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
    Trust in care homes has slumped, leaving half of the British public lacking confidence that friends or family would be well looked after.
    Nationwide polling for the Guardian revealed 9 out of 10 older people believe there are not enough care staff, and half have lost confidence in the standard of care homes since the start of the pandemic.
    The survey conducted by Ipsos this month follows a doubling in public dissatisfaction in the NHS and exposes deepening fears about the fitness of a social care sector that had its weaknesses exposed by Covid-19, which claimed 36,000 lives in care homes in England alone.
    The Relatives and Residents Association (RRA) said the polling tallied with calls to its helpline about the “harm and anguish caused by poor care and frustration at the inconsistency in standards”.
    “We must weed out the poor providers and invest in skills – care workers must become our most valued workers, not the least,” said Helen Wildbore, the RRA’s chief executive. “Tomorrow, any one of us could need them.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 24 April 2023
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    More teenagers are at risk of contracting rare but serious diseases due to a fall in immunisations as a result of the pandemic, according to a report.
    The uptake of vaccines among teenagers in secondary schools that protect against meningococcal disease, diphtheria, tetanus and polio has dropped since COVID affected routine school immunisation programmes provided by the NHS.
    The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found that 69% of children in year nine, aged 13 and 14, had the MenACWY vaccine and the Td/IPV booster in 2021-22. This marked a 7% drop in coverage for both vaccines compared to the previous year.
    The 3-in-1 Td/IPV booster helps provide teens with long-lasting protection against tetanus, diphtheria and polio, diseases that can result in serious illness or even death.
    Doctor Vanessa Saliba, consultant epidemiologist at UKHSA said: "In recent years we have seen vaccine uptake fall due to the challenges posed by the pandemic.
    "Many young people who missed out on their vaccinations have already been caught up, but more needs to be done to ensure all those eligible are vaccinated.
    "These vaccines offer the best protection as young people start their journey into adulthood and mixing more widely - whether going to college, starting work, travelling or going to summer festivals."
    Read full story
    Source: Sky News, 24 April 2023
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    Unannounced and out-of-hours spot-checks on mental health services are set to ramp up following a string of abuse scandals, The Independent can reveal.
    The Care Quality Commission’s new mental health chief Chris Dzikiti said he was “saddened” by “unacceptable” scandals in the last six months, warning the regulator “will use the powers [it has] to hold people to account.”
    He said the organisation will be carrying out more unannounced inspections of providers, including inspections launched out of normal hours, with the aim to have the “majority” of spot-checks carried out this way.
    In his first interview since joining the regulator in November Mr Dzikiti, who is mental health nurse by background, said: “I talk to chief execs of mental health services, I talk about [how] as a regulator, we will use the power we have, when [we] see poor practice, we will definitely hold people to account.
    “In our inspection programmes, we are also increasing the unannounced inspections out of hours inspections, because we need to try and get really deep into the culture of mental health services, especially those areas where we think there’s a higher risk of poor practice.
    “I will not rest until we get people safe.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 24 April 2023
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    The amount of government money spent on medical negligence cases and legal fees in Northern Ireland doubled within a year.
    Just over £20m was paid out during 2020-21 but that increased to more than £40m in the 2021-22 financial year.
    Last year, £30.7m was paid out in damages, while £5.9m went on plaintiff costs and £3.7m in defence costs.
    The increase in cost is being attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.
    Last year, 3,987 clinical negligence cases were open. Almost half (1,813) of all cases open in 2021-22 related to four specialties:
    Obstetrics - 564 Accident and emergency - 456 Neurology - 407 General surgery - 386 There has been a stark increase in the number of cases relating to neurology in the past five years from 23 in 2017-18 to 407 in 2021-22.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 April 2023
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    The medical device complaint management market is experiencing significant growth due to the increasing focus on patient safety and regulatory compliance. As medical devices become more complex and the regulations governing them become more stringent, it has become essential for manufacturers to have effective complaint management systems in place to ensure the safety and satisfaction of their customers.
    The global medical device complaint management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% from 2021 to 2026. 
    One of the key factors driving the growth of the medical device complaint management market is the increasing emphasis on patient safety. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the potential risks associated with medical devices, and patients are increasingly demanding higher levels of safety and quality. This has led to a greater focus on complaint management among medical device manufacturers, who are now investing in advanced complaint handling systems to ensure that they are able to identify and address issues before they become major problems.
    Read full story
    Source: Digital Journal, 20 April 2023
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS England has launched a new framework for quality improvement and delivery, including a national board that will pick a “small number of shared national priorities”.
