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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Children feel they have to attempt suicide multiple times before they get treatment from NHS mental health services, the former children’s commissioner has warned.
    Anne Longfield said that schoolchildren were aware that NHS mental health infrastructure was “buckling and far from being able to cope with the demand”.
    She told the Times Health Commission: “When I first became children’s commissioner in 2015, the thing that children talked about most often was mental health. They said they knew they couldn’t get help and treatment easily, because there just wasn’t enough help to go around.
    “Some said, we know that we’ve almost got to try and take our own life before we can get help. And I thought that was pretty shocking at the time. Now, young people are saying not only do they have to try to take their own life, they have to try and take their own life several times, and they say there will be an assessment of levels of intent within that.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Times, 1 November 2023
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    Millions of patients will be handed the power to view their own medical records and test results online after the NHS overruled opposition from the doctors’ union.
    From 1 November every GP surgery in England will be contractually obliged to give all patients over the age of 16 access to their health information on their phones.
    It means patients will no longer have to ring up their surgery or book a GP appointment to get details of blood test results, medications and repeat prescriptions, but instead they can access them by logging in to the NHS app.
    The British Medical Association (BMA) had threatened to go to court over the plans, arguing that granting people access to their records would add to GP workloads and could put patients at risk.
    However, Jacob Lant, the chief executive of the charity umbrella group National Voices, said: “Ensuring everyone has access to their own medical records through the NHS app is an important step in building a more equal partnership between patients and clinicians.
    “It gives people much easier access to the information they need to prepare for appointments, and having quick access to test results can help patients manage their conditions better. Using technology in this way has the potential to help millions, and free up capacity of staff to help those who are less able to make use of digital services.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 31 October 2023
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    Nearly four years since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, you could be forgiven for believing the pandemic is behind us. But for many, it feels far from over.
    Close to two million people face a daily battle with debilitating symptoms of Long Covid – the lasting symptoms of the virus that remain after the infection is gone – with some now housebound, unable to walk and even partially blind.
    Alan Chambers, 49, is among those who have been grappling with the illness for years, having caught coronavirus in March 2020.
    Mr Chambers went from being “a fit, healthy, working member of the community who would do anything to help anyone” to being “ill and isolated in our bedroom”, blind in one eye and no longer able to walk unaided, his wife Vicki said.
    As of March, an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK have experienced coronavirus symptoms for more than four weeks, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. Of those, 1.5 million reported the condition had adversely affected their day-to-day activities.
    It comes as coronavirus case rates have shown an overall increase since July, with fears the approaching winter will bring a further surge in infections.
    Yet in May, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that coronavirus no longer represents a global health emergency, which was seen as a symbolic step towards the end of the pandemic.
    Dr Jo House, founding member and health advocacy lead at Long Covid Support, said the advocacy group now has 62,000 members, with about 250 more people joining every month.
    “In their words, they feel ‘forgotten, unheard, disbelieved, isolated, unemployed, disabled, immobile’. 
    NHS England admitted to The Independent that access to necessary support, treatment and care for Long Covid patients is still lacking. It said there was “still more to do to ensure support is there for everyone who needs it”, so that patients requiring specialist assessment and treatment for Long Covid can access care in a timely way.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 29 November 2023
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    The government must allow health systems to plan their finances over a longer period to help deliver ‘real’ savings by rationalising services, says a leading chief executive.
    Kevin McGee, who recently stepped down from Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, said the “short-termism” baked into the annual NHS budget cycle is a major source of frustration for local leaders.
    Many trusts and systems have struggled to deliver their financial plans this year due to the savings required, and Mr McGee warned that continuing to “salami slice” the budgets will exacerbate patient safety risks.
    He said Lancashire and many other systems urgently need to rationalise and consolidate acute services on fewer sites, which would bring significant cost savings. However, changes such as these can often take years to plan and implement.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 1 November 2023
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    Black, Asian and minority ethnic people experience longer waiting times, and are less likely to be in recovery after treatment, when accessing NHS mental health services compared with their white counterparts, a report has found.
    The research looked at 10 years’ worth of anonymised patient data from NHS Talking Therapies, formerly known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies – an NHS programme that launched in 2008 to improve patient access to NHS mental health services. A total of 1.2 million people accessed NHS Talking Therapies services in 2021-22, and by 2024 the programme aims to help 1.9 million people in England with anxiety or depression to access treatment.
