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Found 290 results
  1. Content Article
    Specialist centres for those affected by mesh implants, as recommended by the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, became operational formally in April 2021. HSJ analyses how they performed in their first year.
  2. News Article
    A shocking undercover investigation has laid bare appalling failures in patient care on Britain’s mental health wards. Reporters from Channel 4’s Dispatches programme spent three months secretly filming at one of the UK’s biggest mental health trusts – Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. The footage reveals horrifying abuses of vulnerable residents on two acute mental health wards. It includes patients being dragged across the floor, pinned down by staff, mocked while they are in distress and humiliated. On one occasion, a patient who is at high risk of suicide and supposed to be under constant supervision is left unattended and makes an attempt on their own life. Another chaotic scene involves staff trying to locate a crucial bag of specialist cutting devices to save the life of a female patient who got hold of a ligature, after a carer failed to keep watch. In one distressing example, a young woman being treated for anorexia – who is heard hyperventilating with fear – is dragged across the floor by her arms. When she is later discovered making a suicide attempt, she is pinned down by five carers for 40 minutes. As the woman lies sobbing on the floor, one of the staff members discusses the success of his latest diet. Another carer laughs as she marks the rhythm of the woman’s laboured breathing with her hands. The damning footage raises fresh concerns about the state of treatment for the most mentally unwell in this country. While the Essex Trust is just one of 54 across England, mental health professionals and families warn that such failures are widespread. Former mental health nurse Julie Repper, director of imROC, an organisation that helps improve patients’ experiences in mental health services, describes events in the film as ‘literally abusive’. "I asked the peer support workers we train about their experiences of the system, and they described seeing repeated ligaturing, people being dragged by their feet and being restrained. It’s ubiquitous". "These units are supposed to keep people safe, but this film shows they’re not. Everybody has a stake in seeing this improve, because every single one of us may become overwhelmed at some point and find we hit a crisis." Read full story Source: MailOnline, 10 October 2022
  3. Content Article
    Mr B was 71 years' old and was undergoing treatment for cancer of the oesophagus. During surgery, a nasogastric tube that had been inserted became dislodged and was put back into place by medical staff, despite guidelines against this. The family realised that something had gone wrong in the operation and Mr B became very seriously ill, dying five months later. When the family asked the hospital for an investigation, they revealed that a hole had been made in Mr B’s stomach when the nasogastric tube was replaced. There was no assurance given that steps would be taken to prevent similar errors in the future, and no apology from the hospital. The family sought legal advice and came to an out of court settlement with the hospital.
  4. Content Article
    The gap in healthy life expectancy is being driven by the increasing numbers of people managing a long-term condition (LTC) and, increasingly more than one – known as multi-morbidity. This situation affects a higher proportion of the population facing systemic discrimination and marginalisation, and those experiencing higher levels of deprivation. This report from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy raises awareness of health inequities in rehabilitation and recovery services across the UK
  5. Content Article
    For the first time since the 1990s, the Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh has displayed a new pathology specimen—a transvaginal tape removed in April 2022 from a woman suffering complications of vaginal tape (or mesh) surgery performed in 2006. In this blog Louise Wilkie, the museums' Curator, explains how the device came to be displayed, the history of vaginal tape surgery and the controversy surrounding its introduction and regulation. She also highlights concerns about the subsequent treatment of women who experienced life-changing complications as a result of the procedure.
  6. News Article
    Responding to the Ofgem announcement on the energy price cap, Jo Bibby, Director of Health at the Health Foundation said: 'Today’s announcement confirms the mounting financial pressures facing people this winter. 'Cold, damp homes make people ill. When people are having to make a choice between heating and eating, their health is going to suffer. Many will face the stress of managing debt and, in the long run, the price will be paid in poorer health, more pressure on the NHS, and fewer people in work. 'The cost-of-living crisis should be a spur for action for the new government – bringing forward the Health Disparities White Paper. In particular, it must deliver significant emergency support in the autumn, targeted at lower-income families who are most at risk of poorer health. Without the speed and scale of action we saw through the pandemic, there is a risk the cost-of-living crisis becomes another health crisis.' Read full story Source: The Health Foundation, 26 August 2022
  7. Content Article
    In this joint blog, Patient Safety Learning and Sling the Mesh highlight several issues with the specialist mesh centres set up by the NHS to provide treatment and surgery for women who have been harmed by mesh. We identify key patient safety issues and look at what needs to be done to ensure women receive timely, compassionate and appropriate treatment for complications they face as a result of mesh implants.