    The new document says NHSE will “establish a national improvement board, to agree the small number of shared national priorities on which NHS England, with providers and systems, will focus our improvement-led delivery work”.
    The review says NHSE will, among other actions: 
    Create a “national improvement board” to “agree a small number of shared national priorities and oversee the development and quality assure the impact of the NHS improvement approach”. Set an expectation that all NHS providers, working in partnership with integrated care boards, will embed a quality improvement method aligned with the NHS improvement approach”. Incentivise a universal focus on embedding and sustaining improvement practice”, including with “regulatory incentives alongside clearer and more timely offers of support. Work with the [Care Quality Commission] to align the revised CQC well-led [inspection method] with the improvement approach. Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 April 2023
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    System leaders are discussing pushing back the NHS’s target to virtually eliminate 78-week breaches from the waiting list by this month to ‘June or July’, HSJ understands.
    The discussions come after the service missed its original targeted trajectory of clearing the backlog by this month, as first proposed in NHS England’s elective recovery plan last February, despite a steep reduction over the past 18 months.
    Internal NHS forecasts suggest there will be around just over 10,000 long waiters still on the waiting list by the end of April, as HSJ first revealed last month. Senior sources said this week that this figure remained a likely position for the end of the month.
    HSJ understands there has not been any official communication to trusts about pushing back the 78-week target, and it was not yet clear when the centre’s expectations would be finalised.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 21 April 2023
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    The mother of a young woman who died with herpes said she was "disgusted" with an NHS trust which "lied" about the potential cause of the virus.
    Kim Sampson and Samantha Mulcahy died with herpes after the same obstetrician at the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust carried out their caesareans.
    Yvette Sampson's daughter had been "fit and healthy" until she gave birth on 3 May 2018, an inquest has heard.
    She said the trust had lied about links between the two mothers' deaths.
    They were treated by the same surgeon and midwife six weeks apart, neither of whom were tested for herpes, the inquest in Maidstone was told.
    Ms Sampson said her daughter had been "in agony" from 3 May when she gave birth to her second child, until she died on 22 May.
    She told the inquest she had received "poor treatment" by midwives at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM) in Margate, which she felt also "contributed" to her daughter's death.
    Ms Sampson was initially denied a Caesarean and instead told to push for almost three hours, despite repeatedly telling midwives that "something wasn't right" and "clinging to the bed in agony", her mother said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 20 April 2023
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS has launched a legal challenge that could end in the high court to block the second day of an upcoming strike by tens of thousands of nurses.
    Officials at NHS Employers wrote to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) on Wednesday saying the union’s plans for a two-day strike were unlawful.
    In response, it is understood the RCN has said it will “forcibly resist” employers’ attempts to seek a high court injunction designed to block the strike, which they insist is lawful.
    The threat raises the possibility of a high court clash between NHS lawyers backed by the government and those of the nursing union. It also highlights the increasingly bitter relationship between the government and those representing workers on the frontline of the health service.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2023
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Nearly five million patients each month in England wait more than a fortnight for a GP appointment, NHS figures show, which Labour is calling "unacceptable".
    The government says it expects all patients needing a GP appointment to be seen within two weeks.
    The Royal College of GPs says 85% of appointments happen within two weeks and nearly half on the same day.
    Those taking longer than two weeks may be routine ones for which the wait is therefore appropriate, it says.
    Prof Kamila Hawthorne, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said: "GPs and our teams are working tirelessly to deliver safe, timely and appropriate care and to give patients the choice of appointment they want.
    "We share our patients' frustration when they struggle to access our care. However, this is not down to GPs and their hard-working teams, but due to decades of underfunding and poor resource planning."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 21 April 2023
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Inadequate health visiting provision has led to gaps in care for children and heaped pressure on acute services, senior clinicians have told HSJ. 
    Government data suggests that a fifth of infants are not receiving one or more of their five mandatory health visiting reviews across the first two years of life, with rates still substantially below pre-covid levels.
    Meanwhile, nationally about 1 in 10 children are still being seen virtually, contrary to the government’s delivery model and despite clinicians saying in-person contact is vital to spotting problems. Senior figures in children’s services told HSJ that in some areas a much higher rate was still being carried out with no in-person contact.
    Clinicians said the reasons were ongoing funding and staffing constraints, and that the problems were leading to parents turning to emergency departments and GPs instead.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 April 2023
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    The US Supreme Court has extended until Friday a temporary block on limits to access of a popular abortion pill.
