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Showing results for tags 'Secondary impact'.
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Content ArticleThe aim of this study from Aiken et al. was to determine the well-being of physicians and nurses in hospital practice in Europe, and to identify interventions that hold promise for reducing adverse clinician outcomes and improving patient safety. The study found that poor work/life balance (57% physicians, 40% nurses), intent to leave (29% physicians, 33% nurses) and high burnout (25% physicians, 26% nurses) were prevalent. Rates varied by hospitals within countries and between countries. Better work environments and staffing were associated with lower percentages of clinicians reporting unfavourable health indicators, quality of care and patient safety. The effect of a 1 IQR improvement in work environments was associated with 7.2% fewer physicians and 5.3% fewer nurses reporting high burnout, and 14.2% fewer physicians and 8.6% fewer nurses giving their hospital an unfavourable rating of quality of care. Improving nurse staffing levels (79% nurses) and reducing bureaucracy and red tape (44% physicians) were interventions clinicians reported would be most effective in improving their own well-being, whereas individual mental health interventions were less frequently prioritised.
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News Article
Covid pandemic linked to surge in child and teen diabetes
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
There has been an unusual rise in the number of children and teenagers around the world diagnosed with type 1 diabetes since Covid, say researchers. A new study in JAMA Network Open journal has collated available data from different countries, including the UK, on more than 38,000 young people diagnosed during the pandemic. The authors describe the increase in cases of diabetes as "substantial". More work is needed to understand why the rise is happening, they say. Some of the rise could be attributed to catch-up - from backlogs and delays when health services were shut - but does not explain all of the newly diagnosed cases, say scientists. Before the pandemic, the incidence rate of childhood type 1 diabetes was already increasing - by about 3% a year. -
Content ArticleThere are reports of increasing incidence of paediatric diabetes since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study by D'Souza et al. compares the incidence rates of paediatric diabetes during and before the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found that incidence rates of type 1 diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis at diabetes onset in children and adolescents were higher after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic. Increased resources and support may be needed for the growing number of children and adolescents with diabetes. Future studies are needed to assess whether this trend persists and may help elucidate possible underlying mechanisms to explain temporal changes.
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News Article
Sharp rise in teenage girls with eating disorders during Covid
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
GP records show a sharp rise in teenage girls in the UK developing eating disorders and self-harming during the Covid pandemic, a study has found. The increases were greatest among girls living in the wealthiest areas, which could be due to better GP access. Young women have told the BBC that the lack of control over their lives during lockdown was a behavioural trigger. Eating disorders and self-harming have been rising among children and young people for a number of years but "increased substantially" between 2020 and 2022, the study found. Over that period, around 2,700 diagnoses of eating disorders were anticipated among 13-16-year-olds, but 3,862 were actually observed - 42% more than the expected figure. Dr Shruti Garg, from the University of Manchester - a child and adolescent psychiatrist and the study author - called it a "staggering rise" which highlighted an urgent need to improve early access to support. Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 June 2023 -
Content Article
UK Covid-19 Inquiry website
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Covid-19 Inquiry
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and learn lessons for the future. The Inquiry’s work is guided by its Terms of Reference. -
News ArticlePatients diagnosed with cancer in 2020 had “significantly lower” survival rates in Scotland a year after having their cases confirmed compared with the previous year, a report has found. The increase in deaths was an indirect result of the pandemic as coronavirus dissuaded people from getting check-ups or visiting physicians. Many cancer screening programmes were also paused and infection control measures in healthcare settings caused delays in both diagnosis and treatment. Andrew Elder, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the government’s decision to pause screening programmes was “understandable in the extreme circumstances”, but added that the figures were “concerning”. He said: “Fewer and later presentations by patients who may have had more advanced disease clearly have had sometimes tragic consequences that are now being identified in the data.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 31 May 2023
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News ArticleMore than 26,000 adults with severe mental illness die prematurely each year from preventable physical illnesses, analysis by the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggests. New data from the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities shows 120,273 adults in England with severe mental illness, including psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia, died before the age of 75 between 2018 and 2020. Of these, the College estimates 80,182 deaths (two in three) were potentially preventable, which is an average of 26,727 people each year. Preventable deaths include deaths from diseases like cancer and heart disease which could have been prevented with earlier detection and treatment or lifestyle changes. While adults with severe mental illness are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviours like smoking and drinking alcohol excessively, they are also less likely to access screening and treatment for a range of reasons including stigma associated with having a mental illness. While cancer is the leading cause of premature death among those with a severe mental illness, it also significantly increases the risk of dying before the age of 75 across a range of physical health conditions. Adults with severe mental illness are on average: 6.6 times more likely to die prematurely from respiratory disease 6.5 times more likely to die prematurely from liver disease 4.1 times more likely to die prematurely from cardiovascular disease 2.3 times more likely to die prematurely from cancer. Read full story Source: Royal College of Psychiatrists, 17 May 2023
