Authors

John Tingle is a regular contributor to the Bill of Health blog. I am a Lecturer in Law, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK; and a Visiting Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago, School of Law. I was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School in November 2018 and formerly Associate Professor at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University in the UK. I have a fortnightly magazine column in the British Journal of Nursing where I focus on patient safety and the legal aspects of nursing and medicine. I have published over 500 articles and a number of leading texts in patient safety and nursing law. My current research interests are in global patient safety, policy and practice, particularly in African health care systems. My most recent publication is: "Global Patient-Safety Law Policy and Practice," edited by John Tingle, Clayton O'Neill, and Morgan Shimwell, Routledge 2018.
Surgeon at work in the operating room.

Litigation and Patient Safety: The Importance of Good Communication Strategies

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By John Tingle

Good record keeping and communication practices are essential prerequisites for safe and proper patient care. Serious patient injury, including death, can result from poor record keeping and other communication failures.

A fundamental issue in England’s National Health Service (NHS) patient safety culture development, however, is whether health care staff implement the necessary communication changes in light of  adverse health care events. In fact, failure to learn from errors is a persistent patient safety theme that has featured strongly in various health regulatory, patient safety, and crisis inquiry reports going back over 20 years.

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Change for the Medical Malpractice Compensation System in England?

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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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The Need to Go Back to Basics in Patient Safety

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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.

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Balancing Patient Rights and Costs in Medical Malpractice Claims

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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.

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Buzzwords in Patient Safety: Some Preliminary Thoughts

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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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Artificial Intelligence and Health Law: Updates from England

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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.

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The Latest on Never Events in the NHS in England

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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.

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

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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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