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Found 983 results
  1. News Article
    NHS patients are being left unseen in pain and in some cases to die alone because shifts do not have enough registered nurses, a survey shows. The Royal College of Nursing said analysis of a survey it carried out showed that only a third of shifts had enough registered nurses on duty. The union has also gathered testimonies from nurses who talk of always “rushing” and being asked to do more; working in “completely unsafe” levels of care; and having to make “heartbreaking” decisions on who does or doesn’t get seen. Shortages mean individual nurses are often caring for dozens of patients at a time, the RCN said. It has called for limits on the maximum number of patients for whom a single nurse can be responsible. Nicola Ranger, the RCN’s acting general secretary and chief executive, said the survey showed that patients were being failed. “In every health and care setting, nursing staff are fighting a losing battle to keep patients safe,” she said. “Without safety-critical limits on the maximum number of patients they can care for, nurses are being made responsible for dozens at a time, often with complex needs. “It is dangerous to patients and demoralising for nursing staff.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 July 2024
  2. News Article
    NHS England has warned trusts corridor care “must not be considered the norm”, adding that the failings exposed by a recent undercover documentary were “not acceptable”. In a letter to boards after a Dispatches documentary filmed at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital aired on Monday, NHSE’s chief operating officer, chief nursing officer, national medical director and director of urgent and emergency care warned trusts they must ensure basic standards of care. The note, seen by HSJ, described footage filmed at RSH’s emergency department as “stark”, adding that it highlighted the service some patients receive is “not acceptable”. The documentary captured many instances of patients being treated in corridors, and the letter said corridor care or that delivered outside a normal cubicle environment “must not be considered the norm”. NHSE added: “It should only be in periods of escalation and with board-level oversight at trust and system level… where it is deemed a necessity… it must be provided in the safest and most effective manner possible, for the shortest period of time… with patient dignity and respect being maintained throughout.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 June 2024 Related reading on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift
  3. News Article
    A cancer patient has told Sky News it's "terrifying" for her health that junior doctors are striking again from Thursday. The NHS is expecting "major disruption" during the five-day strike as medics in England walk out over pay amid a yellow health alert heatwave and ongoing disruption to some services because of a ransomware cyber attack earlier this month. Major hospitals Guys' and St Thomas' and King's in London are still running at reduced capacity after the incident. Cancer survivor Donia Youssef has annual colonoscopies but her last was cancelled because of previous industrial action by junior doctors. Donia, from Grays in Essex, said: "It's a worry as a mum with two young children and I was on the list. It got cancelled. First time because of the strikes. And after that I didn't hear from them. So I kept pushing. Nothing. It was just more delays. I was just kept waiting. "[They said]: 'There's a backlog. We'll get back to you. There's a backlog, they're getting through. We'll let you know if there's any cancellations.'" "It's like months later. Nothing. So eventually, because the symptoms are getting worse, I decided to pay." Donia was so scared of her health worsening she paid for private treatment, a cost she could barely afford. And now, as a cancer survivor, every time there's a fresh round of strikes she is filled with dread. "I get scared. I can't get [treatment] on the private and a lot of it's really expensive. So, yeah, it's terrifying. So you're constantly aware," she said. Read full story Source: Sky News, 27 June 2024
  4. News Article
    A patient in a West Midlands A&E was forced to urinate while lying in a corridor as another was left crying in agony for hours in an undercover report highlighting the NHS’ emergency care crisis. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme has exposed the “suffering and indignity faced by patients on a daily basis” after an undercover reporter secretly filmed himself working as a trainee healthcare assistant inside the emergency department of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital for two months. The footage, which aired on Monday night, shows one patient waiting 30 hours in a “fit to sit” area while a suspected stroke sufferer was there for 24 hours, the broadcaster said. In one clip, an elderly man was forced to urinate in a trolley on the corridor in full view of staff and other patients, while in another a woman is left crying in agony for hours. Nurses are also seen discussing how one of their patients was forced to wait a staggering 46 hours for care and at one point the footage shows large pools of blood on the floor. Experts have said while the scenes were “shocking” and “harrowing” they were not unique to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and are occurring in hospitals across England. Read full story Source: The Independent, 25 June 2024
  5. News Article
    Long waiting times at hospitals in the north-west of England are putting patient's lives at risk by holding up ambulance crews, a coroner has warned. It comes after the death of Bobilya Mulonge, who called 999 with breathing problems on 24 November 2022. She waited 72 minutes for an ambulance - four times longer than North West Ambulance Service's (NWAS) 18-minute target for her category of emergency call - which "probably contributed to her death", coroner Lauren Costello said. A NWAS spokesman said the service was "very sorry" an ambulance was unable to attend sooner and the service had made "significant" improvements since. A report by Ms Costello has been sent to the health secretary and NWAS and urges the region's health authorities to take action to prevent further deaths. She said evidence about ambulance delays revealed during the inquest had given rise to her concerns. "In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths could occur unless action is taken," she wrote. Dale Ollier, north-west regional organiser for Unison, which represents some ambulance staff, said backlogs in moving patients out of hospitals was having a "knock-on effect" at A&E, leading to a "bottleneck crisis". “We have patients that could be safely discharged but there isn’t anywhere to discharge them to because of the lack of capacity in social care." Ambulances were working "flat out", he added, but delays had lead to an "unbearable demand" on crews who were sometimes "tied up for several hours" waiting at hospitals. Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 June 2024