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News Article
Poor diabetes care may be behind 7,000 excess deaths
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Delayed health checks among people with diabetes may have contributed to 7,000 more deaths than usual in England last year, a charity report suggests. The routine checks help cut the risk of serious complications like amputations and heart attacks. Diabetes UK says too many people are still being "left to go it alone" when managing their challenging condition. There are more than five million people in the UK living with diabetes, but around 1.9 million missed out on routine vital checks in 2021-22, Diabetes UK says. Disruption to care during the pandemic is likely to be a factor in the current backlog, which may be leading to higher numbers of deaths than usual in people with diabetes, it says. Between January and March 2023, for example, there were 1,461 excess deaths involving diabetes - three times higher than during the same period last year. "Urgent action is needed to reverse this trend and support everyone living with diabetes to live well with the condition," the report says. Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 May 2023 -
Content Article
Diabetes care: Is it fair enough? (Diabetes UK, 10 May 2023)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Diabetes
Missed checks, disrupted care and health inequalities have been revealed in a new report from Diabetes UK looking at the state of diabetes care in England. The report reveals that less than half (47%) of people living with diabetes in England received all eight of their required checks in 2021-22, meaning 1.9 million people did not receive the care they need. It is calling for urgent action to address the routine diabetes care backlog and prevent avoidable deaths of people living with diabetes. -
Content ArticleA shortage of nurses across the world, including in countries that provide nurses for international recruitment, has created a global health emergency, according to the latest report from the International Council of Nurses. The report, Recover to Rebuild: Investing in the Nursing Workforce for Health System Effectiveness, lays out the devastating impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on nurses around the world. It urges that investment in a well-supported global nursing workforce is needed if health systems around the world are to recover and be rebuilt effectively. It also warned against reliance on the “quick fix” of international recruitment instead of investing in nursing education, as this was contributing to staff shortages even in countries with a long tradition of educating nurses to work in higher income countries. The report, co-authored by the organisation's chief executive, Howard Catton, and nursing workforce policy expert Professor James Buchan, includes the findings of workforce surveys from more than 25 countries, including the UK, as well as other research.
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Content ArticleThe Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact heavily on all our lives and one of the long-lasting, but unanticipated, impacts is the emergence of Long Covid. Whilst many people infected by Covid-19 may fully recover, significant numbers will experience varied, ongoing and debilitating symptoms that last weeks, months or years following the initial infection. This prolonged condition has been given the umbrella term Long Covid. Recognition of Long Covid was accelerated by people-led advocacy groups such Long Covid Support. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that, as of 1 August 2021, 970,000 people in the UK were experiencing self-reported Long Covid. The most recent data from 2 January 2023, shows that this has increased to 2 million people This report summarises the findings of a self-selecting survey of 3,097 people with Long Covid in September and October 2022 on their experiences of work.
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Event
NHS Long Term Plan 2023
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
The pandemic struck just over a year after the Long Term plan was published, a year which was designed to lay the groundwork for many of the plan’s commitments. Some of this had progressed, for example new Primary Care Networks were created, but work on delivering many of the plan’s goals had only just begun when COVID-19 arrived. It’s clear that no part of the NHS Long Term Plan has been unaffected by the pandemic. The conference will build on collaboration during the pandemic across government departments, health and care organisations, local government, and voluntary, community and private sector organisations to prevent and mitigate some of the most pressing impacts of COVID-19 on the nation’s mental health and wellbeing and support people who are struggling. Register -
Content ArticleIn this report, the Public Accounts Committee, which examines the value for money of UK Government projects, programmes and service delivery, looks in detail at the implementation of NHS England’s three-year recovery programme for tackling the Covid-19 backlog of elective care.
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Content ArticleYoung people from across the UK reflect on how the pandemic is still affecting their lives and their plans for the future, 18 months after the end of the third national lockdown.
