Category Archives: NHS

Great Ormond Street apologises after children suffered ‘severe harm’ under surgeon

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NHS hospital reviews care of 700 patients after inquiry found orthopaedic doctor caused lifelong damage to some, one of whom underwent an ‘avoidable limb amputation’

A leading NHS children’s hospital is reviewing the care 721 patients received after an investigation found that children treated by one of its surgeons came to “severe harm” during limb reconstruction operations.

Great Ormond Street hospital (Gosh) in London has offered its “sincere apologies” to children who have suffered what the Sunday Times reported was in some cases lifelong damage.

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Tory health reforms left UK open to Covid calamity, says top doctor’s report

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Britain’s pandemic response was among the worst and the NHS had been ‘seriously weakened’, says leading surgeon

• Three reports lay bare scale of NHS malaise, but will Reeves fund a remedy?

Britain was hit far harder by the Covid-19 pandemic than other developed countries because the NHS had been “seriously weakened” by disastrous government policies over the preceding decade, a wide-ranging report will conclude this week.

An assessment of the NHS by the world-renowned surgeon Prof Ara Darzi, commissioned in July by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, will find that the health service reduced its “routine healthcare activity by a far greater percentage than other health systems” in many key areas during the Covid crisis.

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Lucy Letby victims’ families call for CCTV on neonatal wards

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Lawyer for relatives says Thirlwall inquiry into case of killer nurse, due to begin next week, is ‘vitally important’

Families of some of Lucy Letby’s victims are calling for CCTV on neonatal wards, tighter control of insulin in hospitals and more protection for NHS whistleblowers, their lawyer has said before a public inquiry begins next week.

The Thirlwall inquiry, which starts on Tuesday, has been set up to examine what happened at the Countess of Chester hospital, where Letby worked. She has been convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more while based there as a neonatal nurse.

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Target for cutting premature birthrate in England will not be met, minister says

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Gillian Merron tells Lords the goal of reducing rate of preterm births to 6%, which was set in 2019, may be changed

The women’s health minister has admitted there is no chance the government will meet its target of reducing the premature birthrate to 6% in England by 2025.

Preterm birth, when a baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy, is the biggest cause of death among children under five in the UK. The previous government set a target in 2019 to reduce the preterm birthrate to 6% by 2025.

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NHS faces ‘tipping point’ in England where most appointments will not be with GPs

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Rapidly falling number of family doctors will harm ‘continuity and quality’ of care according to new research

The NHS in England is heading towards a “tipping point” after which GPs will no longer provide the majority of appointments because their numbers are falling so fast.

That is the conclusion of an extensive piece of new research that also shows one in five surgeries has shut and the number of patients each family doctor looks after has soared over the last decade.

1,625 GP surgeries closed between 2013 and 2023 – a fall of 20% or 178 a year – reducing the total number from 8,044 to 6,419.

The average number of patients on each surgery’s books rose by 40% – or 291 a year – over the same period, from 6,967 to 9,724.

Total patient numbers have grown from 56 million to 62.4 million.

Although the overall number of GPs working in the NHS rose, after taking changes in working hours into account those working the equivalent of full-time fell from 27,948 to 27,321.

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Pregnant women and older people in England offered RSV vaccine on NHS

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Programme for respiratory syncytial virus could prevent estimated 5,000 hospitalisations annually in infants

Pregnant women and older people across England will be routinely vaccinated against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for the first time, the NHS has said.

From 1 September the NHS will vaccinate pregnant women from 28 weeks onwards and adults turning 75. Adults aged 75 to 79 will be offered a catchup vaccine to make sure they are protected.

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Many patients leave GP appointment without discussing all worries, survey shows

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Ipsos poll found 40% of Britons thought there was not enough time to raise all concerns in 10-minute slot

Two-fifths of patients leave their GP appointment without discussing everything that is worrying them about their health, a survey has revealed.

The finding has prompted claims that older people often feel family doctors “want them out the door as soon as possible” rather than listening to all their concerns.

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NHS queues mean most Britons expect to pay for healthcare, says report

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Joseph Rowntree Foundation points to ‘critical shift in expectations’ and says the public now budget for many routine services

Most people in the UK now believe they will have to spend their own money on private healthcare for routine services such as dentistry, physiotherapy and counselling because they won’t be able to get them quickly on the NHS, pioneering new research has found.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says its findings, based on extensive focus group analysis, is evidence that Britons have undergone a “critical shift in expectations” about the health service’s capacity to meet their needs.

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Lucy Letby inquiry should be postponed or changed, experts say

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Group including neonatal experts and statistics professors question its setup amid concerns about conviction

A group including some of the UK’s leading neonatal experts and professors of statistics is calling on the government to postpone or change the terms of a public inquiry over concerns about the conviction of the neonatal nurse Lucy Letby.

In a private letter to ministers, seen by the Guardian, the 24 experts said they were concerned that the inquiry’s narrow terms could prevent lessons being learned about “possible negligent deaths that were presumed to be murders” in the neonatal ward of the Countess of Chester hospital (CoC).

