Tag: Patient Safety

‘Safe spaces’ in adverse health incident investigation and patient complaints

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By John Tingle

Two new reports, one by Action against Medical Accidents,(AvMA),the charity for patient safety and justice and the other by the Patient’s Association charity, (PA), highlight once again significant  problems with NHS (National Health Service) patient safety investigative and complaints structures and procedures.

The Department of Health, (DH) in 2016 produced a consultation paper which closed on 16th December 2016 on providing a ‘safe space’ in healthcare safety investigations.

This is linked to the new NHS, Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB),operational from April 2016, and when fully functional will  offer support and guidance to NHS organizations on investigations, and carry out certain investigations itself.Current Government policy is to consider the development of a ‘safe space’ in serious adverse health incident investigations. The Consultation paper stated:

“…many believe that the creation of a type of ‘strong wall’ around certain health service investigations, so that information given as part of an investigation would only rarely be passed on, would provide a measure of ‘psychological safety’ to those involved in investigation, allowing them to speak freely. This will enable lessons to be learned, driving improvement and ultimately saving lives.” (p.8). Read More

Missed opportunities to learn from patient deaths in the NHS

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By John Tingle

The National Health Service (NHS) in England’s quality regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has recently published a highly critical report on the way patient deaths are investigated in the NHS. The investigation follows events at the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust where a number of failings were identified in the way patient deaths were identified and investigated. Certain groups of patients including people with a learning disability and older people receiving mental health care were far less likely to have their deaths investigated by this Trust. The Secretary of State for Health called for a CQC investigation into how acute, community and mental health NHS facilities across the country investigate and learn from deaths. The findings of the report are not good and major improvements in this area are needed across the NHS.

There are failings in openness, transparency and missed opportunities to learn important patient safety lessons. Families of patients and carers told the CQC reviewers that they often have a poor experience of investigations and are not always treated with kindness, respect, honesty and sensitivity. The CQC states that across their review they were unable to identify any NHS healthcare facility that could demonstrate good practice across all aspects of identifying, reviewing and investigating deaths and ensuring that learning from the events is implemented. Read More

Premature baby left to die alone in sluice room, report reveals: A looming patient safety crisis in the NHS?

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By John Tingle

BBC News reported, 24/11/2016 on the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust review of its Royal Oldham and North Manchester General hospitals which identified several ‘unacceptable situations’. The BBC news item states that the review document

“…described how a premature baby had arrived “just before the legal age of viability” – at 22 weeks and six days – but staff did not find “a quiet place” for the child’s mother “to nurse her as she died and instead placed her in a Moses basket and left her in the sluice room to die alone”.

The report goes on to catalogue a number of other shocking events that occurred. Read More

New dimensions in patient consent to treatment

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By John Tingle

In the patient care equation doctors  and nurses will always be in a more dominant and powerful position. They have the professional  knowledge the patient needs, they are in their usual environment. The patient is ill, not in their usual environment and is often thinking the worst about their condition. The law recognises the need to correct this power imbalance and cases have gone to court over matters such as patient informed consent to treatment. Modern cases emphasise the importance of patient autonomy against that of medical paternalism. In the House of Lords case of Chester v Afshar [2004] UKHL 41 involving consent to treatment failures, Lord Steyn stated:

“In modern law medical paternalism no longer rules and a patient has a prima facie right to be informed by a surgeon of a small, but well established, risk of serious injury as a result of surgery.” (Para 16).

The focus of the modern day law and that of many professional health organisations policy development is on patient rights, trying to balance the unequal care equation. Read More

“That I Don’t Know”: The Uncertain Futures of Our Bodies in America

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By Wendy S. Salkin

I. Our Bodies, Our Body Politic

On March 30, at a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, an audience member asked then-presidential-hopeful Donald J. Trump: “[W]hat is your stance on women’s rights and their right to choose in their own reproductive health?” What followed was a lengthy back-and-forth with Chris Matthews. Here is an excerpt from that event:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the woman.
TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.
MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?
TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.

Much has been made of the fact that President-Elect Trump claimed that women who undergo abortion procedures should face “some sort of punishment.” Considerably less has been made of the fact that our President-Elect, in a moment of epistemic humility, expressed that he did not know what he would do, though he believed something had to be done. (He later revised his position, suggesting that the performer of the abortion rather than the woman undergoing the abortion would “be held legally responsible.”)

I am worried about the futures of our bodies, as, I think, are many. That a Trump Presidency makes many feel fear is not a novel contribution. Nor will I be able to speak to the very many, and varied, ways our bodies may be compromised in and by The New America—be it through removal from the country (see especially the proposed “End Illegal Immigration Act”), removal from society (see especially the proposed “Restoring Community Safety Act”), or some other means (see especially the proposed “Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act”).