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News Article
Covid: Half a million people missed out on heart drugs
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
During the pandemic, nearly half a million people in the UK missed out on starting medication to help prevent heart attacks and strokes, a new study suggests. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) team looked at prescribing data for the first 18 months after Covid hit. Some 491,000 people (27,000 a month) appear to have missed out on blood pressure pills, and 316,000 did not get treatment to lower their cholesterol. The team says more needs to be done to make sure that anyone who needs treatment gets it. During the pandemic, normal NHS services were severely disrupted. For example, there was a reduction in diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of high blood pressure, and other heart and circulation disease risk factors. Although the NHS took action, including providing more than 220,000 blood pressure monitors for people to use at home, data shows two million fewer people in England were recorded as having controlled hypertension in 2021 compared to the previous year. Lead investigator Prof Reecha Sofat, who is based at the University of Liverpool, said the findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine, highlight the impact Covid has had on other important health conditions: "Despite the incredible work done by NHS staff, our data show that we're still not identifying people with cardiovascular risk factors at the same rate as we were before the pandemic. " Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 January 2023 -
Content ArticleInstitute of Health Visiting executive director Alison Morton warns national policy has developed a “baby blind spot” amid the NHS crisis, with many young children missing out on government’s promise of the “best start in life”, and calls for a shift towards prevention and early intervention.
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News Article
Tories ‘failing women’ as gynaecology waiting times treble in a decade
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The Conservatives have been accused of “failing women” as analysis reveals gynaecology waiting times have trebled in the past decade, with more than 540,000 waiting for NHS care. NHS England data shows that in October 2012, the average waiting time to see a gynaecologist was 4.8 weeks. By October 2022, the most recent month for which figures are available, that figure had increased by 225% to 15.6 weeks. Many of the conditions experienced by women waiting to see a gynaecologist are progressive. Left untreated, they can need more complex or invasive surgery. Thousands are living in extreme pain as a result of the long waits, doctors, health experts and charities told the Guardian. The figures reveal that 38,231 women have been waiting more than a year. Ten years ago there were 15 women in England waiting longer than 12 months – and no one waiting two years. Today, 69 women have been waiting more than 24 months. Dr Ranee Thakar, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “This new analysis adds to our own research that gynaecology waiting lists were outstripping other specialities long before the pandemic, and they continue to grow rapidly. “Shockingly, the fact we can now track this pattern back 10 years, shows how long overdue action is to address the unequal growth in waiting lists.” Thakar added: “Women’s health has been consistently deprioritised. Gynaecology waiting times are currently the longest we’ve seen since waiting list targets were introduced, leaving thousands of women with symptoms including extreme pain, heavy menstrual bleeding and incontinence.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 19 December 2022 -
Content ArticleThe World Health Organization (WHO) has been tracking the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic since the beginning of 2020. This report is a comprehensive and consistent measurement of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by estimating excess deaths, by month, for 2020 and 2021. It estimates 14.83 million excess deaths globally, 2.74 times more deaths than the 5.42 million reported as due to COVID-19 for the period. There are wide variations in the excess death estimates across the six World Health Organization regions.
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News ArticleNearly 8,900 more people have died of cancer than expected in Britain since the start of the pandemic, amid calls for the Government to appoint a minister to deal with the growing crisis. In an essay in The Lancet Oncology, campaigners and medics said the upward trend of cancer deaths is likely to continue, with 3,327 in the last six months alone. They urged the Government to tackle the crisis with the same focus and urgency given to the Covid vaccine rollout, and called for a cancer minister to get on top of the backlog. NHS data from November showed that in the last 12 months, 69,000 patients in the UK have waited longer than the recommended 62-day wait from suspected cancer referral to start of treatment. Professor Gordon Wishart, a former cancer surgeon and chief medical officer of Check4Cancer, said: “The Covid-induced cancer backlog is one of the deadliest backlogs and has served to widen the cracks in our cancer services". “Now we face a deadly cancer timebomb of treatment delays that get worse every month because we don’t have a sufficiently ambitious plan from policymakers. I urge the Government to work with us.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 15 December 2022
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News Article
‘Patient safety progress stopped in its tracks by covid’ says Hunt report
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A report commissioned by Jeremy Hunt before he became Chancellor has highlighted how the pandemic ’stopped progress on patient safety in its tracks’ and called for more accurate data to be published on a range of measures. The National State of Patient Safety was funded by Mr Hunt’s Patient Safety Watch charity and produced by Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. It highlights a rise in rates of MRSA and C. difficile since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, as well as an increase in deaths due to venous thromboembolism and hip fractures. The report said the pandemic had also exacerbated issues associated with staff wellbeing, claiming there had been “notable rises” in staff burnout and ill-health. The researchers described problems with the breadth and accuracy of available patient safety data and highlighted that only 44% of trusts currently fulfilled the obligation to report their own estimated number of avoidable deaths. Although the report added that “data on rates of avoidable deaths are not a panacea”, it described them as a “snapshot of safety and harm and are most usefully used to initiate further work to understand the causes of unwarranted variation”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 November 2022 -
