There has been a call from Peter Walsh, Chief Executive of Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), and others for urgent action to be taken to prevent avoidable harm and deaths among non-COVID-19...
‘Grieving families of patients who have died after contracting coronavirus are exploring the possibility of taking the NHS to court, as unions warn litigation threats are piling added pressure on...
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...
Walsh (2020) captures this issue well:.
‘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...
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...
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...
‘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...
‘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...
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...
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...
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...
‘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...
‘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...
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...
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