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Found 843 results
  1. News Article
    The number of GPs in England has fallen every year since the government first pledged to increase the family doctor workforce by 5,000, a minister has admitted. There were 29,364 full-time-equivalent GPs in post in September 2015, when the then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, first promised to increase the total by 5,000 by 2020. However, by September 2020 the number of family doctors had dropped to 27,939, a fall of 1,425, the health minister Maria Caulfield disclosed in a parliamentary answer. And it has fallen even further since then, to 27,920, she confirmed, citing NHS workforce data. In the 2019 general election campaign, Boris Johnson replaced Hunt’s pledge with a new commitment to increase the number of GPs in England by 6,000 by 2024. However, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, admitted last November that this pledge was unlikely to be met because so many family doctors were retiring early. Organisations representing GPs say their heavy workloads, rising expectations among patients, excess bureaucracy, a lack of other health professionals working alongside them in surgeries, and concern that overwork may lead to them making mistakes are prompting experienced family doctors to quit in order to improve their mental health and work-life balance. The British Medical Association (BMA) said the figures Caulfield cited showed that the lack of doctors in general practice was “going from bad to worse for both GPs and patients”, and it warned that patients were paying the price in the form of long waits for an appointment. “Despite repeated pledges from government to boost the workforce by thousands, it’s going completely the wrong way,” said Dr Kieran Sharrock, the deputy chair of the BMA’s GP committee. “As numbers fall, remaining GPs are forced to stretch themselves even more thinly, and this of course impacts access for patients and the safety of care provided.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 April 2022
  2. News Article
    Hospital inspectors have uncovered repeated maternity failings and expressed serious concern about the safety of mothers and babies in Sheffield just days after a damning report warned there had been hundreds of avoidable baby deaths in Shrewsbury. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found Sheffield teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust, one of the largest NHS trusts in England, had failed to make the required improvements to services when it visited in October and November, despite receiving previous warnings from the watchdog. As well as concerns across the wider trust, a focused inspection on maternity raised significant issues about the way its service is run. When it came to medical staff at the Sheffield trust, the “service did not have enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, and experience to keep women and babies safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment”, the report said. Inspectors found that staff were not interpreting, classifying or escalating measures of a baby’s heart rate properly, an issue that was raised by Donna Ockenden in her review of the Shrewsbury scandal. Despite fetal monitoring being highlighted as an area needing attention in 2015 and 2021, the most recent inspection “highlighted that the service continued to lack urgency and pace in implementing actions and recommendations to mitigate these risks, therefore exposing patients to risk of harm”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 April 2022
  3. News Article
    ‘Horrifying and upsetting’ reports of bullying in prestigious heart units are being probed by national officials and professional leaders, HSJ can reveal. Health Education England told HSJ it was “undertaking a national thematic review of training in cardiothoracic surgery”, while the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery separately revealed it was investigating concerns about “bullying, harassment and undermining behaviour” in the specialty following high-profile recent cases in Newcastle and Wales. Society president consultant surgeon Simon Kendall, who is based at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, told HSJ he has been made aware of wider problems beyond those identified in the North East and Wales. Mr Kendall revealed allegations reported to the society have included people being shouted at in public, problems resulting from a “legacy culture of sarcasm and public humiliation”, and more personal disputes between individuals. The consultant surgeon told HSJ: “The job is hard enough for all of us, without picking on each other and making it worse." He added: “It’s the extended team that is affected by these behaviours and it will have an impact on patient safety and patient care. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 April 2022
  4. News Article
