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John Tingle

Global patient safety initiatives and the NHS

The WHO's work in global patient safety has had a direct influence on NHS efforts to develop an ingrained patient safety culture. Some useful materials and initiatives have been developed. In...

Litigation and patient–carer, safety issues in the COVID-19 crisis

‘In a significant U-turn, PHE advised frontline staff to wear a flimsy plastic apron with coveralls when gowns ran out, in a move that doctors and nurses fear may lead to more of them contracting...

COVID-19 safety in maternity care: lessons for the whole NHS

More than a fifth of birthing centres and more than a third of homebirth services have been closed due to midwifery shortages (Summers, 2020), and there are concerns about how quickly ambulances can...

Patient safety and litigation in the NHS post-COVID-19

The COVID-19 NHS crisis plan response (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2020a) seeks to deploy nursing and medical students, and clinical academics. It will be appropriate and necessary for UK doctors...

Is patient safety in the NHS in England a postcode lottery?

‘Patient safety is a serious global public health concern. It is estimated that there is a 1 in 3 million risk of dying while travelling by aeroplane. In comparison, the risk of patient death...

Considering the ‘ostrich syndrome’ and patient safety

‘Many of the reactions of maternity unit staff at this stage were shaped by denial that there was a problem, their rejection of criticism of them that they felt was unjustified (and which, on...

Patient safety reports and crisis events round up

I have said before in my BJN column that the NHS is no sloth when it comes to developing patient safety initiatives, policies and reports. The problem is that these so often seem to falter at the...

Shifting the mindset in the NHS complaints system

History has not served the NHS complaints system well. There have been many reports about NHS complaints going back to 1994 and the Wilson report, Being Heard, saying the same or similar things about...

Towards a safer NHS in 2020?

The NHS and other patient safety stakeholder organisations have been consistent over the years in producing well-thought-out and articulate patient safety policy plans while at the same time major...

The relevance of law to patient safety education and training

‘HEE will work with NHS Improvement and NHS England to produce the best informed and safety-focused workforce in the world. Developing a consistent national patient safety syllabus to apply across a...

Worthy of the ‘global leader’ hype, or are we seeing the tip of the iceberg?

‘Hundreds of families whose babies died or were seriously injured at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust do not even know their cases have been identified for investigation in the biggest...

Urgent and emergency care: patient safety and quality issues

There seems to be no shortage of reports looking at urgent and emergency care provision and how to make good, how to re-cast service provision in the face of demand on resources. The problems facing...

The state of NHS care in England

The CQC (2019) presents a useful and real-time picture of health and social care in England. The report looks at trends and shares examples of outstanding, good and poor care practices. Like all CQC...

Getting lost in the maze of NHS patient safety publications and initiatives

What is worrying is that when we look at patient safety policy developments and initiatives such as World Patient Safety Day the general public does not seem to know much about the problem. This is...

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