    The report, Ethnic Inequalities in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, commissioned by the NHS Race and Health Observatory and undertaken by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, found that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds were less likely to go on to have at least one treatment session, despite having been referred by their GP, than their white counterparts.
    Dr Lade Smith, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “For far too long we have known that people from minoritised ethnic groups don’t get the mental healthcare they need. This review confirms, despite some improvements, it remains that access, experience and outcomes of talking therapies absolutely must get better, especially for Bangladeshi people.
    “There is progress, particularly for people from black African backgrounds, if they can get into therapy, but getting therapy in the first place continues to be difficult. This review provides clear recommendations about how to build on the improvements seen. I hope that decision-makers, system leaders and practitioners will act on these findings.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 1 November 2023
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    People have been hospitalised after taking a fake version of the weight-loss control jab Ozempic, with 369 drugs seized by the UK’s medicines safety regulator.
    The fake jabs, obtained without prescription through black market suppliers, were seized by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
    Ozempic, the brand name for semaglutide, and demand for the medicine has contributed to shortages in the product, which is also used for people with type 2 diabetes.
    The watchdog said a low number of patients had been hospitalised and reported serious side effects, including hypoglycaemic shock. Others ended up in a coma, which indicates the pens may have contained insulin rather than semaglutide.
    It has urged the public not to buy drugs without a prescription and warned buying prescription-only medicines online “poses a direct danger to health”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 29 October 2023
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients who have been waiting more than 40 weeks for treatment in England will be offered the option of getting seen in another part of the country.
    About 400,000 will be contacted in the coming weeks and asked whether they would be willing to travel and how far.
    Patients already have a right to ask for treatment elsewhere. But NHS England believes that by proactively contacting the longest waiters they will help unlock some of the worst bottlenecks in the system.
    Only those who do not have an appointment already scheduled within the next eight weeks will receive the offer via text, email or letter.
    The 400,000 figure represents about 5% of the total number waiting for treatment.
    If a patient is happy to travel, the treatment could either be in an NHS or private sector hospital.
    Those on low incomes will be entitled to some financial support to enable them to travel for treatment.
    Patients will retain their place on the waiting list at their local hospital while other options are explored.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 31 October 2023
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    Parents of babies who have died or been harmed as a result of poor care are demanding that ministers order a public inquiry into repeated failings in NHS maternity units.
    They want Steve Barclay, the health secretary, to set up a judge-led statutory inquiry to investigate recurring problems in maternity services, which cost the NHS in England £2.6bn a year in damages.
    Babies are still being damaged and dying, despite previous inquiries into maternity scandals at the Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent NHS trusts recommending changes. The NHS’s failure to improve maternity safety is so alarming that a public inquiry is needed to finally ensure that women and babies no longer come to harm, the families say.
    The Maternity Safety Alliance, a group of relatives of newborns who have died due to lapses in NHS childbirth, warned that scandals will continue unless such an inquiry is held.
    “Our babies are too precious to keep on ignoring the reality that despite a raft of national initiatives and policies implemented in the wake of investigations and reports, systemic issues continue to adversely impact on the care of women and babies.
    “Far too much avoidable harm continues to devastate lives in circumstances that could and should be avoided. Fundamental reform is needed,” they said in a letter urging Barclay to intervene.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 31 October 2023
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Lawyers for a doctor at the centre of Northern Ireland's biggest patient recall have withdrawn from his new fitness to practise hearing.
    Legal representatives for Michael Watt said they are "concerned about his serious mental health condition".
    They told the Medical Practice Tribunal Service that the continuation of the hearing in public "presents a real risk to his mental health".
    A new fitness to practise hearing began in September.
    The legal team has also formally withdrawn an application to the tribunal for Michael Watt to remove himself from the medical register.
    It followed a ruling by the High Court earlier this year to quash a decision where he previously was voluntary erased from the medical register.
     
    The tribunal is inquiring into the allegation that, between 7 and 22 of October 2018, Michael Watt underwent a General Medical Council assessment of the standard of his professional performance.
    It is alleged that that performance was unacceptable in the areas of maintaining professional performance, assessment, clinical management, record keeping and relationship with patients.
