Category: Patient Care

UCL A&E entrance

The NHS Complaints System: Wither the Toxic Cocktail Image?

John Tingle 1 Comment

The National Health Service in England has been trying for many years to get its complaints system right, but it has never succeeded. A great number of reports have been published on the system over the years, some dating back for at least a quarter of a century.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC ) the independent regulator of health and social care in England have just published a report launching a “Declare Your Care” campaign, which raises several important issues about the NHS complaints system. Read More

Handcuffs on a pile of pills

Emergency Department Psychiatric Holds: A Form of Medical Incarceration?

Stephen Wood Leave a comment

Wait times and length of stay in emergency departments are a hot topic and often result in a variety of identifiable harms that include medical error and failures to meet quality care measures. Patients with psychiatric conditions, including suicidal ideations, risk for harm to others, or psychosis, are particularly vulnerable to increased emergency department (ED) lengths of stay. The length of ED holds for psychiatric patients can be three-fold that of similar holds for medical patients. Lack of access to appropriate care, comorbid medical illness, or violent behavior can all contribute to this.

Increased length of stay impacts the efficiency of the ED itself, increasing wait times, utilizing human resources and physical space. It has a more important impact, however, on the patient. Patients may be held in a small room with constant observation for days with little or no access to natural light, bathing facilities or contact with family or friends. They may be dressed in paper gowns, told when to eat, when to sleep and confined to their room for days at a time, emulating the conditions in a maximum security prison. Emergency Departments, through no fault of their own, are becoming holding cells for patients who are both vulnerable and often marginalized.

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Image of healthcare professionals holding up an anesthesia mask up to you

Can Anesthesiologists Adopt a Public Health Law Framework to Improve Medication Safety?

Ron Litman Leave a comment

Recent studies have highlighted the inherent susceptibility for medication errors by anesthesia providers in the perioperative environment. In a prospective survey at Massachusetts General Hospital, investigators identified a concerning potential error rate of 1 in 20 medication administrations, many of which resulted in patient harm.

To those of us who toil daily in the trenches of the operating room, this come as no surprise, for we are the only type of healthcare provider that prescribes, dispenses, premixes, repackages, relabels and administers the medications, independently and without secondary verification or use of technologic support. In one sense this may seem to be an advantage, for if there are fewer intermediaries, such as pharmacists or registered nurses, there are fewer humans to make a mistake. On the other hand, more intermediaries or additional verification might identify previously unrecognized errors. Read More

the NHS logo on the side of a building

Why Patients Make Claims for Clinical Negligence

John Tingle Leave a comment

The NHS (National Health Service) in England is in very deep water when it comes to the increasing costs of clinical negligence claims made against it. NHS litigation compensation damage awards and costs over  recent years have shot upwards to reach record heights threatening some would argue the very sustainability and fabric of the NHS. The increase in litigation against the NHS is well documented in terms of levels and trends over time. However, what is less clear is the motivation behind patients suing. Read More

group of nurses walking in hospital hallway

Burnout and Moral Distress in Nurses: Can Staffing Numbers Increase Patient Safety?

Paul C. McLean 3 Comments

I know Nurse X only by her failures the night a young woman with asthma died gasping for breath just steps from the emergency entrance of Somerville Hospital. The preventable nature of the woman’s death, and the discovery of that hard truth by her husband, are described thoroughly and compellingly in Sunday’s Boston Globe magazine.

This death was the result of medical error, estimated to be the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

But the blurry image of Nurse X, standing in the ER doorway and failing to see the dying woman in the shadows steps away, is for me a snapshot of burnout. I’ll carry it with me to the voting booth on Tuesday when I stare at Question 1, the ballot measure in Massachusetts that could determine and lock into place nurse-to-patient staffing levels. Read More