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John Tingle

Developing perspectives in NHS patient safety

In terms of patient safety improvement practices and culture development, a recent report published by Healthcare Excellence Canada (Gilbert et al, 2023) provides some interesting and valuable...

Patient empowerment: the need to go beyond buzzwords

When we use concepts such as patient empowerment, we need to be as specific as we can about what we mean and understand about the term. We don't want the words to be just seen as a convenient ‘clarion...

Martha's Rule and NHS patient safety

One issue she discusses are the professional silos and hierarchies, for example:.

Determining what good looks like in patient safety

In a clinical negligence case, for example, the court must carefully unpack and analyse the level of care given to determine whether there was any negligence. Lawyers discuss with clinical experts the...

Patient safety in the NHS: now is the time for optimism

‘It would be quite wrong to conclude that the NHS as an organisation is incapable of learning and improving, but the evidence suggests that learning generally takes a long time and that...

Stop the NHS patient safety policymaking and practice merry-go-round and act

In the light of the above, is it fair to characterise NHS efforts to handle patient safety crises and develop policy and practice in the area as akin to being on a patient safety merry-go round? It is...

Considering NHS patient safety culture in context

‘Treating over a million people a day in England, the NHS touches all of our lives. When it was founded in 1948, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, free at the...

Patient redress in clinical negligence cases: an uneven playing field

‘We contend that part of the ongoing muddle about safety cultures stems from this lack of focused attention on the nature and implications of justice in the field of patient safety.’ .

The cyclical nature of patient safety

The problems with maternity and neonatal services in East Kent, as highlighted by the independent review, are a salutary reminder of the terrible patient safety issues that can occur:.

Patient safety and clinical negligence: the importance of looking back

Lord Woolf 's Civil Justice Review, Access to Justice (Woolf, 1996), changed the face of civil litigation in England and Wales. The reforms brought about judicial case management. Judges became the...

Patient safety and the law: driving the development of a patient safety culture

This discussion raises the issue of what is primarily driving the development of an NHS patient safety culture and how these aims could be seen negatively by nurses, doctors and other stakeholders....

Just culture development and patient safety in the NHS

‘Clinical competence was substandard, with deficient skills and knowledge; working relationships were extremely poor, particularly between different staff groups, such as obstetricians,...

Patient safety in the NHS: after Francis

‘In health we focus too much on the consequences, looking backwards at what has gone wrong. We need leaders to stop harm in advance, identifying and managing the causes and the controls.’

Duties of candour: being open and honest with patients

‘Staff were disrespectful to women and disparaging about the capabilities of colleagues in front of women and families. A family member heard a consultant describe the unit they were in as “unsafe”...

Asking the fundamental questions

Henrietta Hughes, the Patient Safety Commissioner, has shared her ideas on several patient safety matters (Hughes, 2023). These include the need to hear more of the views of patients at trust board...

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