    A number of London GP practices are training their receptionists to do blood tests, Pulse has learned. Professor Sir Sam Everington, a GP and chair of Tower Hamlets CCG, told Pulse that ‘lots of practices’ in the area have taken the step, including his own. Training a receptionist to carry out blood tests – which can be done in just six weeks – provides much-needed support to pressured practices, he said. Dr Everington told Pulse: ‘A lot of our receptionists have signed up to be phlebotomists and they love it because actually, phlebotomy is not just about taking blood. "You get to know all the patients with long-term conditions and so our phlebotomists know all these patients." He added that reception teams are a ‘fertile recruitment ground’ for a phlebotomist. They can ‘manage even the most terrified patients’ and have ‘amazing’ clinical skills. Dr Everington suggested that training receptionists as phlebotomists can help build trust with patients who are suspicious about having to describe their symptoms for triage by reception staff. But he said that the extra role just ‘acknowledges’ that all members of practice staff are ‘part of the clinical team’. He told Pulse: "In our practice, we all train together. We have meetings together, the whole team, and it’s acknowledging in this modern world that actually every member of your staff is a clinician – part of the clinical team – because there are always things they will do or can do that will have an impact clinically." "There isn’t a hidden supply of GPs out there in the next few years. It takes 10 years to train GPs so actually help is going to come from a wider team base." Read full story Source: Pulse, 31 March 2022
  5. News Article
    NHS staff are significantly less likely to recommend their organisations as places to work or believe they employ enough people to deliver effective care, the service’s annual staff survey has revealed. The 2021 survey results, published today, showed regression across a broad range of questions, including in areas such as motivation, morale, workload pressures and staff health. One of the biggest drop-offs in survey scores related to the question asking whether there were enough staff in their organisation for respondents to do their job properly. Only 27.2% of those surveyed said staffing was adequate, a fall of 11% points from the previous year (38.4%). Only 59.4%nof staff said they would recommend their organisation as a place to work. This represented a 7% point decline from the previous year (66.8%). The rating had steadily improved since 2017 when it was at 59.7%. While a decline was seen across all sectors, the steepest drop was found among ambulance trusts. Ambulance trusts performing worse compared to other sectors appeared to be a recurring theme across the survey. Read full story (paywalled) Source: 30 March 2022
  6. News Article
    A damning report into hundreds of baby deaths has condemned the trust at the centre of the biggest maternity scandal in the history of the NHS for blaming mothers while repeatedly ignoring its own catastrophic blunders for decades. The independent inquiry into maternity practices at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust uncovered hundreds of cases in which health officials failed to undertake serious incident investigations, while deaths were dismissed or not investigated appropriately. Instead, grieving families were denied access to reviews of their care and mothers were blamed when their babies died or suffered horrific injuries. A combination of an obsession with natural births over caesarean sections coupled with a shocking lack of staff, training and oversight of maternity wards resulted in a toxic culture in which mothers and babies died needlessly for 20 years while “repeated failures” were ignored again and again. Tragically, it meant some babies were stillborn, dying shortly after birth or being left severely brain damaged, while others suffered horrendous skull fractures or avoidable broken bones. Some babies developed cerebral palsy after traumatic forceps deliveries, while others were starved of oxygen and experienced life-changing brain injuries. The report, led by the maternity expert Donna Ockenden, examined cases involving 1,486 families between 2000 and 2019, and reviewed 1,592 clinical incidents. “Throughout our final report we have highlighted how failures in care were repeated from one incident to the next,” she said. “For example, ineffective monitoring of foetal growth and a culture of reluctance to perform caesarean sections resulted in many babies dying during birth or shortly after their birth. “In many cases, mother and babies were left with lifelong conditions as a result of their care and treatment. The reasons for these failures are clear. There were not enough staff, there was a lack of ongoing training, there was a lack of effective investigation and governance at the trust and a culture of not listening to the families involved. “There was a tendency of the trust to blame mothers for their poor outcomes, in some cases even for their own deaths. What is astounding is that for more than two decades these issues have not been challenged internally and the trust was not held to account by external bodies. “This highlights that systemic change is needed locally, and nationally, to ensure that care provided to families is always professional and compassionate, and that teams from ward to board are aware of and accountable for the values and standards that they should be upholding. Going forward, there can be no excuses.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 March 2022
  7. News Article
    The children’s inpatient unit at an ‘outstanding’ mental health trust has been downgraded to ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), amid a surge in demand for its services. The CQC previously rated child and adolescent mental health wards at Hertfordshire Partnership University Foundation Trust as “outstanding” in May 2019. But after an inspection in November and December 2021, these services were downgraded to “inadequate” overall and for the key categories of safety and leadership. Although inspecting a core service, the CQC said its visit was “not wide-ranging enough” to update overall trust ratings, so HPFT remains “outstanding” overall. Teenagers aged from 13 to 18 and admitted to Forest House, a 16-bed unit in Radlett providing HPFT’s only inpatient service for children and adolescents, told CQC inspectors they felt “unsafe”, dissatisfied with their care, and had experienced bullying by fellow patients. Leadership in the service had “significantly deteriorated” since previous inspections, CQC chiefs wrote in a report published today, and this was having a “knock-on effect in all areas of care being provided”. Staff morale was low and access to clinical psychologists limited, with a reduced ability to provide therapeutic interventions, inspectors added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 March 2022
