Patients in England are being harmed because doctors and nurses are too busy to enforce directives designed to improve safety, a scathing report by the NHS regulator has found.
People in hospital are exposed to increased risk, including during surgery, because safety alerts are not being implemented by staff struggling with “unmanageable” workloads, the Care Quality Commission said.
The findings come from a review of patient safety in England ordered last year by the then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and undertaken by the CQC.
About 500 people a year are suffering avoidable harm as a result of “never events” – serious lapses in patient safety that can cause injuries or even death and should be completely avoidable. They include surgeons operating on the wrong part of a patient’s body and swabs being left inside someone during their procedure.
Full story in The Guardian, 19 December 2018