    A Texas judge suspended approval of abortion drug mifepristone on 7 April, questioning its safety.
    Parts of that decision were upheld on appeal, prompting the Biden administration to make an emergency request to the Supreme Court.
    It's the most significant such case since the Supreme Court last year ended the nationwide right to abortion.
    The pill - used in more than half of abortions in the US - was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more than two decades ago. 
    Critics say that by overriding the FDA's approval, the court in Texas has usurped the federal health agency's remit to regulate food, medicine, and medical devices. Legal experts warn the ruling opens the door for challenges to other approved medicines in the US and could also stifle development of future drugs.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 20 April 2023
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    The UK is not ready for the next global pandemic because public services are being dismantled and key research is being defunded, experts have claimed.
    More than three years after the global outbreak of coronavirus, top scientists have warned that the UK is no better prepared for a pandemic than it was in 2020.
    They say another epidemic on the scale of Covid-19 is inevitable, but that disinvestment in infection-monitoring services, dismantling of key infrastructure, and the state of the NHS mean the country is “losing ground”.
    Sir John Bell, a leading immunologist and a member of the UK’s Covid vaccine taskforce during the pandemic, said it was too easy to dismiss Covid-19 as a “once in a generation crisis”.
    Writing in The Independent, he warned that it is “a question of when, not if, another pandemic strikes”, adding that the nation needs to adopt an “always on” approach that includes building a more resilient healthcare system, carrying out better surveillance, and identifying future threats.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 18 April 2023
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    Medical leaders have called for third-party arbitration to break the impasse on a pay dispute between junior doctors and the government after hundreds of thousands of procedures and appointments were cancelled as a result of last week’s strike in England.
    The “colossal impact” of the four-day stoppage compounded by a health service already stretched by the coronavirus pandemic and facing workplace shortages has led the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) to intervene and urge both parties to engage with an independent organisation.
    The AoMRC, the membership body for the UK and Ireland’s 24 medical royal colleges and faculties, said in a statement it was “concerned that a solution has not yet been reached and about the anticipated impact on NHS services and patients that will potentially follow any future action”.
    It added: “Both parties need to rapidly engage with an independent organisation to work out how the deadlock can be broken for the sake of patients and the wider NHS.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2023
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS trusts have been given targets to increase elective activity that range from 103% of pre-pandemic levels to nearly 130%, internal data seen by HSJ reveals.
    The wide gap between the targets, which are based on past performance and reflect the value of activity carried out, indicate the slow pace of recovery at many trusts last year.
    Forty trusts have been set the least ambitious target, to deliver 103% of pre-covid activity levels in 2023-24, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Barts Health, and University Hospitals Birmingham.
    All providers were supposed to deliver at least 104% of pre-covid activity last year, but few managed to achieve this, with emergency pressures, the impact of covid and flu, and workforce problems hampering efforts to ramp up activity.
    Amanda Pritchard has previously admitted the health service would have to “re-profile” the trajectory to achieving 130% of pre-covid activity levels by 2025.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 April 2023
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Take-up and usage of the NHS App in England has begun to plateau, after covid drove huge growth, figures seen by HSJ suggest.
    This can be seen in the percentage of GP appointments booked or cancelled using the app; the number of records viewed; and the number of times it has been downloaded.
    Rapid uptake was driven during covid restrictions, when travel and other activities often required a covid vaccination pass. Government has said it wants the growth to continue.
    The number of GP appointments booked or cancelled using the app fell for a third consecutive month in March to 212,954, representing a decrease of 15% since January and 28% on October 2022, when usage peaked.
    The NHS app is central to government’s plan for digital health and care, published last year, billed as the “digital front door” to the NHS which would aid the recovery of services post-pandemic.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 19 April 2023
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    The safety of a ward accused of failing children has been rated as inadequate by inspectors.
    The care regulator warned Kettering General Hospital (KGH) in Northamptonshire over its children's and young people's services.
    Inspectors' worries include sepsis treatment, staff numbers, dirt levels and not having an "open culture" where concerns can be raised without fear.
    Since the BBC's first report in February highlighting the concerns of parents with children who died or became seriously ill at KGH, dozens more families have come forward, bringing the number to 50 to date.
    Inspectors found that "staff did not always effectively identify and quickly act upon patients at risk of deterioration".
    They said there were sometimes "delays in medical reviews being undertaken outside of normal working hours", highlighting one case where a seemingly deteriorating patient was not seen until three hours after being escalated to the on-call team.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 20 April 2023
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    A team from NHS Ayrshire & Arran has successfully created a system to ensure that people with Parkinson’s get their medication on time while they are in hospital.