  8. News Article
    An ambulance trust has appointed a former senior trust executive to lead an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the unexplained death of a staff member, HSJ has learned. East of England Ambulance Service Trust also shared the terms of reference for the investigation withHSJ, which follows the trust being forced to launch a similar probe in 2020 after three young staff members died in 11 days in December 2019. The latest investigation is into the death of Nick Lee, 46, from Ovington in west Norfolk, who died on 3 December 2021. Mr Lee was an operations manager for the trust in the west Norfolk area and had worked for the trust for nearly 20 years. The cause of death is yet to be officially established. Margaret Pratt has been appointed by the trust to lead the investigation. A trust statement issued to HSJ said: “The purpose of the investigation is to look at the events leading up to the death, review the circumstances of the death and consider whether there is anything that the trust can learn to contribute to improving the support provided to staff.” The investigation follows a prolonged period of years in which the trust has been dogged by high-profile and deeply ingrained cultural and bullying problems. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 March 2022
  9. News Article
    A whistleblower who worked at a hospital trust where hundreds of babies died or were left brain-damaged says there was "a climate of fear" among staff who tried to report concerns. Bernie Bentick was a consultant obstetrician at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust for almost 30 years. "In Shrewsbury and Telford there was a climate of fear where staff felt unable to speak up because of risk of victimisation," Mr Bentick said. "Clearly, when a baby or a mother dies, it's extremely traumatic for everybody concerned. "Sadly, the mechanisms for trying to prevent recurrence weren't sufficient for a number of factors. "Resources and the institutionalised bullying and blame culture was a large part of that." More than 1,800 cases of potentially avoidable harm have been reviewed by the inquiry. Most occurred between 2000 and 2019. Mr Bentick worked at the Trust until 2020. He said from 2009 onwards, he was raising concerns with managers. "I believe there were significant issues which promoted risk because of principally understaffing and the culture," he said. He also accuses hospital bosses of prioritising activity - the number of patients seen and procedures performed - over patient safety. "I believe that the senior management were mostly concerned with activity rather than safety - and until safety is on a par with clinical activity, I don’t see how the situation is going to be resolved," he said. Read full story Source: Sky News, 27 March 2022
  10. News Article
    The chief executive of one of England’s most prestigious private hospitals has lost her employment tribunal claim that she was dismissed for whistle blowing over patient safety issues. Aida Yousefi ran the Portland Hospital in central London from January 2017 until her dismissal in December 2019 on two counts of gross misconduct. She was also in charge of The Harley Street Clinic and a specialist cancer centre. Ms Yousefi’s argument that she was removed after raising concerns about the patient safety was rejected by central London employment tribunal in a judgment published last week. The judge instead ruled that while other senior staff had raised patient safety concerns over cost-cutting, there was no evidence that Ms Yousefi had done so. In their judgment the tribunal panel said: “In oral evidence the claimant further accepted that, as CQC-registered manager, if patient safety concerns were not being dealt with she should have raised it with CQC. She did not do so at any point during her employment.” Staffing concerns were raised by The Harley Street Centre chief nursing officer Claire Champion and others. However, the tribunal heard evidence that doing so could be frowned upon by senior management at HCA International. The tribunal was shown an email from then vice president of financial operations at THSC and the Portland Enda O’Meara saying “Frankly – we are starting to piss some very senior people off in appearing that we can’t [make savings]. We can’t always cite patient safety. Because the response will always be other facilities are doing it”. Another email from Mr O’Meara said: “Please don’t cite ’patient safety’ unless you truly believe it to be the case. This term is particularly sensitive and nothing winds them up more”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 March 2022
  11. News Article
