Jump to content
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    11,906

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Patient Safety Learning

Administrators

 Content Type 

News posted by Patient Safety Learning

  1. Patient Safety Learning
    The blanket use of antibiotics in farming has led to the emergence of bacteria that are more resistant to the human immune system, scientists have warned.
    The research suggests that the antimicrobial colistin, which was used for decades as a growth promoter on pig and chicken farms in China, resulted in the emergence of E. coli strains that are more likely to evade our immune system’s first line of defence.
    Although colistin is now banned as a livestock food additive in China and many other countries, the findings sound an alarm over a new and significant threat posed by the overuse of antibiotic drugs.
    “This is potentially much more dangerous than resistance to antibiotics,” said Prof Craig MacLean, who led the research at the University of Oxford. “It highlights the danger of indiscriminate use of antimicrobials in agriculture. We’ve accidentally ended up compromising our own immune system to get fatter chickens.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 25 April 2023
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has demanded recovery plans from six systems with a poor record on delivering urgent cancer checks. 
    NHS England has told the chief executives of the six integrated care boards they must “present and deliver a plan” to make more use of their diagnostic facilities for patients who need urgent cancer checks. The “facilities” referred to are all community diagnostic centres.
    The six were selected because they diagnosed or ruled out fewer than 70% of urgent cancer referrals within 28 days during February. This benchmark is known as the “faster diagnostic standard”. 
    A letter to the chief executives said: “improving waiting times for patients referred for urgent suspected cancer will be a critical priority for the NHS over the coming year”. It adds: “it is essential… our national investments in diagnostic capacity are more clearly prioritised for patients being investigated for urgent suspected cancer”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 28 April 2023
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    Four carers have been found guilty of ill-treating patients at a secure hospital, following a BBC Panorama investigation.
    Nine former staff at Whorlton Hall, near Barnard Castle, County Durham, had faced a total of 27 charges. Five of those on trial have been cleared.
    Jurors heard vulnerable patients were mocked and treated with "contempt".
    Lawyers for the defendants argued their clients had been doing their best in very challenging circumstances.
    The men found guilty have been bailed and will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court in July.
    Speaking after the verdicts, Christopher Atkinson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the four men had a "duty of care for patients who, due to significant mental health issues, were wholly dependent on their support every day of their lives".
    He said it was "clear" there were times when the care provided was "not only devoid of the appropriate respect and kindness required but also crossed the line into criminal offending".
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 27 April 2023
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    Discrimination and inequality are bigger factors for staff wanting to leave acute trusts than burnout, new analysis of this year’s NHS staff survey has found. 
    Researchers at LCP compared 12 summary indicators within the survey to answers on intention to leave, to build a “relative importance model” to explain “nearly 85% of the variation in intention to leave”.
    LCP said: “Approximately 30 per cent of that explained variance is attributable to the diversity and equality score (compared to less than 10 per cent attributable to the burnout summary indicator score).”
    Natalie Tikhonovsky, an analyst in LCP’s Health Analytics team, said: “Our analysis reveals a grim picture of low satisfaction levels and higher staff turnover rates currently facing the NHS acute sector. Understanding what is driving this will be key to the success of the government’s new workforce plan and to the overall aim of reducing steadily increasing wait lists.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 28 April 2023
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    A hospital trust has said its staff have been verbally abused when contacting some patients to postpone their appointments because of next week’s nursing strike.
    Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust posted a statement to its website yesterday, which said: “It is very regrettable that we have to report that our staff have been verbally abused when contacting some patients to postpone their appointments. We fully understand and appreciate how disappointing and frustrating any postponement is, and we only do this if we absolutely have to in order to provide safe care for all our patients.
    “Our staff are doing their best in challenging circumstances to make sure you are informed as soon as possible. We do not tolerate abuse of our staff and abuse will be noted and further action may be taken.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 27 April 2023
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    Almost one in three UK doctors investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) think about taking their own life, a survey has found.
    Many doctors under investigation feel they are treated as “guilty until proven innocent” and face “devastating” consequences, the Medical Protection Society (MPS) said.