  6. Content Article
    On 24 May 2023 an investigation was commenced into the death of Bobilya Mulonge then aged 62 years. The investigation concluded at the end of the inquest on 19 April 2024. The conclusion of the inquest was a narrative conclusion that Mrs Mulonge died as a result of congestive cardiac failure against a background of hypertensive heart disease. Ambulance response times probably contributed to her death.     The medical cause of death being:   1 (a) Congestive Cardiac Failure (b) Hypertensive Heart Disease   II) Chronic Kidney disease and Type II diabetes mellitus.
  7. Content Article
    Over three months, a Dispatches reporter has filmed secretly while working in a major NHS A&E department. The undercover footage exposes the suffering and dangers patients face on a daily basis.
  8. News Article
    Almost 19,000 NHS patients were left waiting in A&E for three days over a 12-month period, an investigation has revealed. Between April 2023 and March 2024, nearly 400,000 people were left waiting more than 24 hours across A&E departments, a 5% rise on the previous year. Channel 4’s Dispatches programme also found that 54,000 people had to wait more than two days, a freedom of information request to NHS England found. The investigation exposed “suffering and indignity faced by patients on a daily basis”, after an undercover reporter secretly filmed himself working as a trainee healthcare assistant inside the emergency department of the Royal Shrewsbury hospital for two months. The “harrowing” scenes from the hospital’s A&E department came as an analyst from a thinktank said people were dying in emergency care in England “who don’t need to be dying”. Footage shows one patient waiting for 30 hours in a “fit to sit” area while a suspected stroke sufferer was there for 24 hours, the broadcaster said. Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “I don’t think this is unique to this hospital by any stretch of the imagination. The things we’ve seen here today are clearly not just confined to winter. It was a year-round crisis in emergency care. “Spending two days in an emergency department is worse than spending two days in an airport lounge. These are people who are sitting in uncomfortable seats where the lights never go off. There’s constant noise, there’s constant stress. There’s no end in sight.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 June 2024
  9. News Article
    The NHS is engulfed in a summer crisis, senior doctors have said, amid severe ambulance delays, corridors crowded with trolleys and patients facing 25-hour waits in A&E units. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) sounded the alarm over the “national scandal” of long waits for emergency care that it said were leading to “entirely preventable” deaths at a time of the year when there should be some respite from the traditional pressure experienced over winter. Elderly people in particular were facing the brunt of the impact, with many forced to endure horrific long waits for a bed once a decision had been taken to admit them to hospital, the college said. A snapshot survey by the RCEM of emergency department chiefs from across the UK, conducted between Monday and Wednesday this week, exposed the extent of the summer crisis in hospitals. Nine in 10 (91%) of 63 A&E bosses admitted NHS patients were “coming into harm” on their wards due to the quality of care that could be delivered under current conditions. Eighty-seven per cent said they had patients being treated in corridors and 68% said they had patients waiting in ambulances outside their A&E. One emergency department leader revealed that one of their patients this week waited more than 19 hours for a hospital bed to become available once a decision was made to admit them after they had already waited six hours to be seen. Overall, the patient ended up waiting 25 hours in A&E. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 June 2024 Related reading on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift Reflections on a clinical shift: "After 20 years of nursing, this is one of the worst shifts I have ever completed"
  10. News Article
    Dr Shivani Tanna has been working in the NHS for 18 years. "Everything [she] always had concerns about played out" in the care of her husband, who died after NHS hospital failures. A passionate doctor from a circle of acclaimed medics, Dr Tanna was thrust into life ‘on the other side’ as a ‘patient and a relative’ when her husband, Professor Amit Patel, was struck by a life-threatening illness. That experience, the devastated mum-of-two claims, "corroborates what [her] own patients have told [her] about the fact that, currently, the NHS is not fit for purpose". In the wake of her husband's death, Dr Tanna says his case reveals fundamental issues in the health service. “We have been indoctrinated as doctors, service users, and as a society in general to believe that this is a wonderful entity and we are so lucky to have a national health service," she says. “However, nobody wants to address the elephant in the room - that it is operating on less than full staff constantly... there is so much poor practice that it’s become normalised." Three years on and a long-running inquest to find answers later, Prof Patel’s wife is fighting to make changes to the NHS. “It has not been fit for purpose for decades,” Dr Tanna told the Manchester Evening News. "It is operating on less than full staff constantly, relying on bank staff and locums, and we’ve got doctors leaving in droves because they’ve not been nurtured or given the opportunity to work, I think, in a safe and appropriate environment.” The Area Coroner for the Manchester City concluded that