    Read full story
     
    Source: BBC News, 27 October 2023
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Rishi Sunak is “highly unlikely” to meet his promise to cut NHS waiting lists, health leaders have warned, as a “sobering” analysis suggests the backlog will rise to 8 million and won’t begin to fall until next summer.
    The prime minister vowed in January that “NHS waiting lists will fall” as he outlined five pledges upon which he staked his premiership. The backlog was 7.2 million at the time. It is now 7.75 million, the highest since records began in 2007.
    But a grim report published today by the Health Foundation, an independent thinktank, will pile further pressure on Sunak over the NHS. The 15-page analysis predicts that the waiting list for hospital treatment in England will continue to rise for at least 10 months and ultimately top 8 million, regardless of whether or not strikes continue.
    The thinktank modelled four different scenarios and concluded that, based on current trends, NHS waiting list figures could peak by August 2024 if there was no more strike action by healthcare workers, before starting to come down. If strikes were to continue, the list could increase a further 180,000, it said.
    Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “This analysis all but confirms that the prime minister’s pledge to reduce the size of the waiting list is increasingly unlikely to be met.”
    He added: “As the Health Foundation report rightly says, the root cause of the delays to treatment that patients are now experiencing is a decade of underinvestment in the NHS.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 27 October 2023
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    The performance of one of the NHS’s flagship strategies to reduce demand on over-stretched hospitals has collapsed, HSJ  can reveal.
    Internal NHS figures show the number of processed advice and guidance requests (A&G) from GPs to hospital consultants fell by 28% between June and August, alongside a 32% fall in the number of processed cases where patients were diverted away from secondary care. This comes despite the overall number of A&G requests from GPs only falling by 5% in the same period.
    A&G services allow GPs to contact hospital consultants before making a referral in order to ensure only clinically appropriate patients are referred to secondary care.
    The model is described by NHS England as a ”a key part of the National Elective Care Recovery and Transformation Programme’s work.”
    The data showing the fall in processed requests and diversions from secondary care came from NHSE’s specialist advice activity dashboard, which HSJ has seen.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 26 October 2023
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    Women affected by a review of cervical smears in the Southern Health Trust have said they are "angry, frustrated and scared" for their future.
    About 17,500 patients in the trust are to have their previous smears re-checked as part of a major review of cervical screening dating back to 2008.
    Some of these women will be recalled to have new smear tests carried out. But the process has not started yet and will take at least six months to complete.
    Letters were sent out by the trust earlier this month to those affected.
    The Southern Trust says it expects to recall around 4,000 women for a new smear test after it reviews 17,368 historic slides.
    The Trust's medical director, Dr Steve Austin, told its board meeting that the review of slides was expected to start next week.
    It also emerged that the number of calls from concerned women has increased with many asking for more "specialist" answers.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 27 October 2023
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    Children are not being over-diagnosed with ADHD despite concerns about a spike in prescriptions of powerful stimulant drugs, a leading psychiatrist has said.
    NHS statistics show 125,000 children and teenagers in England are taking drugs such as Ritalin for symptoms such as poor concentration, up by a quarter since before the Covid pandemic.
    Isobel Heyman, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street Hospital and lead for child mental health at Cambridge Children’s Hospital, said that on the whole ADHD remained “under-treated” and that this was driving high levels of mental illness in young people.
    Speaking to the Times Health Commission, Heyman said: “My understanding is that the increase in prescribing is largely related to increased diagnosis and increased recognition … We are still overall slightly under-treating [rather] than over-treating.
    “There is a problem about over-medicalisation of ordinary distress, ordinary ebullience and over-enthusiasm in young people.”
    She said the public should be reassured that ADHD diagnoses follow a “very stringent” process. However, she said private adult ADHD clinics may be less “rigorous” in providing a diagnosis.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 18 October 2023
    Further reading:
    Long waits for ADHD diagnosis and treatment are a patient safety issue
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    A 30-year-old actress whose symptoms were dismissed as anxiety died of a blood clot.
    Emily Chesterton believed she had seen a GP, but had in fact been seen twice by a physician associate (PA), a newer type of medical role that involves significantly less training.
    Her parents, Brendan and Marion Chesterton, both 64 and retired teachers, said they have serious concerns about plans for thousands more PAs to be employed to combat staff shortages as part of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
    Chesterton’s calf pain and shortness of breath should have suggested a pulmonary embolism and meant she was sent to A&E. A coroner concluded this would probably have saved her life. Instead she was told to take anxiety pills. She collapsed that evening. She was taken to hospital but her heart stopped and she could not be revived.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 10 July 2023
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    The UK's biggest chain of GP practices lets less qualified staff see patients without adequate supervision, an undercover BBC Panorama investigation has found.
