By John Tingle and Amanda Cattini
In the hustle and bustle of our daily professional lives, it is sometimes all too easy to forget about the basics. In terms of health care practice and patient safety, these underpinning basic, foundational concepts include the need for proper patient communication strategies.
The consequences of failures in patient communication can be devastating. There is a need to go back to this basic issue at regular intervals.
By John Tingle and Amanda Cattini
The issue of the high and increasing costs of clinical negligence (medical malpractice) in the National Health Service (NHS) in England has long been a contentious one. There are common themes in the debate. The economic arguments supporting reform explain that the NHS is spending a considerable amount of money out of its health budget on malpractice claims, which otherwise could be put into front line health care services. While the economic arguments are important, others contend that the patient’s voice must be heard more widely in the reform debate. They emphasize that it is important to look deeper as to what compensation means to victims of clinical negligence, and caution against unnecessarily fettering patients’ reasonable pursuit of claims.
Two recently published reports provide several key perspectives on these issues.
By John Tingle
The clinical negligence system reform debate in England is proceeding at some pace now with the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee recently receiving expert oral evidence.
The evidence has produced some excellent and controversial food for thought along with creating an important change agenda.
By John Tingle
In patient safety terms in the NHS England, there have been positives and negatives over the past year to reflect on, and for 2022 there are interesting developments on the horizon. In this post I will discuss a small number of patient safety matters of major impact.
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.
By John Tingle
Artificial intelligence (AI) is making an impact on health law in England.
The growing presence of AI in law has been chronicled by organizations such as the Law Society, which published a forward-thinking, horizon-scanning paper on artificial intelligence and the legal profession back in 2018.
The report identifies several key emerging strands of AI development and use, including Q&A chatbots, document analysis, document delivery, legal adviser support, case outcome prediction, and clinical negligence analysis. These applications of AI already show promise: one algorithm developed by researchers at University College London, the University of Sheffield, and the University of Pennsylvania was able to predict case outcomes with 79% accuracy.
By John Tingle
“Never Events” — medical errors that should never occur — are a major and recurring problem in health care in England.
When they do occur, they sap confidence and trust in the health care system, and can result in significant injury or death to the patient. They can result in expensive litigation. There is also a significant financial cost to the NHS, which is always short of financial resources. The patient, their relatives, and all those involved in the incident bear emotional costs, too.
In the National Health Service (NHS), Never Events are defined and listed. The list includes such incidents as a foreign body being left in a patient, wrong implant/prosthesis, and wrong site surgery, among others. Sadly, the incidence of Never Events in the NHS is still too high.
Never Events are also a major patient safety metric that helps regulators such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the public judge the safety of a hospital or other health care facility.
Recent publications highlight that Never Events remain a critical and a stubbornly persistent problem for the NHS to address.
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.
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.
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.