    Its survey of 197 doctors investigated by the GMC over the last five years found:
    31% said they had suicidal thoughts. 8% had quit medicine and another 29% had thought about doing so. 78% said the investigation damaged their mental health. 91% said it triggered stress and anxiety. The MPS, which represents doctors accused of wrongdoing, accused the GMC of lacking compassion, being heavy-handed and failing to appreciate its impact on doctors.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 27 April 2023
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    The trust at the centre of a maternity scandal is trying to reduce the number of births at its main maternity units by 650 a year following a highly critical Care Quality Commission (CQC) visit.
    East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust is looking at ways to reduce pressure on staff at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, including stopping bookings from women who are “out of area”. The unit currently has around 3,600 births a year, of which 200 are out-of-area bookings. The trust is also seeking to send more births to its other site, in Thanet.
    It comes after the CQC used enforcement powers to order immediate improvements at the unit, following a visit in January, when it had “significant concerns about the ongoing wider risk of harm to patients”. 
    Earlier this year, the trust’s new chief executive, Tracey Fletcher, held what board papers describe as an “emotional” meeting with 135 midwives, other staff and senior Royal College of Midwives representatives. She was told by staff that the service at the WHH was not felt to be safe due to a lack of substantive staff, high acuity of patients and the level of activity.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 28 April 2023
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    A 48-hour strike by nurses in England over the Bank Holiday weekend will be cut short by a day after a High Court judge ruled it was partly unlawful.
    The walkout in a row over pay by the Royal College of Nursing, due to start on Sunday, will now end on Monday.
    RCN chief Pat Cullen said this was "the darkest day" of the dispute so far and the government needed to negotiate.
    Downing Street said it was "regrettable" the government had to go to court and it had tried to avoid it.
    Health Secretary Steve Barclay took legal action after NHS Employers said the last day of the planned strike was not covered by the mandate as the ballots closed on 2 November at midday.
    The judge Mr Justice Linden ordered the RCN to pay the costs of the hearing, saying the union had showed "a high degree of unreasonableness", the outcome was "inevitable" and "instead of grasping the nettle and conceding" it had forced the case to court.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 27 April 2023
     
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Young doctors just out of medical school working as resident physicians, fellows and interns at major US hospitals are organising unions at an increasing rate, citing long-running problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic and a need to rethink the struggles young doctors face in the profession.
    The Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of SEIU, added five unionised sites in 2022 compared with about one a year before the pandemic and the surge has continued in 2023 with multiple union election filings. It currently represents over 25,000 residents, fellows and interns across the US, comprising about 15% of all resident and fellow physicians.
    Hospital management has opposed the unionisation effort, declining to voluntarily recognise the union, encouraging residents not to sign union authorisation cards ahead of the election filing and writing local op-eds in opposition to unionisation.
    Since going public with their union plans, staff have been sent emails and been invited to meetings to try to dissuade residents from unionising, “often counting on myths around what unionizing would mean”, said Dr Sascha Murillo, a third-year internal medicine resident at Massachusetts general hospital.
    The unionising campaign took off after vulnerabilities in the healthcare system were exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, with residents working on the frontlines and bearing the brunt of staffing shortages, an influx of Covid-19 patients, and patients who deferred medical care.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 27 April 2023
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Patient safety investigators have issued a warning to the NHS over writing to patients only in English after a Romanian child died following missed cancer scans.
    The three-year-old, of Romanian ethnicity, had an MRI scan delayed after they were found to have eaten food beforehand.
    When the appointment for the child’s MRI scan was made by the radiology booking team, a standard letter was produced by the NHS booking system in English asking the child not to eat before the scan, despite the family’s first language being Romanian. Staff at the trust had hand-written on the patient’s MRI request sheet that an interpreter was required.
    “The family recognised key details in the written information, including the time, date and location of the scan,” the report said.
    “However, they were not able to understand the instructions about the child not eating or drinking (fasting) for a certain amount of time before the scan.”
    The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) has urged NHS England to develop and implement new rules on supplying written appointment information in languages other than English.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 27 April 2023
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Following an in-depth expert safety review of the acne drug isotretinoin (commonly known by brand names Roaccutane and Reticutan), the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has agreed to a number of recommendations to strengthen the safe use of the treatment.
