demand coupled with workforce shortages is challenging OTs’ capacity to provide essential support to people whose lives are impacted by long term health conditions and disability. In November 2022, the Royal College of Occupational Therapists surveyed OT practitioners across the UK about the workplace issues they’re facing now, and how these affect the services they deliver to the public. They also asked how practitioners are impacted personally, including whether they intend to continue working as OTs. The challenges shared by over 2,600 respondents have significant implications for the resilience of the current and future OT workforce, and the people who use OT services.
  14. News Article
    Patients were left on trolleys for up to four days at a major NHS hospital where whistleblowers raised concerns over “unsafe” staffing levels, it has emerged. In a scathing report, the NHS safety watchdog said it found patients waiting on trolleys, in corridors and outside nursing bays at Good Hope and Heartlands hospital, run by the scandal-hit University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. In one incident flagged by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a patient’s skin ulcers had grown significantly worse while they waited for four days on a trolley without an appropriate mattress. At the time of the inspection, most patients had been waiting for more than two days on trolleys, according to the CQC. The inspection took place in December, after concerns were raised by patients and families over care. The CQC said staff told inspectors they’d been left in “unsafe situations” due to poor staffing. Read full story Source: The Independent, 19 April 2023
  15. News Article
    A quarter of a million children in the UK with mental health problems have been denied help by the NHS as it struggles to manage surging case loads against a backdrop of a crisis in child mental health. Some NHS trusts are failing to offer treatment to 60% of those referred by GPs, the research based on freedom of information request responses has found. The research carried out by the House magazine and shared with the Guardian also revealed a postcode lottery, with spending per child four times higher in some parts of the country than others, while average waits for a first appointment vary by trust from 10 days to three years. Olly Parker, head of external affairs at YoungMinds, said the freedom of information findings showed a “system is in total shutdown” with “no clear government plan to rescue it”, after the 10-year mental health plan was scrapped. “In the meantime, young people are self-harming and attempting suicide as they wait months and even years for help after being referred by doctors,” he said. “This is not children saying ‘I’m unhappy.’ They are ill, they are desperate and they need urgent help.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 16 April 2023
  16. Content Article
    "One family told me their mum had only been waiting six hours on the floor for an ambulance. Only six hours. For a moment I thought this was a positive outcome. A patient in their 80s, lying on a cold hard floor for the equivalent of three quarters of my shift and I felt this was good patient care. Sadly, this genuinely was better than earlier in the year with patients waiting over 12 hours on the floor and an additional 16 plus hours in an ambulance. I cried when I got home about how far we’ve fallen." An anonymous junior doctor shares his experience on the NHS frontline.
  17. Content Article
    Nine care home workers are facing trial for neglecting, verbally abusing and deliberately antagonising extremely vulnerable patients at Whorlton Hall. The six men and three women, aged 25-54, are being prosecuted after a reporter went undercover and filmed the behaviour for a BBC Panorama documentary. George Julian repots on the case at Teesside crown court in Middlesbrough.
  18. News Article
    The leaders of acute trusts across England have told HSJ the second junior doctor’s strike ‘feels very different’ from the first stoppage, and services are much more vulnerable because of ‘thinner’ consultant coverage. They also reported that the instruction from NHS England not to proactively cancel elective procedures and apppointments has been largely ignored by trusts. The chief executive of a large trust in the east of England said they were “more concerned about clinical safety than at any time during covid surges”. A trust CEO in the North West told HSJ this week’s stoppage “feels much more risky than the previous strike. We have managed to cover rotas but we are very stretched and concerned about short notice cancellation from agencies and short term sickness after bank holiday.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 April 2023
  19. News Article
    The four-day strike by junior doctors in England will have a “catastrophic impact” on NHS waiting lists, with up to 350,000 appointments and operations likely to be cancelled, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation has said. Matthew Taylor said the industrial action this week posed risks to patient safety and called on the public to avoid “risky behaviour”. “These strikes are going to have a catastrophic impact on the capacity of the NHS to recover services,” he told Sky News. “The health service has to meet high levels of demand at the same time as making inroads into that huge backlog that built up before Covid, but then built up much more during Covid." He said he hoped everyone who needed urgent care would get it, but added: “There’s no point hiding the fact that there will be risks to patients – risks to patient safety, risks to patient dignity – as we’re not able to provide the kind of care that we want to.” He called on the public to use NHS services responsibly. Read full story Source; The Guardian, 10 April 2023
  20. Content Article
    Research paper by Toye et al. published in the Lancet on the experience of women reporting damage from vaginal mesh.
  21. News Article
    Thousands of children experiencing “unacceptable” long waits for NHS treatment face a “lifelong” impact on their health, a senior doctor has warned, as shocking figures reveal that nearly 15,000 paediatric operations were cancelled over the last year. Dr Camilla Kingdon, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the mounting treatment backlog in England risked “serious” and “devastating” physical and mental consequences for children and their families. She sounded the alarm as data obtained under freedom of information laws by the Liberal Democrats showed that a record high 14,628 children’s operations were postponed in 2022, up from 11,870 the year before and the highest in five years of data examined. Some children have now waited several years for surgery, according to the data. Delaying a child’s operation risks having a “lifelong impact” on their development, Kingdon said, and also “seriously impact” their mental health, with knock-on effects on their ability to socialise, go to school and reach their full potential. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 April 2023
  22. Content Article
    Autistic patients trapped in mental health units tell their stories, revealing a system of poor treatment, abuse and long stretches inside with their symptoms only getting worse.
  23. Content Article
    A survey of over 4,000 people with long-term conditions on prescription charges has found the charge is a barrier to accessing medicine. The findings come following the UK government's announcement that the prescription charge will rise on 1 April 2023.
  24. Content Article
    The following account has been shared with Patient Safety Learning anonymously. We’d like to thank the patient for to sharing their experience to help raise awareness of the patient safety issues surrounding outpatient hysteroscopy care.
  25. News Article
    “There’s a gap today that no locum filled, so I am carrying both bleeps and doing the work of two people.” That recent tweet, by a children’s doctor, is one of many examples posted on social media by medics illustrating how NHS staff shortages affect them, patients, the smooth running of important services – and, sometimes, the safety of those who are receiving care. It is a concern shared by every organisation that represents frontline staff, by regulators such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC), and by NHS England, the body that oversees the service. In January the CQC reported that an inspection it had undertaken of Colchester hospital in Essex found patients were missing out on meals because there were too few staff on duty to feed them. Some patients were wearing dirty dressings, and others did not have their call bells answered promptly, for the same reason. In a letter to the trust that runs the hospital, it said: “All wards’ actual staffing levels and skill mix meant staff were often overstretched. All staff we spoke with expressed concern about the impact on patient care and personal wellbeing. “Some staff we spoke to were tearful, reported feeling exhausted and concerned that they were unable to care for patients well enough to keep them safe.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 March 2023
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