the death of a 43-year old Consultant Haematologist and father of two, Prof Amit Patel, would have been avoided were it not for ‘inexplicable’ failures by clinicians to provide a national-level Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) with relevant and readily available information about the patient. Prof Patel was suffering from Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (‘HLH’), a rare disorder in which he himself was an expert. The Coroner found that the local clinicians at Wythenshawe Hospital had failed to provide a National HLH MDT with relevant and readily available information that would have influenced the decision making about Prof Patel’s care. As a result the National MDT, operating on incomplete information, recommended that Prof Patel undergo an Endobronchial Ultrasound guided biopsy (EBUS) procedure, a complication of which ultimately led to his death. The Coroner also found that there were failures in the process by which Prof Patel’s consent was obtained to undergo the procedure and as a result he was not given the opportunity to provide his informed consent to the EBUS that ultimately led to his death. Read full story Source: Manchester Evening News, 17 June 2024
  11. News Article
    The number of children receiving treatment in private hospitals across the UK rose by almost a quarter last year to more than 46,000, according to new data seen by the BBC. In each case, families either paid for treatment or used medical insurance - rather than being referred by the NHS. The record figures from private healthcare providers come as England's NHS trusts tell File on 4 that children have become the “forgotten generation” in the race to reduce health service backlogs. The Department of Health says NHS staff are “working tirelessly” to cut waiting lists. But the Royal College of Surgeons of England told us children were lagging behind adults and spending years waiting for NHS surgery - with potentially life-long consequences for their health and development. The BBC has spoken to a number of families whose children’s conditions have deteriorated during long waits. They include 16-year-old Georgina Smith from Hertfordshire, who is waiting for open-heart surgery to repair a valve on her right side which doesn’t close properly. It can cause her blood to flow the wrong way, making it harder for her heart to work. Georgina is one of 601 children waiting for heart surgery in England - 139 have been waiting more than six months. She suffers chest pains, extreme fatigue and fainting episodes and has been forced to miss a lot of school. Georgina says she feels like her operation will never happen. “It’s like a cloud over my head, it’s always just this waiting and waiting and waiting,” she says. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 June 2024
  12. News Article
    Almost half of adults in the UK have struggled to get medicine they have been prescribed – and more people blame Brexit than anything else for the situation, research shows. Forty-nine per cent of people said they had had trouble getting a prescription dispensed over the past two years, the period during which supply problems have increased sharply. Drug shortages are so serious that 1 in 12 Britons were unable to find the medication they needed, despite asking a number of pharmacies. The survey of 2,028 people representative of the population, undertaken by Opinium for the British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA), found that: One in 12 people (8%) have gone without a medication altogether because it was impossible to obtain. Thirty-one per cent found the drug they needed was out of stock at their pharmacy. Twenty-three per cent of pharmacies did not have enough of the medication available. “Shortages are deeply worrying for patients’ physical health, alongside the stress of not knowing if an essential medicine will be available,” said Mark Samuels, the chief executive of the BGMA. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 16 June 2024
  13. News Article
    Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to wait months to start essential cancer treatment, with deadly delays now “routine” and even children struck by the disease denied vital support, according to a series of damning reports. Health chiefs, charities and doctors have sounded the alarm over the state of cancer care in the UK as three separate studies painted a shocking picture of long waits and NHS staff being severely hampered by a worsening workforce crisis and a chronic lack of equipment. The first report, by Cancer Research UK, found that 382,000 cancer patients in England were not treated on time since 2015. The charity investigated how many patients had begun treatment 62 days or longer after being urgently referred for suspected cancer. The national NHS target – under which at least 85% of people should start treatment within 62 days – was last met in December 2015. The second report, by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), said delays in cancer care had become routine, with nearly half of UK cancer centres experiencing weekly delays in starting treatment. The RCR also warned of a “staggering” 30% shortfall in clinical radiologists and a 15% shortfall in clinical oncologists – figures it projects will get worse in the next few years. The third paper, from four children’s cancer charities – Young Lives vs Cancer, Teenage Cancer Trust, Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, and Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group – said young patients were being failed by a lack of support after diagnosis. Naser Turabi, the charity’s director of evidence, said the crisis was causing widespread treatment delays that “negatively impact” patients. “One study has estimated that a four-week delay to cancer surgery led to a 6-8% increased risk of dying, and delays can also reduce the treatment options that are available. There are also the psychological effects – with waiting causing major stress and anxiety for cancer patients and their loved ones.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2024
  14. Content Article
    The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) have published their 2023 clinical radiology and clinical oncology workforce census reports. These reveal dangerous shortages of doctors essential in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and other conditions including stroke.  