    Isotretinoin is used to treat severe forms of acne, especially if there is a risk of permanent scarring. This medicine is an extremely effective last-line treatment for severe acne. However, patients and members of the public have raised concerns about suspected side effects associated with isotretinoin, including psychiatric (mental health) and sexual side effects that sometimes continue after treatment with isotretinoin has been stopped.
    Key recommendations include:
    Better information for patients and their families about the risks of isotretinoin so that they can make an informed decision before using this medicine. Consistent monitoring of a patient’s psychiatric and sexual health so that any problems are spotted earlier and there are defined routes for patients to receive help. Tighter controls on first prescribing isotretinoin to young people (aged 12 to 18) so that it is only started when doctors agree the acne is severe enough to justify it and that other standard treatments have been sufficiently tried and haven’t worked. Patient Safety Commissioner, Henrietta Hughes tweeted last night: "I welcome the new recommendations from @MHRAgovuk to strengthen the safe use of isotretinoin. Courageous patients and families have shared their experience with the review. It’s only by listening and acting that we can meet patients’ needs."
    Read MHRA press release, 26 April 2023
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    Today’s generation of elderly people could be the last to face the spectre of untreatable Alzheimer’s disease, according to the co-chair of the government’s new dementia mission.
    Hilary Evans, the chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, appointed by ministers last month, said the world was “on the cusp of a new dawn” for dementia treatments that meant devastating neurodegenerative illness would no longer be regarded as an inevitable part of old age.
    However, she warned that an overhaul of NHS dementia care was required to ensure that patients could access the first effective Alzheimer’s drugs, which could be approved in the UK as soon as next year.
    Evans was appointed last month to co-chair the UK government’s national dementia initiative, which aims to draw lessons from the Covid vaccine taskforce to accelerate dementia research and comes with a commitment to double funding for dementia research to £160m a year by 2024–2025.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 26 April 2023
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has told many trusts and systems they are not allowed to increase their staffing establishment in the next 12 months, HSJ has learned.
    Trust leaders said NHS England and the government were treating money as the “first priority” and one director, speaking anonymously, said: “The tone of the conversation [with NHSE about finance] has become intimidating and I worry that this will lead boards to take unsafe risks, and head into Mid Staffs territory.”
    Board papers seen by HSJ, and several senior sources, confirmed many trusts had been told by NHS England during the planning process that they were not permitted to increased their total number of planned posts, known as staffing “establishment”, for 2023-24. 
    A chief nurse at one large acute provider said the pressure on staff numbers “doesn’t triangulate” with messages on safer staffing from regulators, including NHSE, such as the drive to increase midwife numbers over maternity safety concerns. It also contrasts with plans to expand clinical staff numbers in the promised national long-term workforce plan, the chief nurse said.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 25 April 2023
     
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    A major acute trust has warned ahead of next week’s nursing strike that it will face ‘very severe staffing shortages’ in children’s A&E, with ‘as few as one nurse per ward’, much less critical care capacity, and fewer operating theatres open than on Christmas Day.
    Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust’s medical director said in a note, seen by HSJ,  that the hospital would only have 60 to 70% of its critical care beds open and that “it is not possible to guarantee patient safety on our wards over the forthcoming weekend” with severe staffing shortages in “almost all areas”. 
    The Royal College of Nursing is planning no derogations (exceptions) to its planned 48-hour walkout, from 8pm on Sunday until 8pm on Tuesday, whereas its previous action has exempted emergency care. 
    There have been national warnings about the significant safety threat posed, but the CUH message, sent to all staff by medical director Ashley Shaw, sets out a more stark picture of critical services scaled back.
    It says: ”Our current information indicates there will be a severe shortage of nurses in almost all ward areas, with as few as 1 nurse per ward per shift."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 26 April 2023
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    In September 2021 Caitlin Glasgow, then 10-years-old, was diagnosed with Covid. She never fully recovered.
    "The rest of Caitlin's classmates all returned to school after isolating for 10 days, but she was still in bed after six weeks," recalls her mother Lorna.
    Lorna believes her daughter has Long Covid. She is one of 175,000 people in Scotland who say they are still affected by the illness.
    Lorna, who lives in Penicuik in Midlothian, said her local GP was helpful and concerned for Caitlin, but it has been difficult to understand why she hasn't recovered like her friends.