    More than 1,500 patient deaths are to be investigated in the largest-ever independent inquiry into “unacceptable” mental health care. A probe into the deaths of patients who were cared for by NHS mental health services across Essex has revealed its investigation will cover deaths from 2000 to 2020. All 1,500 people died while they were a patient on a mental health ward in Essex, or within three months of being discharged from one. In 2001, following an investigation into 25 deaths, police criticised the trust for “clear and basic” failings but did not pursue a corporate manslaughter prosecution. And in 2021, the Health and Safety Executive fined the trust £1.5m due to failures linked to the deaths of 11 patients. The regulator said the trust did not manage the risks of ligature points for a period of more than 10 years. In January 2021, following pressures, former patient safety minister Nadine Dorries commissioned former NHS England mental health director Dr Geraldine Strathdee to chair an independent inquiry. While it is not known yet how many of the 1,500 deaths were caused by neglect, Dr Strathdee said evidence had so far shown some “unacceptable” and “dispassionate” care. Melanie Leahy, who has campaigned for change within Essex mental health services since her son died in 2012, has been leading the call for it to become a public inquiry on behalf of the families. Her son, Matthew Leahy, died as an inpatient at the Linden Centre, following multiple failings in his care. A 2018 parliamentary health service ombudsman report on his death, and that of another young man called Richard Wade, identified “systemic” failings on behalf of the trust. These included the failure to manage his risk level, to look after his physical health and to take action when he reported being raped in the unit. Read full story Source: The Independent, 28 March 2022
  12. News Article
    "Absolutely soul destroying" is how one paramedic describes his job. He is not alone. Over the past few months, BBC Wales has been contacted by employees from the Welsh Ambulance Service who paint a dire picture of a service under immense pressure. Ambulance waiting times have climbed and climbed throughout the pandemic. The impact that has on patients is well known - but what about those on the other side? Mark, who did not want to disclose his real name or show his face for fear that he would lose his job, described the stress of his shifts with a radio strapped to his chest, hearing "red calls waiting, red calls waiting". "That is the potential of somebody's life waiting in the balance - and you can't get there. It's absolutely soul-destroying. We wouldn't treat animals this way, why are we treating humans?", he said. Mark said the job has always come with pressure and anxiety. But over the course of the pandemic that has intensified and he has "never known as many people looking for other jobs as they are at the moment". The stress has become so bad that he is now on antidepressants. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 March 2022
  13. News Article
    An NHS trust has apologised over the death of a 27-year-old events manager after a locum gynaecologist mistook aggressive cervical cancer for a hormonal or bowel problem. The family of Porsche McGregor-Sims, who died a day after being admitted to Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, told her inquest that she had felt she was not listened to and that the misdiagnosis had robbed them of a chance to say goodbye. The area coroner Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp said the case was one of the most “shocking and traumatic” she had dealt with and she would write to Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust expressing her concern. In December 2019, McGregor-Sims’ GP referred her to a consultant after she complained of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. She saw Dr Peter Schlesinger, an agency locum at the Queen Alexandra hospital, at the end of January 2020. He did not physically examine her and believed her symptoms were linked to changing hormones or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). After the UK went into lockdown two months later, McGregor-Sims continued to report symptoms but was prescribed antibiotics over the phone and was seen in person only after a GP thought she might have Covid because she had shortness of breath. McGregor-Sims was finally diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer and on 13 April was taken to hospital, where she died a day later. During the inquest, her family accused Schlesinger of having denied them their chance to say goodbye. Her mother, Fiona Hawke, told him: “You robbed us of the opportunity to prepare for her death and say goodbye to her.” Schlesinger insisted McGregor-Sims’ symptoms – including bleeding after sex – did not lead him to think she had a serious illness. Dr Claire Burton, a consultant gynaecologist, said Schlesinger should have physically examined McGregor-Sims, and apologised for the care she received at the trust. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 March 2022
  14. News Article
    The former health secretary Jeremy Hunt will join doctors’ representatives today in a call to stem the “bleed” of GPs or risk endangering patients. Polling shows that almost nine in ten GPs fear that patient safety is being put at risk by shortages of family doctors and too little time for appointments. The government has admitted that it will fail to fulfil an election pledge to recruit 6,000 extra full-time GPs by 2024. Hunt is campaigning with the British Medical Association and the GPDF, which represents local medical committees, in calling for the government to put forward a GP workforce plan to “rebuild general practice”. He said: “The workforce crisis is the biggest issue facing the NHS. We can forget fixing the backlog unless we urgently come up with a plan to train enough doctors for the future and, crucially, retain the ones we’ve got. “As someone who tried hard to get more GPs into local surgeries but ultimately didn’t succeed because the numbers retiring early exceeded those joining, I’m passionate about fixing this.” The campaign wants the government to deliver on its pledge for an extra 6,000 GPs in England and action to tackle the reasons for GPs leaving the profession, such as burnout. It says that a plan is needed to reduce GP workload, which would improve patient safety.