News ArticleAt a time when it feels like the world’s perpetually on fire, we all need a therapist – but trying to find one in the USA is difficult. A study from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 6 in 10 psychologists “no longer have openings for new patients” in America. The shortage comes as demand for therapy soars: since the beginning of the pandemic, about three-quarters of practitioners have seen their waiting lists expand. In the same period, almost 80% of practitioners report an increase in patients with anxiety disorders and 66% have seen an increase in those needing treatment for depression. “I started my private practice just before Covid hit, and it was certainly filling up then,” says Dr Jennifer Reid, a psychiatrist, writer and podcast host in Philadelphia. “But the numbers have exponentially risen since that time.” Reid focuses on anxiety and insomnia, which have been “major players” in the pandemic. Early on, people with anxiety, phobias or obsessive-compulsive disorder related to germs had particular trouble, she says. Then there was the isolation and the doomscrolling. And now, she says, people are struggling to re-enter the world. “People are finding they’re having anxiety trying to re-engage in social settings in situations that were previously not as safe” at Covid’s peak, she says. Often, she says, people may need to return to their primary care doctor for a period of time, “or they just end up going without and waiting on waitlists, unfortunately”. The APA study found that the average psychologist reported being contacted by 15 potential patients every month; Reid, who combines therapy and medical approaches, says she generally has space for about one new patient every few weeks. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 November 2022
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Content Article
Covid Airborne Protection Alliance Latest News
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Covid Airborne Protection Alliance – formerly the AGP Alliance – (Chaired by BAPEN's Dr Barry Jones) is calling on Governments and health services in all four nations of the UK to review and update its guidance regarding personal protective equipment (PPE) for all health and social care staff as a matter of urgency. Stay up to date with their latest news. -
Content ArticleThe Covid-19 pandemic has led to the reorganisation of healthcare services to limit the transmission of the virus and deal with the sequelae of infection. This reorganisation had a detrimental effect on cardiovascular services, with reductions in hospitalisations for acute cardiovascular events and the deferral of all but the most urgent interventional procedures and operations. Aortic stenosis (AS) is the most common form of valvular heart disease. Once stenosis is severe, symptoms follow and the prognosis is poor, with 50% mortality within 2 years of symptom onset. Thus, timely treatment is of paramount importance. There was a large decline procedural activity to treat severe AS during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we move into an era of ‘living with’ COVID-19, plans must urgently be put in place to best manage the additional waiting list burden for treatment of severe AS. In this study, Stickels et al. used mathematical methods to examine the extent to which additional capacity to provide treatment of severe AS should be created to clear the backlog and minimise deaths of people on the waiting list.
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News Article
Care homes and hospitals told to stop shutting out visitors
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Care homes and hospitals will be forced to allow visitors under plans being drawn up by the government. Helen Whately, the care minister, said shutting out relatives showed a lack of humanity. Covid-19 rules mean some of the country’s most vulnerable people still cannot have loved ones at their bedside. Whately, who has told of her personal grief and frustration at being barred from visiting her critically ill mother, is now developing laws to give residents and patients a right to receive visitors. Although official visiting restrictions were dropped in the spring in England, there are still widespread reports of care homes and hospitals refusing to let in relatives or imposing stringent conditions that ministers do not believe are justified by public health guidance. Hundreds of care homes still refuse to accept visitors entirely, according to government figures, while others restrict residents to one relative at a time. Campaigners report residents losing weight because their relatives cannot go in to help them at mealtimes amid staff shortages. They also fear residents are being left in bed for long periods because staff know there will be no visitors to check on them. Whately said that she was “determined to fix” the issue, adding: “No one can be in any doubt now how much visits matter”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 11 November 2022 Related reading on the hub: Visiting restrictions and the impact on patients and their families: a relative's perspective It’s time to rename the ‘visitor’: reflections from a relative -
News Article
NHS disruption driving rise in heart deaths, charity says
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Extreme disruption to NHS services has been driving a sharp spike in heart disease deaths since the start of the pandemic, a charity has warned. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said ambulance delays, inaccessible care and waits for surgery are linked to 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in England. It has called for a new strategy to reduce "unacceptable" waiting times. Doctors and groups representing patients have become increasingly concerned about the high number of deaths of any cause recorded this year. New analysis of the mortality data by the BHF suggests heart disease is among the most common causes, responsible for 230 deaths a week above expected rates since February 2020. The charity said "significant and widespread" disruption to heart care services was driving the increase. Its analysis of NHS data showed that 346,129 people were waiting for time-sensitive cardiac care at the end of August 2022, up 49% since February 2020. It said 7,467 patients had been waiting more than a year for a heart procedure - 267 times higher than before the pandemic. At the same time, the average ambulance response time for a suspected heart attack has risen to 48 minutes in England against a target of 18 minutes, according to the latest NHS figures. The BHF said difficulty accessing face-to-face GP and hospital care may have also contributed to the rise. Read full story Source: BBC News, 3 November 2022