    "She still gets pains in her legs, that's probably the worst thing along with the fatigue. There's breathlessness, chest and tummy pain, brain fog and she gets quite light-headed at times."
    A report published by a Scottish government committee said tackling the stigma around long Covid needs "urgent" action.
    The Covid-19 recovery committee has outlined a raft of measures to improve awareness of the condition among healthcare professionals.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 26 April 2023
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that a batch of contaminated India-made cough syrup has been found in the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
    The WHO said that the tested samples of Guaifenesin TG syrup, made by Punjab-based QP Pharmachem Ltd, showed "unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol".
    Both compounds are toxic to humans and could be fatal if consumed.
    The WHO statement did not specify if anyone had fallen ill.
    The latest alert comes months after the WHO linked other cough syrups made in India to child deaths in The Gambia and Uzbekistan.
    Sudhir Pathak, managing director of QP Pharmachem, told the BBC that the company had exported the batch of 18,346 bottles to Cambodia after getting all due regulatory permissions. He said he didn't know how the product had reached the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 26 April 2023
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    “Nobody cares about me. Nobody wants to help me. I don’t want to be here anymore.” Difficult words to hear from a small child, but for Molly Tippetts, aged five with a nasty tooth infection, the outburst was the culmination of two years of pain – all because she couldn’t get an appointment to see a dentist.
    Molly is just one example of the UK’s dental-health crisis. An increasing number of people cannot access dental care at all; others – including children and expectant mothers – find themselves on years-long waiting lists. Even though the pandemic is over, NHS practitioners admit the country is in a crisis that shows no sign of ending.
    New research shows one in four people suffering from toothache put off going to the dentist because of the cost.
    Dentistry is now the number one issue raised with Healthwatch, the independent statutory body representing NHS patients, with four in five people who contacted them saying they found it difficult to access dental care. 
    The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health recently warned that even toothbrushes were a “luxury item” for some families, and that children’s dental health was a “national disgrace”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 25 April 2023
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    Women in labour should be offered an alternative to an epidural spinal block injection, say new draft guidelines for the NHS.
    The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is recommending remifentanil, which is a fast-acting morphine-like drug given into a vein.
    Women control the medication themselves, by pressing a button to get more of the drug for pain relief. A timer ensures the user cannot administer too much of it.
    Women who decide to try remifentanil and do not like it could still decide to have an epidural instead if there is no medical reason why they should not.
    They can use gas and air, also called Entonox, which is a mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide, at the same time.
    NICE says having remifentanil as a treatment option has advantages - it might enable women to be more mobile than with an epidural, which makes the legs numb and weak, for example.
    Evidence suggests fewer epidurals might mean fewer births using instruments like forceps and ventouse vacuum suction, says NICE.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 25 April 2023
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Two former senior managers at a large mental healthcare provider have told the BBC they had concerns about the safety of patients and staff.
    The whistleblowers claim they felt pressure to cut costs and fill beds.
    The Priory Group, which receives more than £600m of public money each year, is the biggest single private provider of mental health services to the NHS.
    The company denies the claims and says it successfully treats tens of thousands of patients each year.
    It adds its services "remain amongst the safest in the UK".
    The former members of the Priory Group's senior management said that, when they were working for the company, they found it difficult to recruit or retain staff, due to poor pay and conditions.
    They believe this resulted in patients being placed on wards that did not have staff equipped with the right skills to handle their conditions.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 26 April 2023
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    A senior GP has been struck off the UK medical register for an “utterly deplorable” litany of treatment failures and for “reprehensible” professional conduct that included leaving patients in the care of unprepared trainee doctors and operating without adequate professional insurance.
    At least two patients suffered “grave consequences” from inaction on the part of Surraiya Zia, including a man whose deteriorating condition was effectively ignored for six months, despite the fact that he “presented to Dr Zia frequently, sometimes up to three times within a week, with red flag symptoms,” said Samantha Gray, chairing the medical practitioners tribunal.
    The patient was eventually persuaded to seek private magnetic resonance imaging by his family. This showed widespread stage IV lung cancer that took his life within weeks. 