    Operose Health is putting patients at risk by prioritising profit, says a senior GP.
    The company, with almost 600,000 NHS patients, is owned by US healthcare giant Centene Corporation. 
    BBC Panorama sent undercover reporter Jacqui Wakefield to work as a receptionist at one of the UK company's 51 London surgeries. 
    A GP working at the practice said they were short of eight doctors. The practice manager said they hired less qualified medical staff called physician associates (PAs), because they were "cheaper" than GPs.
    Physician associates were first introduced by the NHS in 2003, so that doctors could deal with more complex patient needs. PAs are healthcare professionals who have completed two years of post-graduate studies on top of a science degree, as opposed to 10 years education and training for GPs. They support GPs in the diagnosis and management of patients, but should have oversight from a doctor.
    Panorama gathered evidence that PAs were not being properly supervised at the Operose practice. The PAs told the undercover reporter they saw all sorts of patients, sometimes without any clinical supervision. They said the practice treated them as equivalent to GPs.
    Prof Sir Sam Everington, a senior practising GP at an unconnected partner-run practice, reviewed BBC Panorama's undercover footage and said he was concerned for patient safety.
    During the undercover investigation at the London practice, administrative workers also revealed a backlog of thousands of medical test results and hospital letters on Operose computer systems. 
    One worker said they were tasked with getting through 200 documents a day, deciding which were important enough to be seen by a GP or pharmacist and which would be filed to the patient's records. One member of staff, worried about making mistakes said they sometimes used Google to help them work out what to do with the documents.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 11 June 2022
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    The GMC has responded to senior medical leaders’ frustration at news that the Government is again delaying long-promised plans for its reform which would ease the strain felt by doctors. 
    Its chief executive said its Council shared widespread disappointment at the hold-up in changing the legislation – which was expected this year, but will not now happen until 2024-25.
    Charlie Massey told Independent Practitioner Today: "Physician associates and anaesthesia associates are an important part of the health workforce and we welcome progress to bring them into regulation, which we will do within 12 months of legislation being laid by Government.
    "But we are disappointed that the outdated legislation for doctors will not be replaced at the same time. 
    "The current framework stops us from being responsive and flexible in how we address patient safety concerns and register doctors to join the UK workforce. That isn’t good for patients and puts unnecessary strain on doctors.
    "The Government has said that it expects to deliver reforms for doctors as a priority following its work on physician associates and anaesthesia associates."
    Mr Massey called for a clearer commitment on the specific timing of that work, adding that the GMC wanted to progress better regulation for both doctors and medical associate professionals (MAPs) as soon as the Department of Health and Social Care laid the necessary legislation.
    "It is now the department’s decision when and how to implement these changes. When the department does implement these changes, we will be ready to start the process to put the reform changes into practice," he said.
    Read full story
    Source: Independent Practitioner Today, 9 August 2022
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    A consultant obstetrician has claimed he was sacked from his hospital for raising whistleblowing concerns about patient safety over fears they would cause “reputational damage”.
    Martyn Pitman told an employment tribunal in Southampton that managers dismissed his concerns and he was “subjected to brutal retaliatory victimisation” after he criticised senior midwife colleagues.
    He said: “On a daily basis there was evidence of deteriorating standards of care. We were certain that the situation posed a direct threat to both patients’ safety and staff wellbeing. Concern was expressed that there was a genuine risk that we could start to see avoidable patient disasters.”
    Rather than addressing these, Pitman said the trust had considered it “the path of least resistance to take out [the] whistleblower”.
    Pitman was dismissed this year from his job at the Royal Hampshire County hospital (RHCH) in Winchester, where he had worked as a consultant for 20 years. He is claiming he suffered a detriment due to exercising rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
    He said he “fought against [an] absolute barrage of completely unprofessional assaults on me” after he raised concerns about foetal monitoring problems that resulted in the death of a baby and the delivery of another with severe cerebral palsy.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 26 September 2023
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    Claims for damages by more than 170 people who say they were affected by hormone-based pregnancy test drugs have been thrown out by a High Court judge.
