Tag Archives: patient safety

In the years after Labour came to power in 1997, NHS healthcare improved rapidly. Waiting lists came down, we were offered a greater choice of providers through a new Choose and Book scheme and walk-in centres were set up, meaning patients could be seen on the day in the community for urgent health problems. But no more.

No one can fail to have noticed the decline in NHS healthcare provision in England in recent years: long waits to see a GP for routine appointments; more GP consultations over the phone instead of face-to-face; even longer waits for outpatient appointments and services such as physiotherapy – up to 12 months where I live (honestly what is the use of that?); the substitution of physician associates for doctors; long hours of corridor care in A&E; and, most worryingly, an increase in medical errors. It is primarily these medical errors that have prompted me to write this piece.

Over the past decade we have seen an increasing number of health scandals come to light, especially, but not exclusively, in maternity care. Despite several high-profile maternity reviews by eminent clinicians over the past decade, these failings continue, with multiple NHS Hospitals Trusts now having been implicated and investigated, including at Nottingham, Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent, Leeds, Oxford and Gloucestershire NHS Hospital Trusts.

It also takes the NHS far too long to weed out poor practice. A leaked Royal College of Surgeons’ report on a surgeon who performed poor surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is said to have criticised the hospital’s lower limb reconstruction service as not “safe for patients” with the orthopaedic department being “dysfunctional”. And this hospital is supposed to be a national centre of excellence! Surely, after a certain number of poorly performed operations, alarm bells should be ringing and matters quickly taken in hand? An independent review found in this case, that 94 children and young people had come to harm at GOSH due to the surgeon in question, 13 of whom had life-long injuries according to the initial review by the RCS. There have been similar stories in the media down the years, including that of disgraced surgeon Ian Paterson, who performed unnecessary or botched surgery on more than a thousand women. But is poor practice still going under the radar and is it still too hard for NHS whistleblowers to come forward? Also concerning is the increasing number of ‘never events’ in surgery. For example, cases of wrong-site surgery in England rose from 69 in 2020 to 101 in 2025, with 7% involving serious harm to patients. Still low numbers yes – but devastating for those involved.