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‘Real hope’ for cystic fibrosis patients as NHS rolls out life-changing drug

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Campaigners hail decision to give thousands of sufferers access to new set of drugs known as ‘modulators’

Alix Oxlade was 30 weeks into her pregnancy when scans showed fluid building up in the stomach and bowels of her unborn son, Rufus. The cause was unclear, though there was an early suspect: cystic fibrosis.

One of the most common inherited illnesses in the west, cystic fibrosis is caused by a defective protein that allows mucus to build up in the lungs, bowels and other organs and can lead to chronic infections that worsen through life. Tests subsequently showed Alix and her partner, Ben, who live in East Yorkshire, were both carriers of the disease.

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Victims of UK’s infected blood scandal to start receiving payouts by end of year

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Those affected by contaminated blood transfusions and products in 1970s and 80s to finally receive compensation

A new authority set up to properly compensate the victims and families of the infected blood scandal is due to start making payments by the end of this year.

The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) was set up after the inquiry in May into the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS concluded that governments, the health service and doctors had repeatedly failed victims. Regulations enacting the compensation scheme were laid out on Friday.

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Labour must raise GP funding to end ‘8am scramble’, says doctors’ group

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General practices forced to ‘do more and more with less and less’, says Doctors’ Association UK

Labour’s promise to “end the 8am scramble” for medical appointments will be impossible without increasing core funding for GPs, according to a leading medical association.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, pledged during the general election campaign that Labour would “end the 8am scramble by allowing patients to easily book appointments to see the doctor they want, in the manner they choose”.

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NHS plans review of adult gender services following Cass criticisms

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Workers in adult gender clinics allege ‘chaotic’ administration and ‘out of control’ waiting lists

The NHS has set out plans for a review into the safety of adult gender services, in response to detailed concerns raised by the author of the Cass report on gender care for children and young people.

Dr Hilary Cass, the leading consultant paediatrician, listed 16 separate points of concern about the quality of treatment being offered to adults with gender dysphoria in a strongly worded letter to NHS England.

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Nottingham attack preventable if NHS had ‘done its job’, health secretary says

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Wes Streeting says victims ‘might still be alive’ if health service had recognised Valdo Calocane’s risk to others

The health secretary said “three innocent people might still be alive” if the NHS had “done its job” in treating Valdo Calocane in the years running up to the Nottingham attacks.

Wes Streeting said the deaths of Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates were “preventable if the NHS had been there when it should have been”.

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Nearly half of England’s GP surgeries taking industrial action, survey finds

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One in four practices capping number of patients they see to 25 a day amid first action in 60 years

Almost half of GP surgeries in England are staging industrial action for the first time in 60 years amid a row over funding, with one in four capping the number of patients they see to 25 a day, a survey suggests.

Family doctors voted overwhelmingly in favour of collective action earlier this month in protest at the last government increasing their budget by only 1.9% this year. The new government has pledged to increase funding for 2024-25 to 6%.

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Nottingham attacks: series of errors led to Valdo Calocane being discharged, review finds

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CQC finds risk he presented to public was ‘not managed well’ before he killed three people in Nottingham last year

A “series of errors and misjudgments” in Valdo Calocane’s mental health care led to him being discharged, despite repeatedly not taking medication and showing signs of aggression, months before he killed three people in Nottingham, a report says.

A review by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) of the treatment that Calocane received from Nottinghamshire healthcare NHS foundation trust over two years between May 2020 and September 2022 found that “the risk he presented to the public was not managed well”.

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Doctor warned Valdo Calocane could kill, three years before Nottingham stabbings

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Family share medical records of Calocane’s mental illness with BBC that they say show missed opportunities to prevent attacks

A doctor warned that Valdo Calocane’s mental illness was so severe he could kill someone, three years before he stabbed three people to death in Nottingham, his medical records reveal.

Calocane’s family, who were shown the records only after he was sentenced to indefinite detention in a high-security hospital for the attacks, have criticised the missed opportunities they believe could have prevented the killings.

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Surgeon suspended for sexual harassment at Oxford Transplant Centre

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Medical tribunal suspends James Gilbert for eight months for the ‘serious misconduct’ it uncovered

A transplant surgeon found to have sexually harassed four colleagues has been suspended for eight months.

Three of the women James Gilbert, 47, harassed were trainees at the Oxford Transplant Centre, a medical tribunal heard.

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UK shortage of drug used to prevent brain damage in alcoholics

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Experts say addiction patients are being treated as second-class citizens as ‘essential’ Pabrinex is withdrawn

Doctors have warned that a severe shortage of an “essential” medicine used to help protect alcoholics from degenerative brain conditions could disproportionately affect “some of the most vulnerable” in society.

Pabrinex, a multivitamin injection, is used to protect heavy drinkers from conditions such as Wernicke’s encephalopathy and Korsakoff syndrome, which can have symptoms similar to dementia. Doctors are concerned the incidence of these debilitating conditions may increase as a result of the shortages.

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‘We’re all scared’: NHS doctor reveals impact of far-right riots on staff

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Hospital worker from Egypt expresses safety fears, doubts about staying in UK and sense of being unappreciated

As far-right riots broke out across parts of the UK this week, the chief executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, warned in an email to NHS leaders that “for many NHS workers, seeing this flare-up of racism will leave them feeling afraid and unwelcome”.

The Guardian spoke to Samir, 32, an NHS hospital doctor in south-west England, who shared his views.

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