    The drugs, including Primodos, were given to women to test if they were pregnant from the 1950s to 1970s and alleged to have caused birth defects.
    But the judge ruled there was no new evidence linking the tests with foetal harm and "no real prospect of success".
    Campaigners say they are "profoundly disappointed" with the judgement.
    Legal action had been brought against three drug companies - Bayer Pharma, Schering Health Care, Aventis Pharma - as well as the government in a bid for compensation. However, they argued there was no evidence of a "causal association" between the hormone pregnancy tests and the harm suffered by the claimants.
    Marie Lyon, chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests, said she was "profoundly disappointed" with the judgement.
    "We do not accept the defendants' claim that our evidence did not provide sufficient scientific evidence and look forward to the additional scientific evidence, to support our original argument, which is due to be published shortly," she added.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 28 May 2023
    Further reading on the hub:
    Patient Safety Spotlight interview with Marie Lyon, chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests
     
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    In 2018 the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (www.baaps.org.uk)  dissuaded all its members from performing Brazilian Buttock Lift (BBL) surgery, until more data could be collated. The decision was taken due to the high death rate associated with the procedure. Now, following an extensive four-year review of clinical data, new technology and techniques, BAAPS has published its Gluteal Fat Grafting (GFG) guidelines.
    Gluteal fat grafting is currently the procedure with the biggest growth rate in plastic surgery worldwide, with an increase of around 20% year-on-year). It has become the most popular means of buttock volume augmentation, overtaking gluteal augmentation with implants.  In 2020, The Aesthetic Society statistics recorded 40,320 buttock augmentation procedures, which included both fat grafting and buttock implants.
    In 2015, there were reports of intraoperative mortality related to pulmonary fat emboli associated with BBL surgery and in 2018 with growing concern about the high mortality rate associated with this procedure BAAPS recommended it was not performed by its members.
    The development of the present guidelines and recommendations has been stimulated by the evidence that has emerged since 2018, based on scientific review and analysis. BAAPS guidelines now recommend that Gluteal Fat Grafting is safe to perform under two key conditions:
    Injection into the subcutaneous plane only - there is a plethora of evidence to suggest this significantly reduces mortality related to the procedure perhaps this needs to be changed to – the evidence shows that the only deaths from the procedure have been when fat has been injected into the deeper muscle layer. Intraoperative ultrasound must be used during the placement of fat in the gluteal area to ensure that the cannula remains in the subcutaneous plane – this is the only way that surgeons can be confident they are not in the muscle layer. Read full story
    Source: BAAPS, 17 October 2022
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    Complaints about non-surgical Brazilian butt lifts and breast enhancements have risen at an “alarming” rate, up from fewer than 5 to 50 in a year, an industry body has revealed.
    Save Face, a national, government-approved register of accredited non-surgical treatment practitioners, is calling for the procedures to be banned, while the Local Government Association has asked Westminster to take urgent action.
    Ashton Collins, the director of Save Face, said the organisation had noted an “alarming” increase in complaints about these enhancements, which she said should be banned.
    Collins said: “No reputable healthcare professional would offer these treatments as they are very high risk.
    “It’s a new and incredibly dangerous trend which has emerged from social media, a trend people think is a cheaper, risk-free alternative to the surgical counterparts. All the cases reported to us have been carried out by non-healthcare practitioners who have prioritised profits ahead of the safety and wellbeing of their clients.
    “These treatments are incredibly risky, and we have helped people who have contracted sepsis and have had to undergo surgery to remove the filler. In 2021, we had fewer than five complaints about these treatments. That figure has increased tenfold in the past year alone and we are getting more and more complaints each week.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2023
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    Practitioners with no professional medical qualifications use social media to target women and girls, an investigation by undercover Times reporters has found.
    The medicines regulator has begun an investigation after undercover Times reporters found beauticians offering to inject women with “black market” Botox, putting them at risk of being disfigured for life.
    Practitioners with no professional medical qualifications used social media to target women and girls, suggesting the treatments were safe and would enhance their looks. Many used products that have not gone through safety checks in Britain. Reporters confirmed that at least three practitioners advertising facial injections on social media sites were using cheap versions of Botox that are not licensed in the UK.
    Campaigners say they are receiving increasing reports of disfigurements such as permanent facial scarring and large sores caused by injections with unlicensed versions of Botox, often carried out in people’s homes and at beauty salons.