  8. News Article
    Thousands of vulnerable people are suffering inadequate care as severe staffing shortages in previously good care homes push operators to break rules and put residents at risk. A wave of inspections has revealed the human impact of a worsening nationwide staffing crisis, with people being left in their rooms 24 hours a day, denied showers for over a week, enduring assaults from fellow residents, and left soaking in their own urine. Stretched staff have described scrambling to help residents with buzzers going off and fear the squeeze on their time is dangerous. Analysis by the Guardian revealed that staff shortages were identified as a key problem in three-quarters of all the care homes in England where the Care Quality Commission regulator had cut their rating from “good” before Covid-19 to “inadequate” this summer. A further 10% of homes whose rankings slumped had enough staff, but failed to recruit safely, either not taking references properly, carrying out criminal records checks, or training staff adequately. Families said the staffing shortages had reached “crisis point”. “Older people are paying a heavy price for these failings, as poor care robs them of their dignity, breaks their will and makes them feel unsafe in their own home,” said Helen Wildbore, director of the Relatives and Residents Association. “Older people need much more than empty slogans from the next prime minister about ‘fixing social care’.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 August 2022
  9. News Article
    At 34 years old, Dawn Jaxson had two young daughters. Since going through childbirth she had been experiencing a prolapsed bladder and urinary incontinence. Her doctors recommended she have a vaginal mesh fitted to treat the problem, and she didn’t question their advice. But more than 15 years later, she wishes she had. “As soon as I’d actually had it fitted, I felt discomfort,” says Jaxson, now 50. “Then the pain just didn’t go.” After years of almost constant pelvic pain and “countless” medical appointments, Jaxson says: “This little tiny piece of tape is still ruining my life.” “I can literally be sat down and then out of nowhere, it will be like somebody is shoving a red-hot poker through my bladder,” she tells iNews. “Being intimate with somebody is just impossible. Sex is no joy. Imagine your worst period pain you could possibly have, and that’s what it’s like on a daily basis.” NHS Digital records show that between April 2008 and March 2017, 100,516 patients had a tape insertion procedure for stress urinary incontinence. A further 27,016 patients had a mesh procedure for pelvic organ prolapse. But the surgery was suspended in Scotland in 2014 and across the rest of the UK by 2018 following complaints about complications – and a review ordered. The review panel, overseen by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, spoke to more than 700 affected individuals and concluded that pelvic mesh procedures had caused “anguish, suffering, and many ruined lives”. In 2020, the panel set out nine recommendations to help the thousands of women affected, including the creation of specialist centres, so patients could have their mesh removed or receive further treatment. But two years on from that landmark report, women say they are still suffering debilitating symptoms and struggling to access the help they so desperately need. Kath Sansom, the founder of the campaigning group Sling the Mesh, has heard many similar stories from among the group’s 9,700 members. “The lack of action on financial redress is the biggest disappointment for women,” she says. “Pelvic mesh caused lifelong damage, and worse, the majority of us were not given any information on the risks. It’s not our fault this happened to us." “Some women have been left disabled in wheelchairs or walking with sticks. Others have had organs removed where mesh has turned brittle and sliced into them. Seven in 10 have lost their sex life. Everyone suffers chronic pain in varying degrees. Women have lost jobs, marriages, homes, and their quality of life.” Read full story Source: iNews, 18 August 2022
  10. News Article
    A shortage of some medicines is putting patients at risk, pharmacists have warned. A poll of 1,562 UK pharmacists for the Pharmaceutical Journal found more than half (54%) believed patients had been put at risk in the past six months due to shortages. A number of patients have been facing difficulties accessing some medicines in recent months, sometimes having to go to multiple pharmacies to find their prescription or needing to go back to their GP to be prescribed an alternative. Since June, the government has issued a number of "medicine supply notifications", which highlight shortages. Some of these include: pain relief drugs used in childbirth; mouth ulcer medication; migraine treatment; an antihistamine; a drug used by prostate cancer and endomitosis patients; an antipsychotic drug used among bipolar disorder and schizophrenia patients; a type of inhaler and a certain brand of insulin. Read full story Source Sky News, 11August 2022