  15. News Article
    A trust has admitted it is having to discharge patients inappropriately into care homes or community hospital beds because of a shortage of home care workers. A report to East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust’s board last week revealed that 160 extra beds had been commissioned to maintain flow across the local health economy “due to insufficient domiciliary/care package capacity.” It went on: “The clinical commissioning group have tried via Kent County Council to commission additional domiciliary care without success. It is acknowledged by the local health economy that it is important to withdraw from these additional beds as quickly as possible as they are not a cost-effective resource and more importantly, in many cases, they are not the ideal discharge destination for those patients who could have been discharged home with a care package. “Patients are being transferred into community hospital beds or residential home beds due to a lack of domiciliary care packages. Although this is a national issue, it will not be resolved locally until appropriate pathway capacity is commissioned.” Professor Adam Gordon, president elect of the British Geriatrics Society, said: “If people have been sent to a care home when they don’t want or need to be there that can affect their motivation and result in a form of deconditioning. One of the principles of effective rehabilitation in older people is that if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 March 2022
  16. News Article
    More than 80% of GPs believe that patients are being put at risk when they come into their surgery for an appointment, a new survey shows. A poll of 1,395 GPs found only 13% said their practice was safe for patients all the time. Meanwhile, 85% expressed concerns about patient safety, with 2% saying patients were “rarely” safe, 22% saying they were safe “some of the time” and 61% saying they were safe “most of the time”. Asked if they thought the risk to patient safety was increasing in their surgery, 70% said it was. Family doctors identified lack of time with patients, workforce shortages, relentless workloads and heavy administrative burdens as the main reasons people receiving care could be exposed to risk. The survey, which was self-selecting, also found that: 91% said more GPs would help improve the state of general practices. 84% have had anxiety, stress or depression over the past year linked to their job. 31% know a colleague who was physically abused by a patient in the last year. 24% know of a member of general practice staff who has taken their own life due to work pressures. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 March 2022
  17. News Article
    An inspection of a county's urgent and emergency services found delays were caused by a lack of empty beds and prolonged waiting times. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected Gloucestershire emergency care services in November and December. The report found staff worked well in challenging circumstances but the CQC said pressures on workers across the system needed addressing. Dr Jeremy Welch said: "The system is being stretched and we need to adapt." CQC deputy chief inspector for hospitals, Nigel Acheson, said: "We found the system to be complicated. As a result, staff and patients weren't always able to understand which urgent and emergency care service was best suited to their needs. "This meant people sometimes attended the emergency department when they could have been treated more appropriately elsewhere." In addition the report touched on adult social care and the possibility of using empty care home beds when hospitals were struggling to cope. Dr Welch recognised "it's been a blinking tough time in care homes" over the pandemic and credited the relaxing of rules to allow visits but said there are other factors that would need to be considered. However he added: "We've got enough beds when we map across, it's just getting patients through the hospital and home because home is where they want to be." Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 March 2022
  18. News Article
    Women and NHS staff have warned that mothers are being “forgotten” after giving birth, with a staff crisis only making matters worse. Kate, a 32-year-old from Leeds, says she has been left in “excruciating” pain for nine years after horrifying postnatal care. Other women have told The Independent stories of care ranging from “disjointed” to “disastrous”. It comes as midwives warn there are “horrendous” shortages in community services, which have prevented women from accessing adequate antenatal and postnatal care. Mary Ross-Davie, the Royal College of Midwives’ director for professional midwifery, said that with each Covid wave midwifery staffing has been hit worse than the last. To provide safe care during labour, antenatal and postnatal care, teams are sent into wards putting “huge pressure on care”. She said this could mean clinicians end up “missing things”, such as women struggling emotionally after birth. The warnings over poor antenatal and postnatal care come after experts at the University of Oxford said in November there were “stark” gaps in postnatal care, despite the highest number of deaths being recorded in the postnatal period. Dr Sunita Sharma, lead consultant for postnatal care at Chelsea and Westminster Trust, said that when NHS maternity inpatient staffing overall is in crisis “often the first place staff are moved from is the postnatal ward, which is clinically very appropriate, but it can come at a cost of putting more pressure on postnatal care for other mothers”. Dr Sharma said postnatal teams were doing their best to improve services but need national drivers and funding to sustain improvement. Read full story Source: The Independent, 16 March 2022