    Parkinson’s nurse specialist Nick Bryden, who led the team, explains: “The timely administration of medication is hugely important in helping to control symptoms in people with Parkinson’s.
    "Guidance states that Parkinson’s medication should be administered within 30 minutes, either side, of the prescribed time which can be challenging within a busy hospital ward environment."
    Nick, who works out of Biggart Hospital in Prestwick, added: “When we initially worked with our digital pharmacist, Richard Cottrell, it was to develop a system that would alert us to when a Parkinson’s patient was admitted to hospital.
    "It then became clear that we could take the system a step further and use it to monitor if people are on the right medication and whether or not it is being administered at the right time.”
    The team worked to develop a further system of clear visual prompts with NHS Digital services, which appear alongside relevant patient details on wards’ electronic whiteboards.
    Every patient prescribed Parkinson’s medication has a tulip symbol beside their name which changes colour and flashes when it’s close to the time to administer the medication. The system was initially piloted in a couple of wards and, due to its success, has now been rolled out to almost every ward in Ayrshire and Arran.
    Read full story
    Source: The Herald, 19 April 2023
    Related reading on the hub:
    Top picks: Seven resources about Parkinson’s Professionals with Parkinson’s tackle time critical patient safety issue: a blog by Sam Freeman Carney
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    Up to one in 20 new diabetes cases could be related to Covid infection, data suggests.
    The research adds to mounting evidence the pandemic may be contributing to a rapidly escalating diabetes crisis, with individuals who have experienced more severe Covid at greatest risk.
    However, lifestyle factors such as being overweight or obese continue to be the main driver for the increase, with 4.3 million officially diagnosed cases in the UK alone.
    Although previous research has hinted that Sars-CoV-2 infection may increase the risk of developing diabetes – possibly by damaging insulin-producing cells in the pancreas – these studies were either relatively small or limited to specific groups of individuals, such as US military veterans, who may not represent the general population.
    To delve deeper, Prof Naveed Janjua at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues turned to the British Columbia Covid-19 Cohort, a surveillance platform that links data on Covid infections and vaccinations with sociodemographic and administrative health data.
    They examined records from 629,935 people who took a PCR test for Covid and found those who tested positive were significantly more likely to experience a new diagnosis of type 1 or type 2 diabetes in the following weeks and months – with 3-5% of new diabetes cases attributable to Covid overall.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 April 2023
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    The backlog for ophthalmology appointments in England is the second-largest in the NHS, with UK eye doctors concerned about the number of patients losing sight unnecessarily. Their shock is palpable.
    How this could be happening in a rich country such as Britain? There are treatments for common blindness-causing conditions such as macular degeneration, but to get them patients must be able to access the service. And right now the NHS doesn’t have the capacity to deliver them in a timely way.
    As junior doctors’ unions – and possibly those of consultants and nurses – proceed with strike action, it’s easy to attack medical professionals with the question: “How many people are dying because of your actions?” The truth is that the entire system has been struggling, and people have been dying anyway because of system failures. Now add to this people living with disabilities that were preventable, such as going blind.
    When Labour was in power, it made a real effort, including with financial allocation, to reduce waiting-list times for non-emergency care. But since the Tories were elected in 2010, years of austerity and public-sector neglect – and the shifting of resources and wealthy patients into a lucrative and growing private sector – has meant that the NHS has been transformed from a robust, preventive healthcare service into an acute one. Its basic offering is now: “If you’re dying, we will save you.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 19 April 2023
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    The Women and Equalities Committee in a recent report has challenged the government over failures to address inequalities in maternity care which have led to Black women dying at four times the rate of white women.
    Tinuke Awe, 31, was left ‘traumatised’ and forced to go without pain relief after midwives didn’t believe she was in labour.
    Ms Awe, was induced after experiencing late pre-eclampsia while pregnant with her first child in 2017. She said:  “Pre-eclampsia can be life-threatening for mum and baby, and it could’ve been fatal if I wasn’t treated. I was told I couldn’t leave the hospital and had to be induced".
    “They said the hormones could take 24 hours to work, but my labour happened really quickly and when I told the midwife she didn’t even believe I was in labour.”
    “I felt so overlooked and it was horrible how nobody listened to me,” she added. “I ended up having to have an assisted delivery which isn’t what I wanted, but it could’ve been avoided if someone had acknowledged I was in labour rather than ignore me. I just felt so unimportant.”