  11. News Article
    Last month saw the highest number of ambulance callouts for life-threatening conditions since records began, NHS England officials say. There were more than 85,000 category one calls, for situations like cardiac arrests and people stopping breathing. The heatwave could have been one reason for increased demand, but experts say hospitals already face immense pressures. Nearly 30,000 patients waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital. The number is up 33% on the previous month and the highest since records began in 2010. Richard Murray, chief executive of The King's Fund said the pressure on hospitals was also being felt right across the health and social care system. He added: "At the end of July, 13,014 people were still in hospital beds despite being medically fit to be discharged, often due to a lack of available social care support. The challenges affecting the NHS cannot be solved without addressing the issues in social care." Read full story Source BBC News, 12 August 2022
  12. News Article
    A woman with fast-growing stage-four breast cancer says the NHS has let her down, with delays at every stage of her treatment. Caroline Boulton, 56, had several appointments for a mammogram, which checks for early signs of cancer, cancelled because of Covid, in March and November 2020. In late 2021, she found a small lump, went to her GP and was referred urgently to a specialist - but then the delays began. "They haven't moved quickly enough," Ms Boulton says, who lives in Greater Manchester. "It's been really, really slow." "Between each appointment, each scan, there's been four-, five-, six-, seven-, eight-week waiting times and delays every time." The referral letter came through "very quickly" but then she waited three weeks, instead of the recommended two, to see a consultant. "When I first found the lump, it was only pea-sized," Ms Boulton says. "By the time I got to see the consultant, it was the size of a tangerine." Her cancer was growing quickly, she was told, but it would be eight weeks before a mastectomy could be scheduled to remove her breast. "Considering it was fast-growing, that's a huge concern - you're living with that, waiting, knowing it's growing," Ms Boulton says. When she finally saw an oncologist seven months after finding the lump, had another scan and received the results, the cancer had spread to her liver - and there was no longer any treatment they could offer. "I've now got stage-four cancer that I shouldn't have - and two years to live." Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 August 2022
  13. News Article
    After lockdown raided the savings of hairdresser and gym instructor Lucie Wilby, a lengthy wait for a hip replacement dealt another blow to her family’s finances. “We’re in a lot of debt because of it and that’s a combination of Covid and obviously surgery [and] waiting times,” the 53-year-old mother from Cornwall says. “If I hadn’t had to wait six months, we’d be nowhere near this issue.” Like many of the 6.6 million people on an NHS waiting list, work had become painful and eventually impossible for Wilby as the backlog in treatment forces people to cut their hours or stop employment altogether. “By the time of the operation, I was barely walking and I’m self employed,” she says. “It took about three years to get diagnosed. That’s one of the major problems – it’s not just the waiting time for the operation once you’re on the list, it’s the waiting time for diagnosis.” While tax cuts and even trans issues may have stolen the limelight in the Tory leadership race, the struggle to get a grip of record NHS backlogs post-Covid is having a huge economic, as well as human, cost. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 7 August 2022
  14. News Article
    Nine in 10 NHS dental practices across the UK are not accepting new adult patients for treatment under the health service, a BBC investigation has found. BBC's research shows no dentists taking on adult NHS patients could be found in a third of the UK's top-tier councils. And eight in 10 NHS practices are not taking on children. The Department of Health said it had made an extra £50m available "to help bust the Covid backlogs" and that improving NHS access was a priority. BBC News contacted nearly 7,000 NHS practices - believed to be almost all those offering general treatment to the public. The British Dental Association (BDA) called it "the most comprehensive and granular assessment of patient access in the history of the service". While NHS dental treatment is not free for most adults, it is subsidised. The BBC heard from people across the UK who could not afford private fees and said the subsidised rates were crucial to getting care. The lack of NHS appointments has led people to drive hundreds of miles in search of treatment, pull out their own teeth without anaesthesia, resort to making their own improvised dentures and restrict their long-term diets to little more than soup. Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 August 2022
