Empty nurses station in a hospital.

The NHS Patient Safety Information Tidal Wave

By John Tingle

The English National Health Service (NHS) was 75 years of age on 5th July 2023 and there was a lot to celebrate. We are proud of our universal health care system which provides free care at the point of delivery. The NHS is an intrinsic part of our national heritage and culture.

The King’s Fund provide some facts and figures on the NHS. It has one of the world’s largest workforces with around 1.26 million full-time equivalent staff in England, as of November 2022. In terms of patient care and treatment, the King’s Fund states that on an average day in the NHS, more than 1.2 million people attend a general practitioner (GP) appointment, and around 260,000 an outpatient appointment. The NHS faces high demand for finite health care resources. We have a growing elderly population in England presenting often with comorbidities. Staffing levels are also a problem, which is being addressed in the NHS long term workforce plan.

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doctor holding clipboard.

Change for the Medical Malpractice Compensation System in England?

By John Tingle

It is fair to say that the British public are generally speaking very proud of our National Health Service  in England, and treasure it greatly. The NHS Constitution sets out the seven key principles which guide the NHS in all its activities, and these include:

  1. The NHS provides a comprehensive service, available to all.
  2. Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay. NHS services are free of charge, except in limited circumstances sanctioned by Parliament.

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Doctor in white coat neck down

Buzzwords in Patient Safety: Some Preliminary Thoughts

By John Tingle and Amanda Cattini

Every profession, service, or industry maintains what can be termed, “buzzwords.” A “buzzword” can be defined as transient, flavor-of-the-month-type word, which describes a concept than can be seen to direct policy and practice until it becomes less topical and eventually fades away from general use. These terms come and go and are often refined and come back into use. In the National Health Service (NHS) in England, we have seen such pervading terms as clinical governance, patient empowerment, controls assurance, and patient advocacy.

Today there is what can arguably be called a new buzzword, “decolonization.” This word seems very much to be the term of the day. It pervades vast areas of academic and professional life and discourse. In terms of health law and patient safety research, the decolonization of national and global patient safety systems and structures seems an interesting perspective to further peruse.

One benefit of adopting decolonization perspectives to patient safety is that we can utilize the concept as a disrupter of established thinking and seek to establish new foundations of knowledge.

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doctor holding clipboard.

Learning from Clinical Negligence Claims: The New NHS Patient Safety Syllabus

By John Tingle

As part of its patient safety strategy, the National Health Service (NHS) in England has created the first system-wide patient safety syllabus, training, and education framework.

Education and training are fundamental prerequisites for creating a patient safety culture in any health care system. This new patient safety syllabus is both innovative and reflective, combining systems and human factors thinking.

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NHS building

When Will the NHS Get Its Complaints System Right?

By John Tingle

The National Health Service (NHS) in England has been trying to get an effective, fit-for-purpose complaints system for at least 28 years, and it has still not succeeded.

This has been one of the NHS’s perpetual and intractable problems. History has not served the NHS well here, despite the publication of countless reports on patient safety and NHS complaint handling, and several major crises happening, such as Mid Staffordshire.

More often than not, the reports into patient safety crises and NHS complaints system reform all say the same (or similar) thing, and point to the same issues.

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NHS building

Health Care Providers’ Legal Duty to Be Open and Honest with Patients

By John Tingle

Last September, the first ever prosecution of a National Health Service (NHS) trust for failure to comply with the regulation concerning duty of candor was adjudicated.

University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust was ordered to pay a total of £12,565 after admitting it failed to disclose details relating to a surgical procedure and to apologize following the death of a 91-year-old woman.

Duties of candor require that patients be informed of adverse events as soon as possible after they occur. These duties serve as mechanisms to help balance power dynamics in health care and to advance patient rights. In England, duties of candor are contained in the professional codes of ethics of doctors and nurses, and in statutory regulations.

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Busy Nurse's Station In Modern Hospital

What’s in a Name? The Value of the Term ‘Never Events’

By John Tingle 

The Healthcare Safety Inspection Branch (HSIB) in England, which conducts independent investigations of patient safety concerns relating to the country’s National Health Service (NHS), has just published a learning report that examines the findings of investigations they have carried out on incidents classified as “Never Events.”

England’s NHS defines Never Events as “patient safety incidents that are wholly preventable,” in accordance with the implementation of “guidance or safety recommendations that provide strong systemic protective barriers.”

In the National Health Service’s policy and framework, Never Events are listed under the following headings: surgical, medication, mental health, and general. These headings include incidents such as overdose of certain medications, failure to remove a foreign object used during a procedure, and transfusion of incompatible blood.

The investigations for the HSIB report cover seven of the 15 types of Never Events listed in the National Health Service (NHS) Never Events policy and framework published in 2018. These seven categories account for over 96% of the total Never Events recorded in 2018 – 2019.

Controversially, the HSIB report recommends that NHS England and NHS Improvement revise the Never Events list to remove several which don’t have “strong and systemic safety barriers.” “These events,” the report states, “are therefore not wholly preventable and do not fit the current definition of Never Events.”

This suggestion is, arguably, not in the spirit of advancing the patient safety agenda in the NHS in England.

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