    Ms Aew alongside Clotilde Abe set up the charity Five X More. The organisation helps give advice and empower Black women to make informed choices during pregnancy and after childbirth.
    Five X More hope that the testimonials of the women they support can be used to show that better outcomes are possible with their ‘five steps for self-advocacy‘ being used to encourage women to ask for things like a second opinion.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 18 April 2023
    Read our interview with Tinuke Awe on the hub: Five X More campaign: Improving maternal mortality rates and health outcomes for black women
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    Anew model of care which the Public Health Agency (PHA) say will 'improve maternity services for women and babies in Northern Ireland' is being launched.
    The new model, which will see women receive support from the same midwifery team during pregnancy, birth and in the early days after birth, is being rolled out across all Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts in the coming months.
    ‘Continuity of Midwifery Carer’ (CoMC) is a new model of care for women throughout their childbirth journey "that will provide positive clinical outcomes and higher care satisfaction", the PHA said.
    Chief Nursing Officer for Northern Ireland, Maria McIlgorm said: “This is a very positive development for maternity services in Northern Ireland. There is a clear evidence base behind the Continuity of Midwifery Carer model which shows that when a woman knows their midwife it can make a significant difference to their experience and outcome.
    “This woman and family-centred model of care will mean that women across Northern Ireland using our maternity services will receive support from the same dedicated midwifery team throughout their pregnancy, birth and postnatal period.”
    Read full story
    Source: Belfast Live, 12 April 2023
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS has been criticised for sending vulnerable patients to a children’s hospital despite receiving reports of more than 1,600 “sexual safety incidents” at the 59-bed unit.
    A series of investigations by The Independent have exposed allegations of systemic abuse across a group of children’s hospitals run by the former Huntercombe Group. The latest revealed that a total of 1,643 “sexual safety incidents” had been reported in four years at its hospital in Maidenhead – accounting for more than half of all sex-related investigations reported in the 209 children’s mental health units across the country since 2019.
    Despite the majority of these reports being made prior to 2022-23, the NHS did not take any action and only stopped using the hospital, also known as Taplow Manor, this year.
    Gemma Byrne, head of health policy and campaigns at Mind, said in response to The Independent report on sexual incidents: “These horrific reports reveal the systemic scale of abuse and neglect in inpatient mental health settings. Even when patients bravely came forward to share their stories, some of which took place more than 10 years ago, young people continued to be sent to a unit which was known to have catastrophic failings in physical and sexual safety.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 18 April 2023
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    Patients were left on trolleys for up to four days at a major NHS hospital where whistleblowers raised concerns over “unsafe” staffing levels, it has emerged.
    In a scathing report, the NHS safety watchdog said it found patients waiting on trolleys, in corridors and outside nursing bays at Good Hope and Heartlands hospital, run by the scandal-hit University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
    In one incident flagged by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a patient’s skin ulcers had grown significantly worse while they waited for four days on a trolley without an appropriate mattress. At the time of the inspection, most patients had been waiting for more than two days on trolleys, according to the CQC.
    The inspection took place in December, after concerns were raised by patients and families over care. The CQC said staff told inspectors they’d been left in “unsafe situations” due to poor staffing.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 19 April 2023
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    People who survive cancer may be at heightened risk of cardiovascular disease in subsequent years, data suggests.
    However, heart scans may identify early heart damage, potentially opening the door to more tailored follow-up care for cancer survivors.
    Although previous studies have suggested that people who have been treated for cancer may be at greater risk of future cardiovascular problems such as stroke or heart failure, these have mainly focused on the first year after a cancer diagnosis. Few have looked at longer term risks or included cardiovascular imaging to pinpoint damage that has not yet resulted in symptoms.
    To plug these gaps, Dr Zahra Raisi-Estabragh at Queen Mary University of London and her colleagues assessed the cardiovascular health of 18,714 UK Biobank participants with a previous diagnosis of lung, breast, prostate, blood, womb or bowel cancer, and compared them with an equal number of participants with no cancer history, tracking their cardiovascular health for nearly 12 years.
    Almost a third of cancer survivors developed a cardiovascular problem during the study period, compared with a quarter of people in the control group.
    “This study adds to existing knowledge about the impact of some cancer treatments on cardiovascular disease in cancer survivors,” said Martin Ledwick, the head information nurse at Cancer Research UK.
    “It may help to inform strategies for how some cancer survivors need to be monitored long-term, especially in situations where they have been discharged from cancer follow-up to the care of their GPs.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 18 April 2023
×
×
  • Create New...