  15. News Article
    A cancer sufferer who says she faced a wait of 31 hours in A&E has compared the emergency department to "a cattle market". Tracy Summerson, who had nausea and a fever, was eventually admitted to Lincoln County Hospital last week. Ms Summerson said there were more than 30 other patients who waited a similar amount of time. The hospital said despite long waits, those who needed immediate care were "able to be seen and looked after". Ms Summerson, from Scopwick near Metheringham, described the scene as "just crammed, you were like cattle in a market". Ms Summerson, who has stage four malignant melanoma, said: "There was people coming with sick bowls being sick next to you. "When you are immune-suppressed you're supposed to go in a side room out of germs way, but they needed all the rooms for consultations." The family of an 83-year-old woman also contacted the BBC to say she waited more than 40 hours in a wheelchair in her nightdress after being taken to the hospital with a suspected brain bleed. The trust added: "We continue to see an increasing demand on our urgent and emergency care services coupled with patients staying much longer in our hospitals than previously experienced." Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 August 2022
  16. News Article
    The NHS’s only gender identity clinic for children has been found to be neither “safe nor viable” and is set to be replaced by regional hubs. A damning report into gender identity services run by the Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust has found that the model is putting children at “considerable risk”. An interim report by Dr Hilary Cass said that children and young people are being subjected to “lengthy” waits for access to gender dysphoria services, and are not receiving support during this time. The report said a “fundamentally different” service model that can provide timely and appropriate care for children is needed, and recommended that the NHS launch local specialist centres. Her full report is due to be published next year, but has so far warned that the long waiting lists for gender-questioning children and young people are “unacceptable”. The review said it was not yet able to provide recommendations on the use of puberty blockers and feminising or masculinising hormones, due to gaps in the evidence. A report from safety watchdog the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch in April warned that CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) had been forced to “hold the risk” while caring for children who are waiting to access specialist gender-dysphoria (GID) services. It added: “There is a lack of capacity and capability to ensure proactive risk assessment of the health of patients waiting on the GIDS waiting list.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 28 July 2022
  17. News Article
    A mother has said an NHS hospital failed to offer her daughter adequate pain relief in a pattern of poor treatment that left the teenager suicidal. Ella Copley, 17, from Tingley, West Yorkshire, has suffered from ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), sometimes known as chronic fatigue syndrome, for seven years. She has been in Leeds General Infirmary since March, when she was taken there by ambulance with an infection later diagnosed as sepsis. Her mother, Joanne McKee, 49, said the treatment Ella had received “feels like neglect and abuse”. She has posted videos on social media of the teenager screaming in pain when medicine is given by nasogastric tube. “I don’t think they believe that her pain is real at all,” she said. McKee said doctors had told Ella she was “hypersensitive”, and suggested that she stroke a piece of material against her skin as part of a desensitisation programme. “I have just never, ever known anything so dismissive,” McKee said. In an interview with Times Radio, she added: “No one has any understanding of her conditions. That really is the issue." The charity Action for ME has written a letter to the hospital’s chief executive raising concerns over Ella’s case. In it, Sonya Chowdhury, chief executive of the charity, said she was “aware of several other situations that bear similarity with Ella’s illness and care”. Questions have been raised over the treatment of Maeve Boothby-O’Neill, who died in October last year. Her death will be the subject of an inquest in Exeter next month. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 18 July 2022
  18. News Article