  15. Content Article
    I am one of many staff that undertake additional shifts as bank staff or agency staff. The reasons are varied and personal. This is a reflection on a shift that I undertook a few weeks ago. I have taken the decision to remain anonymous in this account.
  16. News Article
    A 79-year-old woman bled to death following a hip operation after being rushed to a hospital which lacked a service to save her, a coroner has said. Christine Booker from Wareham died on 24 February 2023, the day after her hip replacement. Coroner Brendan Allen said she was initially transferred to Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, which had no out-of-hours interventional radiology (an imaging procedure), before being sent to Royal Bournemouth Hospital. In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, he said patients in west Dorset faced a "potentially considerable and significant delay in the provision of urgent and life-saving treatment". Writing to Dorset County Hospital, external, the coroner said the lack of an out-of-hours service in Dorchester exposed patients to an "increased risk of death". Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 June 2024
  17. News Article
    Dan Harrison, who had schizophrenia and psychotic delusions about his parents, had been sectioned ten days before he attacked his father. He was detained at Neath Port Talbot Hospital, run by the Swansea Bay University Health Board. During those ten days he received no treatment or medication. He escaped through a door being held open by a member of staff who was talking to someone else and immediately headed for the family home where he killed his father. The attack came after Dan's mother, Jane, and her husband repeatedly asked for help from mental health services as their son’s state of mind and behaviour deteriorated. They were refused. Last month Kirsten Heaven, assistant coroner for Swansea, recorded in a narrative verdict that there had been repeated failings by the Swansea University Health Board and local council. She said multiple system failures had contributed to Kim’s death and warned of more deaths if they were not addressed. Jane is speaking out now, with her son’s permission, after a Sunday Times investigation highlighted the scale of mental health-related killings in Britain. There have been at least 233 reported since 2020 and there have been repeated warnings about NHS services failing to provide crisis care. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 1 June 2024
  18. News Article
    Patients are being squeezed onto wards, forced to have intimate examinations in front of each other and left dying in hospital corridors as nurses are forced to play “trolley tetris”, NHS staff have revealed. Testimonies from nurses, given to the Royal College of Nursing and seen by The Independent, reveal they are regularly forced into “unsafe” practices, such as squeezing more patients into wards with insufficient space and staffing. The warnings come as the RCN has urged the next government to act on the “national emergency” with a survey of thousands of nurses revealing patients are being left without access to oxygen and put in undignified situations. RCN deputy chief nurse Lynn Woolsey said in May: “We have increasing evidence from members up and down the country of patients being cared for in undesignated bed spaces, vending machines being moved out of A&E to make space for patients, two patients being put in one bed space, with one patient being asked to face the wall while a rectal exam was carried out on the other patient... shocking, shocking information and situations.” In the face of the worsening A&E and ambulance waiting times last year, The Independent revealed hospital staff in many areas were ordered to move patients from emergency departments on, regardless of space. In one example, a nurse said her trust ordered workers to accept patients from A&E at midday every day, adding: “Doesn’t matter what capacity A&E is or the ward. It’s just what has to be done. We have no space, no tables, no curtains.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 3 June 2024
  19. Content Article
    In a new Royal College of Nursing report, survey findings and member testimonies show the full grave picture of corridor care across the UK. Of those forced to deliver care in inappropriate settings, over half (53%) say it left them without access to life-saving equipment including oxygen and suction. More than two-thirds (67%) said the care they delivered in public compromised patient privacy and dignity. Thousands of nursing staff report how corridor care has become the norm in almost every corner of a typical hospital setting. Heavy patient flow and lack of capacity sees nursing staff left with no space to place patients. What would have been an emergency measure is now routine. The report says corridor care is “a symptom of a system in crisis”, with patient demand in all settings, from primary to community and social care, outstripping workforce supply. The result is patients left unable to access care near their homes and instead being forced to turn to hospitals. Poor population health and a lack of investment in prevention is exacerbating the problem, the report says. The RCN are asking for mandatory national reporting of patients being cared for in corridors, to reveal the extent of hospital overcrowding, as part of a plan to eradicate the practice. They also need members to raise concerns when care in inappropriate settings takes place.  Related reading on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift
  20. Community Post
    Have you (or a loved one) ever been prescribed medication that you were then unable to get hold of at the pharmacy? Was there an impact on your health (physical and mental)? Were you told the reason for it not being available? Was the issue resolved? If so, how long did it take? If you are still impacted by medication supply issues, have you been told when you will be able to access them again? To help us understand how these issues impact the lives of patients and families, please share your experience and insights in the comments below. You'll need to register with the hub first, its free and easy to do. We would also like to hear from pharmacists working in community or hospital settings, and others who have insights to share on this issue. What barriers and challenges have you seen around medication availability? Is there anything that can be done to improve wider systems or processes? Please comment below or email us at content@pslhub.org
  21. Content Article
    In this Guardian article. Palliative Care doctor Rachel Clarke examines the debate around legalising assisted dying, focusing on the need to ensure patients do not want to end their lives due to lack of adequate health and social care. She highlights the risk that if assisted dying were legalised, patients might be coerced into choosing death "not by some rightwing politician or avaricious family member, but by the woeful inadequacy of their care." She goes on to look at wider attitudes to the dying in the NHS, pointing out that hospice care is mostly funded by charities, not the NHS, and that last year in England, almost 14,000 people died in A&E while waiting more than 12 hours for a bed.
  22. Content Article
    A growing number of patients with eating disorders are reporting having treatment withdrawn by services, often without notice and without their consent. We spoke to eating disorder campaigner Hope Virgo about how pressures on services, enduring stigma around eating disorders and dangerous new narratives are leading to the practice of treatment withdrawal. Hope explains how this is affecting vulnerable patients and highlights that as the number of people developing eating disorders increases, the risks to patient safety will only get worse.
  23. News Article
    Urgent government action is needed to stop preventable asthma deaths, a leading charity has said. More than 12,000 people in the UK have died from asthma attacks since 2014, according to Asthma and Lung UK. It said the figures meant "shockingly little" had changed since a major report a decade ago which found two thirds of asthma deaths could have been avoided with better care. People with asthma should get an annual condition review, a written action plan and inhaler technique checks. But the charity said people with asthma were being "failed", with seven out of 10 not receiving basic care, partly because healthcare workers were over-stretched. Asthma and Lung UK said 31% of asthmatics were "disengaged" with managing their condition, putting them at higher risk, according to its research. Ministers in England and Wales said they were trying to improve services. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 April 2024
  24. News Article
    Patients needing urgent treatment for life-threatening illness such as strokes or heart attacks waited more than 24 hours for an ambulance response, new figures show. New data shows the crisis facing NHS ambulance services resulted in every region missing vital NHS targets to respond to some of the most critically unwell patients last year. Despite improvements compared to 2022, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrat party show ambulance services continued to struggle with response times to category two patients, which may include those who have suffered a stroke or heart attack and should receive a response within 18 minutes. In two cases patients needing this level of response, in Warrington and Staffordshire, waited more than 25 hours for an ambulance. Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive at NHS Providers, which represents all NHS trusts, called for “urgent” investment and warned that “rising demand, limited resources and vast staff shortages are piling pressure on an already-stretched service, further driving up ambulance waiting times.” He said NHS hospital and ambulance leaders are working to reduce delays and responses at a time “when demand has never been higher.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 23 April 2024
  25. News Article
    Leaders of an integrated care system in the Midlands have warned they cannot make the scale of staffing cuts required to balance the books without putting patients at risk. Indicative analysis produced by Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board also found its provider trusts would have to cut 10 per cent of their workforce to break even. This would equate to 2,300 posts across University Hospitals North Midlands, Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust and North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare, while the ICB would have to cancel a “very high proportion” of third-sector contracts. The document says this “would bring our teams below safe staffing levels” and have a “profound effect on our ability to deliver safe services”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 23 April 2024
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