  19. News Article
    An ‘outstanding’ London trust has come under fire for asking staff to communicate ‘only in English’ when around other people. A document published under the ‘trust values’ section of Homerton University Hospital Foundation Trust’s website, says: “I will only communicate in English in the presence of others.” The document has been widely shared on social media in the last 24 hours, with many criticising the trust for its wording. The document itself is dated 2014, but was reposted by the trust in 2019, and remained on its website as of midday today. NHS England’s director of equality – medical workforce, Partha Kar, who is also NHSE’s diabetes lead, questioned the document on Twitter. He also said: “I am not aware of any NHS England ‘diktat’ suggesting we must all only speak in English to uphold NHS values.” It follows a separate notice being posted on Twitter yesterday signed simply by “Matron”, by a doctor who claimed her friend saw it at her “hospital placement”. It seemingly threatened staff with “disciplinary action” if they spoke any other language other than English. It reads: “English is the only language to be spoken in the ward area – this includes the kitchen. Disciplinary action will be taken against staff who do not comply, including agency and bank.” The documents have prompted a backlash on Twitter, with many criticising them and raising concerns about racism and inclusivity of staff. NHSE’s chief nursing officer, Ruth May, has publicly queried where the document is from. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 March 2022
  20. News Article
    A privately run mental health hospital put in special measures last year has been rated “inadequate” again following a fresh Care Quality Commission inspection. Inspectors raised serious concerns about unsafe ward environments and staff not managing patient risks at the Priory Hospital Arnold, which has beds commissioned by Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust. Inspectors said that while the leadership team was experienced, the registered manager had been in post since April last year and the improvements they had made “had not been fully embedded”. The registered manager had changed after the service was placed in special measures. Ligature risks were found in patients’ bathrooms despite the provider making “some progress” and undertaking “substantial work” to remove them, the CQC said. And in one instance, a patient had tried to harm themselves with a plastic bag which was a restricted item on the ward. CQC head of hospital inspection for mental health and community services Craig Howarth said staff “had not followed the patient’s risk assessment” and had not searched the patient on their return from a visit off the ward. He added: “It was also concerning that despite rotas showing enough staff were available across the hospital, staff gave examples of when a lack of staffing had impacted on patient care and safety. “Despite the measures in place, the risks to patients were not reduced and there was evidence of incidents of harm to patients.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 15 March 2022
  21. News Article
    The chief executive of three NHS trusts says ringfencing elective care within an acute hospital site is potentially more ‘productive’ than sending it to a separate ‘cold’ site. Glen Burley, who leads a “provider group” in the West Midlands, says his trusts have been grappling with the challenge of how to maximise elective activity without it being disrupted by emergency pressures. The conventional view – as outlined in the NHS long-term plan – is that performing more elective care on a separate site from emergency can help ensure theatre lists are not disrupted. But George Eliot Trust, which has been led by Mr Burley since 2018 and only has a single district general hospital, has created a “ringfenced” elective hub within the site. In an interview with HSJ, Mr Burley said: “So I actually think the most productive model in the NHS is if you can pull that off. “If you can actually protect your elective capacity and offer it on the same site [as] urgent care, so the clinicians are not having to move between sites, you’ve got optimal productivity. “The challenge right across the NHS has been avoiding that spillage, of emergency care into your elective capacity. “As you get busier and you escalate… the order in which you encroach into areas that you should not encroach into, is really key in that. We are saying we are going to protect our elective beds in a way that we haven’t done before." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 14 March 2022
  22. News Article