    A paediatrician has been struck off for falsely diagnosing children with cancer to scare their parents into paying for expensive private treatment. Dr Mina Chowdhury, 45, caused "undue alarm" to the parents of three young patients - one aged 15 months - by making the "unjustified" diagnoses so his company could cash in by arranging tests and scans, a medical tribunal found. Chowdhury, who worked as a full-time consultant in paediatrics and neonatology at NHS Forth Valley, provided private treatment at his Meras Healthcare clinic in Glasgow. But the clinic made losses, despite "significant" potential income from third-party investigations and referrals for treatment – with patients charged a mark up fee of up to three times the actual cost. In all three cases, Chowdhury gave a false cancer diagnosis, without proper investigation, before recommending “unnecessary and expensive” private tests and treatment in London. Parents previously told the tribunal of their shock and upset at receiving Chowdhury’s diagnoses during consultations between March and August 2017. He told the parents of a 15-month-old girl - known as Patient C - that a lump attached to the bone in her leg was a "soft tissue sarcoma" and a second lump had developed. Chowdhury urged them to see a doctor in London who could arrange an ultrasound scan, a MRI scan and biopsy in a couple of days, saying: "If things are happening it is best to get on top of them early." He also warned that it would be "confusing" to return to the NHS for treatment. But the parents spoke to an A&E doctor and an ultrasound scan revealed that the lumps were likely fat necrosis. Patient C later was discharged after her bloods tests came back as normal. The child’s mother told the tribunal that she and her husband had been "very upset" at Chowdhury’s diagnosis. She was also left "angry" after she later read Dr Chowdhury’s consultation notes and realised they were a "total falsification" of what was discussed. Read full story Source: Medscape, 18 July 2022
  19. Content Article
    This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Clive talks to us about the important role of digital technologies in tackling the big issues healthcare faces, the need for digital tools and records to be joined-up and interoperable, and how his experiences as a carer have shaped how he sees patient safety.
  20. Content Article
    This is the transcript of a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons on waiting lists for gynaecological services.
  21. News Article
    A woman was kept in police custody for 36 hours after having a stillbirth because of suspicions she had an abortion after the legal cut-off point, it has been claimed. UK abortion providers, who supported the woman, denied she had flouted the legal deadline and warned the treatment she endured “should be unthinkable in a civilised society”, with “no conceivable” public interest in holding her. They added that the woman has been under investigation for a year and a half, but still not charged with any crime. Jonathan Lord, medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the UK’s leading abortion providers, told The Independent the woman unexpectedly delivered a stillborn foetus at home that was about 24 weeks old. Dr Lord, the co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, who shared the woman’s story with The Independent, said: “She was shocked to give birth due to not knowing how far along pregnant she was. She was admitted to hospital. “Because healthcare colleagues were suspicious, and knew she had been in touch with us, an abortion provider, as she told them, they suspected her of having an illegal abortion and called the police. But she wasn’t over the limit for a legal abortion. Dr Lord said the experience of having an “extraordinarily unexpected” stillbirth before being taken into police custody during lockdown was “traumatic” and “distressing” for the woman. Read full story Source: The Independent, 5 July 2022
  22. Content Article
    Over the past year, delays in transferring patients from an ambulance to a hospital have risen exponentially. In April 2022 there were over 41,000 delays of over 60 minutes, up over a staggering 450 per cent in 12 months. This equates to 71,000 hours lost, with a significant risk of harm to patients, even though the proportion being taken to hospital by ambulance has fallen thanks to successful initiatives such as “hear and treat” and “see and treat”. These delays mean that, too often, ambulance crews are not able to respond to 999 calls from critically ill patients. Instead they are being held in “stacks” of hundreds each day – as ambulance control room teams strive to prioritise overstretched resources. The current reality is that crews are often waiting with patients in hospital corridors or outside, hearing urgent calls to which they are unable to respond. In addition to the direct impact on patients, this is incredibly demoralising, even traumatising, for many staff involved. So why is this happening? In an article for the Independent, Daren Mochrie, chair of AACE – the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, and Saffron Cordrey, interim chief executive at NHS Provider, discusses what is happening in the NHS.