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: BMJ, 21 April 2023
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    A care home manager said it had become an "impossibility" to get NHS dentists to visit her elderly residents when they needed treatment.
    Liz Wynn, of Southminster Residential Home, near Maldon in Essex, said she had battled for years for site visits.
    It comes as a health watchdog revealed that 25% of care home providers said their patients were denied dental care.
    NHS Mid and South Essex said it was considering a number of approaches to improve access for housebound patients.
    Ms Wynn said the shortage of NHS community dentists available to come into the home to carry out check-ups and treatment had been an "on-going concern" for almost 10 years.
    Ms Wynn said the home relied on its oral care home procedures - such as checking residents' mouths daily - to prevent problems from escalating. However, she said while its residents were "our family", conditions such as dementia made it difficult to spot when patients were in pain.
    She also said poor dental hygiene in the elderly could result in a number of potentially life-threatening infections.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 April 2023
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    Health Secretary Steve Barclay is to ask judges to rule whether part of the next nurse strike is unlawful.
    The government wants the High Court to assess whether Tuesday - the last day of the walkout in England - falls outside the Royal College of Nursing's six-month mandate for action.
    It believes the mandate will have lapsed by Tuesday - the 48-hour strike is due to start at 20:00 BST on Sunday.
    The RCN accused ministers of using "draconian anti-union legislation".
    Mr Barclay's decision to take legal action follows a request from hospital bosses.
    The RCN argues the strike falls within the required six-month period from when votes were cast in its ballot for industrial action.
    But NHS Employers said it had legal advice that the action would be unlawful.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 April 2023
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    Britain is hamstrung by red tape in the NHS and workers are blighted by regulation, Boris Johnson’s former cabinet secretary has said.
    Lord Sedwill, who was head of the civil service for two years, said that the UK was “failing to fulfil its great potential” because of excessive regulation.
    He made the comments in a foreword to a report by the Policy Exchange think-tank which also highlights examples of regulation “passing on significant costs” to customers.
    Examples in the report include NHS rules instructing hospital staff to go through 50 separate steps to discharge patients, “leading to severe delays”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Telegraph, 23 April 2023
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    A week after Donna Ockenden published her damning report on the catastrophic failures in maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust in March last year, she was contacted by families in Nottingham asking her to investigate how dozens of babies had died or been injured in their city hospitals.
    Six months later, Ockenden — herself a senior midwife — was put in charge of another inquiry by the government and yet again she is finding a culture of cover-ups and lies in maternity care.
    “Of the families that I have met in Nottingham to date, some of them have expressed concerns to me that the trust were not truthful in discussions around their cases,” she tells the Times Health Commission.
    “We have all the systems and structures in place that should be able to spot maternity services in difficulty and here we are again. Families are having to fight to get answers.”
    The woman who has done more than anyone to highlight the problems with maternity care is reluctant to use the word “crisis” but she warns: “I think that without urgent and rapid action, from central government downwards — on funding and workforce and training — mothers and their babies are not going to be able to receive the safe, personalised maternity care that they deserve and should expect".
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 21 April 2023
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Seven million people in England are currently waiting for treatment on the NHS.
    That's more than the entire populations of some countries, including Denmark and New Zealand.
    Just under half of those referred to a specialist will have been in the queue for longer than 18 weeks — the maximum target set in 2004 by the Government. And more than 360,000 of them will have been waiting a year or more.
    It's a deeply troubling state of affairs that has been thrown into sharp focus by the impact of the junior doctors' strike.
    However, 'treatment delays existed long before the doctors' strike — and also the Covid-19 pandemic,' Danielle Jefferies, a senior analyst with independent think-tank The King's Fund, told Good Health.
    Indeed, while the impact of the virus may have worsened the bottlenecks, the problem of rising patient demand is of longer standing. And the potential consequences are terrifying.
    Studies show that for each month patients with breast, bowel or head and neck cancers have their treatment delayed, the chances of them dying from the disease increase by 6 to 13%.
    Meanwhile, eye specialists fear some people may suffer permanent sight loss because they cannot get to a specialist in time to prevent the worsening of serious conditions such as glaucoma, which affects around 700,000 people in Britain.
    Read full story
    Source: MailOnline, 19 April 2023
×
×
  • Create New...