But, I am like President-Elect Trump in this way: Like him, “I don’t know.” I don’t know what to say about what will happen to our bodies or to our body politic. So instead, today, I will take this opportunity to point to one aspect of the changing face of access to reproductive technologies that has already become a battleground in the fight over women’s bodies and will, I suspect, take center stage in the debate over the right and the ability to choose in coming years. Read More

Improving the safety of maternity care in the National Health Service (NHS) and other medico-legal matters

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By John Tingle

There are some very interesting Government patient safety and access to justice policy development activities currently going on in England.

Maternity Services

In maternity services, there is a clear recognition by Government that safety is inconsistent and that there is significant scope for improvement. Our still birth rates are amongst the highest in Europe despite the National Health Service (NHS) making advances in patient safety in this area. In the National Maternity Review we are reminded that half of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections of maternity services result in safety assessments that are either ‘inadequate’ (7%) or ‘requires improvement (41%) (page 22). The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

In a speech to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) in London, the Secretary of State for Health, 17th October, 2016, Jeremy Hunt laid out plans to make giving birth safer, including maternity safety funding and other related matters. The Government’s ambition is to halve neonatal death, stillbirth, maternal death and brain injuries caused during or shortly after labour by 2030 and a series of measures were  launched. There will be a £250,000 maternity safety innovation fund and a new national Maternity and Neonatal Health Quality Improvement Programme. New maternity ratings will also be published to help improve transparency, raise standards and will give families better information about the quality of local maternity services.

A safe space Read More

Scottish clinical guidelines on patients’ pressure ulcer care published

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By John Tingle

Failures in assessing the patient properly for pressure ulcers can result in adverse incident reports, complaints and even litigation. A look at medical malpractice lawyer web sites in both the UK and USA will reveal a number of attorneys offering specialism in pressure sore litigation and publishing compensation awards. In the NHS poor pressure area care is a key patient safety issue and positive steps have been taken to reduce the occurrence of these incidents which can cause result in severe harm and even death to patients. The incidents also cost healthcare services a lot of money in remedying the problems of neglect.

The problem of poor pressure area care can also be seen in other countries. Health is a fairly generic concept, whilst the context of health care may well be different, valuable patient safety lessons can be learned from looking at the health quality reports of other countries. Developing an informed comparative patient safety perspective to issues can save both time and money by not reinventing the wheel.

There is new guidance from Scotland, Healthcare improvement Scotland (HIS) on the prevention and management of pressures ulcers which will be of interest to nurses and all those concerned with health quality and governance. Read More

Learning from adverse health care events in Scotland

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By John Tingle

We can learn a lot from how other countries deal with patient safety issues and it can save us from reinventing the wheel at some financial cost.Healthcare improvement Scotland  (HIS) is the national healthcare improvement organization for Scotland and is part of NHS Scotland. The organization provides some excellent patient safety resources. The work of HIS involves supporting and empowering people to have an informed voice in managing their own care and shaping how services are designed and delivered. Delivering scrutiny activity, providing quality improvement support and providing clinical standards, guidelines and advice. HIS produce a rich range of programmes and publications that are relevant to all those concerned with patient safety and health quality in England, USA and elsewhere.

A recent report from HIS focuses on the adverse event lessons learned by health boards and the improvements they subsequently put into place after the events,Learning from adverse events – Learning and improvement summary: May 2016 There is some very good thinking in the report which should be essential reading for all staff involved in patient safety policy development.

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Patient Safety and Clinical Risk in Neonatal Care

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By John Tingle                                     

The CQC (The Care Quality Commission)  is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. They make sure that health and social care services provided to people are safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and they encourage care services to improve. The  CQC inspects health facilities and they have important statutory regulatory powers and sanctions.They have recently produced a report on neonatal care and  on  providing care for infants in the community who need respiratory support. As well as some positive findings, the report does reveal a number of major patient safety risks and failings.

In England, one in every nine babies is born needing care from neonatal services and  this is on the increase. The care process here can be challenging with sick babies with complex health needs receiving hospital care and then care at home and in the community. The care of the baby traverses’ distinct pathways or care areas and sometimes problems can occur:

“A lack of consistency in care and communication across a pathway can result in poor outcomes for both babies and parents.” (p.3)

The report looks at current practice in three different aspects of care: Read More

Child safeguarding: the National Health Service (NHS) can do much better

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By John Tingle

Our children are our future and we need to look after them well. There is however a lot of evidence to suggest that we are failing our children in a number of key health areas. UNICEF in a report put the UK in 16th position – below Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Portugal – in a league table of child well-being in the world’s richest countries. The report considers five dimensions of children’s lives – material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviours and risks, and housing and environment – as well as children’s subjective well-being.

There are a number of health and other child well-being challenges for the UK to meet. The UNICEF report provides some useful context from which to view the recently published Care Quality Commission (CQC) report on the arrangements for child safeguarding and healthcare for looked after children in England.The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.Whilst the report does contain some positive findings, when read as a whole, these seem subsumed by the large number of negative findings, some of which are very worrying. Read More