  23. News Article
    Surgery waiting lists will triple by 2030, triggering a “population health crisis”, unless there is a huge increase in NHS capacity, according to new research. Experts from Birmingham University have said efforts to reduce hospital backlogs are not enough and that it is “impossible” for the existing frontline workers to tackle increasing waiting lists. The most in-depth analysis of the challenge facing hospital waiting lists in England has revealed 4.3 million people need invasive surgery or procedures such as endoscopy, the largest number since 2007. Of these, an estimated 3.3 million are on a “hidden waiting list”, likely to need treatment but yet to be identified by the NHS due to the impact of the pandemic. More than 2.3 million people, 53% of the waiting list, are of working age, meaning their delayed diagnoses and treatments could have an impact on the economy. Without a substantial increase in NHS capacity, the team behind the work say the total figure for those waiting for surgery in England could rise to 14.6 million by 2030. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 26 June 2022
  24. News Article
    Heather Lawrence was shocked at the state she found her 90-year-old mother, Violet, in when she visited her in hospital. "The bed was soaked in urine. The continence pad between her legs was also soaked in urine, the door wide open, no underwear on. It was a mixed ward as well," Heather says. "I mean there were other people in there that could have been walking up and down seeing her, with the door wide open as well. My mum, she was a very proud woman, she wouldn't have been wanted to be seen like that at all." Violet, who had dementia, was taken to Tameside General Hospital, in Greater Manchester, in May 2021, after a fall. Her health deteriorated in hospital and she developed an inflamed groin with a nasty rash stretching to her stomach - due to prolonged exposure to urine. She died a few weeks later. Heather tells BBC News: "I don't really know how to put it into words about the dignity of care. I just feel like she wasn't allowed to be given that dignity. And that's with a lot of dementia patients. I think they just fade away and appear to be insignificant, when they're not." New research, shown exclusively to BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme, has found other dementia patients have had to endure similar indignity. Dr Katie Featherstone, from the Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory, at the University of West London, observed the continence care of dementia patients in three hospitals in England and Wales over the course a year for a study funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. She found patients who were not helped to go to the toilet and instead left to wet and soil themselves. "We identified what we call pad cultures - the everyday use of continence pads in the care of all people with dementia, regardless of their continence but also regardless of their independence, as a standard practice," Dr Featherstone says. Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 June 2022
  25. News Article
    A quadriplegic man was told his care funding would be revoked, after NHS officials deemed him not disabled enough to qualify for support. Simon Shaw, 54, has received 24-hour care since he was left paralysed from the neck down after a car accident in 1984. He relies on carers at night to help him with everything from turning in bed to having a drink of water. They also intervene with medical aid if he develops life-threatening complications related to his paralysis, which could happen at any time, without warning. But a recent NHS assessment controversially ruled Shaw’s health needs were not severe enough to warrant full-time medical care. Local health authority officials told him he did not meet eligibility criteria and his NHS funding would be stopped from 20 June. Shaw, from Clapham, south London, said that meant there was no money for his night-time care and he would be left unsupported from 8pm to 8am for the first time in nearly four decades. “It’s frightening, to be honest,” Shaw said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when they take my care away. “I don’t cease to exist after 8pm. I still need to get into bed, have a drink of water and use the toilet – and I can’t do any of it on my own. “There are a lot of things that can go wrong with my health and when they do, they usually need urgent attention. If there’s no one there, to be frank… it could mean death.” Mandy Jamieson, a caseworker for the Spinal Injuries Association, said: “We have noticed an increase in patients with severe disabilities being turned down for funding in recent years, particularly since the introduction of assessments via video call since the pandemic. “But I feel particularly in Simon’s case the decision that has been made is wrong. He has so many health needs that I find it incredible that they turned him down.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 19 June 2022
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