    Serious safety concerns have been raised about a children’s mental health hospital where staff lacked respect for patients, as the provider faces a police investigation into another one of its units. The Huntercombe Hospital in Stafford has been rated as “inadequate” by watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after inspectors found the safety of children within the hospital was at risk. The concerns about this hospital come as The Independent revealed police have launched an investigation into another mental health unit run by the provider in Maidenhead. Following an inspection in October inspectors sent an urgent warning notice to the provider, after it found there were not enough staff to keep patients safe. The hospital was described as relaying on agency workers who did not have knowledge of the patients. The CQC inspectors found children’s wards were dirty with poor hygiene measures in the hospital and patients at risk of infection. According to the report staff were found “sitting with their eyes closed for prolonged periods of time”, and that staff observations of at risk patients were “undermined by a blind spot where people could self-harm unseen.” Craig Howarth, CQC head of inspection for mental health and community health services, said: “Further to these issues, we saw that staff sometimes showed a lack of respect to patients and one ward was poorly furnished and maintained and there wasn’t always enough emphasis on some people’s individual requirements.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 March 2022
  23. News Article
    The General Medical Council (GMC) has achieved marginal improvements against its targets to reduce racial inequalities, it said in an annual update on the programme. However, BAME doctor representatives as well as the GMC itself said the progress was not sufficient against the targets which the regulator had set itself last year. These included stopping disproportionate complaints from employers about ethnic minority doctors by 2026, and getting rid of disadvantage and discrimination in medical education and training by 2031. According to the update, the gap between employer referral rates for ethnic minority doctors and international medical graduates, compared to white doctors, has marginally reduced. The report also acknowledged the judgment by an employment tribunal in June last year, which found that the GMC had discriminated against a doctor based on his race. Reading Employment Tribunal upheld a complaint that Dr Omer Karim, who previously worked as a consultant urologist in Slough, had been discriminated against during an investigation by the GMC, after the body dismissed charges against a white doctor accused of the same conduct. The GMC has appealed the verdict but is still waiting for the appeal to be heard. Read full story Source: Pulse, 10 March 2022
  24. News Article
    A midwife found guilty of misconduct over the death of a baby six years ago is to be struck off. Claire Roberts was investigated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) for failures in the care she gave to Pippa Griffiths - who died a day after being born at home in Myddle, Shropshire. An independent disciplinary panel described the midwife as "a danger to patients and colleagues". Ms Roberts and fellow midwife Joanna Young failed to realise the "urgency" of medical attention needed, following the birth, the panel said. They had failed to carry out a triage assessment, after Pippa's mother called staff for help because she was worried about her daughter's condition. The panel concluded Ms Roberts's fitness to practise was impaired. Inaccurate record-keeping by Ms Roberts represented "serious dishonesty", panel chair David Evans said, adding she had carried it out "in order to protect herself from disciplinary action". Her failures had represented a "significant departure from standards expected by a registered midwife," he added. Her colleague Ms Young, whose case was also heard by the panel, faced strong criticism on Wednesday, but was told she would face no sanction after the hearing concluded she had shown remorse and undergone extra training since 2016. Kayleigh Griffiths said she and her husband welcomed the findings and sanctions. "We're really relieved that one of the midwives has been struck off and actually we're also relieved to find that the other midwife has learnt and feels significant remorse for the event that took place," she said. "We realise people do make mistakes and I think how you deal with those mistakes is really important. "All we do ask is that learning was made from those and I think in one of the instances it did occur and in the other it didn't - so I think the right outcome has been found." Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 March 2022
  25. News Article
    Staff failed to provide kind and compassionate care and did not treat children with respect at a private hospital downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’, a report by health inspectors has revealed. Huntercombe Hospital Stafford was placed in special measures in 2016, but was rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission two years later. Now, its first inspection under provider Huntercombe Young People Ltd in October 2021 has exposed a raft of safety concerns and instances of poor care. Huntercombe Young People Ltd took over the service in February 2021. Heavy reliance on agency staff, workers spotted with their “eyes closed” on observations, and staff not respecting young people’s pronouns were among concerns inspectors flagged. Staff observation of patients was also found to be “undermined” by a blind spot where people could self-harm unseen, the CQC report, published today, said. Children also told the CQC they felt staff did not always understand their mental health condition or know how to support them, particularly those on the psychiatric intensive care ward with eating disorders or autism. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 March 2022
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