    The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it was reviewing the findings and would “take appropriate regulatory action where any non-compliance is identified”.
    Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said the practices uncovered were “totally unacceptable” and officials were looking into whether legal changes were needed “to ensure no one is harmed”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 2 February 2022
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    Lip fillers have grown increasingly popular but the industry is "like the wild west", experts warn, with many patients left in pain and embarrassed by their appearance.
    As Harriet Green left a salon after getting an injection to add volume to her lips, she was reassured the excess swelling would go down. But three months later her lips were still so bloated she could not close her mouth properly.
    The 22-year-old from Acle in Norfolk needed three corrective procedures - costing a total of more than £700 - to get them back to normal.
    Dr Saba Raja, a GP who runs her own aesthetics clinic in Norwich, says she is increasingly having to correct treatments which have gone wrong, describing the experience as "really distressing".
    "Every month I'm getting enquires from young girls who have gone to a non-medical practitioner for lip or tear trough fillers under the eye and had complications.
    "They often try to contact the practitioner but due to lack of training they are unable to deal with the complications. It is becoming more and more of a problem."
    Dr Raja describes the industry as "like the wild west", with people injecting patients "out of the back of their cars" and in kitchens.
    "Anti-wrinkle injections (Botox) are prescription-only but the injector can be anybody who has been on a day course. Dermal filler (for the lips and face) is not even a prescription-only medication, you can buy it off any website," she says.
    "A lot of non-medical practitioners are buying cheap filler online, with no idea where it has come from. We really need strict regulations and minimum training standards."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 9 May 2023
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    Proposals by the Scottish Government to give a licence to unregistered professionals to carry out cosmetic procedures are “fundamentally flawed” and put lives at risk, leading nurses in the field have warned.
    A consultation has been launched seeking views on plans for a new regulatory regime of non-surgical aesthetic treatments that pierce or penetrate the skin like dermal fillers or lip enhancements. Ministers want to bring non-health professionals under existing legislation allowing them to obtain a licence to perform these procedures in unregulated premises such as beauty salons and hairdressers.
    The move comes after a UK-wide review carried out in 2013, by then NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh, identified that little regulation existed within the cosmetic industry. Since then there has been growing concern that people are coming to physical and psychological harm from treatments gone wrong.
    Leaders at the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses (BACN) told Nursing Times that they were “totally opposed” to non-medical practitioners carrying out injectable beauty procedures.
    BACN Chair Sharon Bennett said holding a medical, nursing or dentistry qualification should be a “basic prerequisite” before being accepted to an aesthetics training course. SHe said BACN believed even clinically trained practitioners, including nurses, needed further training in aesthetics before working in this “specialist” area.
    “[This is] because there is no educational framework, training or statutory provision to establish or task beauty therapists to detect disease, care for patients or carry out medical treatment, so to do so would breach public health safety and endanger lives.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Nursing Times, 20 January 2020
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    A cosmetic surgeon has been suspended from the UK medical register for nine months for failures in obtaining informed consent, pressuring a patient into surgery by offering a discount, and laughing when passing on a patient’s complaint of sexual assault by another doctor.
    Ashish Dutta is the nominated member for the European Society of Aesthetic Surgery on the European Commission for Standardisation of Aesthetic Surgery Services. He is also an examiner for the World Board of Cosmetic Surgery.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: BMJ, 27 November 2019
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    A cosmetic surgery was forced to close after the health watchdog raised concerns about the safety of its practices. Smethwick's Bearwood Cosmetic Clinic's registration was cancelled by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last year.
    The health watchdog's report into the practice is yet to be published, but inspectors have written to other practitioners expressing concerns. It found "unsafe practice" and a lack of appropriate training.
    The letter from the CQC reveals it has inspected 65 services across the country, about two thirds of independent cosmetic surgery providers and raised concerns about 12. While some were found to be "providing a very good standard of care", there were a number of areas of concern.
    Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals, wrote to providers raising particular concern regarding the use of anaesthetic during liposuction. Inspectors had seen examples of "unsafe practice", he said, and reminded providers that a trained anaesthetist should be present for procedures. The CQC also warned it had found evidence of staff not having appropriate training, a lack of attention to fundamental safety processes and infection control standards not being followed.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 31 October 2019
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