This public inquiry report into serious failings in healthcare that took place at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust builds on the first independent report published in February 2010 (ISBN 9780102964394). It further examines the suffering of patients caused by failures by the Trust: there was a failure to listen to its patients and staff or ensure correction of deficiencies. There was also a failure to tackle the insidious negative culture involving poor standards and a disengagement from managerial and leadership responsibilities. These failures are in part a consequence of allowing a focus on reaching national access targets, achieving financial balance and seeking foundation trust status at the cost of delivering acceptable care standards. Further, the checks and balances that operate within the NHS system should have prevented the serious systemic failure that developed at Mid Staffs. The system failed in its primary duty to protect patients and maintain confidence in the healthcare system. This report identifies numerous warning signs that could and should have alerted the system to problems developing at the Trust. It also sets out 290 recommendations grouped around: (i) putting the patient first; (ii) developing a set of fundamental standards, easily understood and accepted by patients; (iii) providing professionally endorsed and evidence-based means of compliance of standards that are understood and adopted by staff; (iv) ensuring openness, transparency and candour throughout system; (v) policing of these standards by the healthcare regulator; (vi) making all those who provide care for patients , properly accountable; (vii) enhancing recruitment, education, training and support of all key contributors to the provision of healthcare; (viii) developing and sharing ever improving means of measuring and understanding the performance of individual professionals, teams, units and provider organisations for the patients, the public, and other stakeholders.

If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain’s entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee’s postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher’s governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee’s planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world.

The Government's initial response, Patients First and Foremost (Cm. 8576, ISBN 9780101857628), set out a radical plan to prioritise care, improve transparency and ensure that where poor care is detected, there is clear action and clear accountability. This document now provides a detailed response to the 290 recommendations the Inquiry made across every level of the system. It also responds to six independent reviews commissioned to consider some of the key issues identified by the Inquiry. This document sets out how the whole health and care system will prioritise and build on this, including major new action in vital areas including: transparent monthly reporting of ward-by-ward staffing levels and other safety measures; a statutory and professional duties of candour; legislate at the earliest available opportunity on Wilful Neglect; a new fit and proper person's test which will act as a barring scheme; all arm's length bodies and the Department of Health have signed a protocol in order to minimise bureaucratic burdens on Trusts; a new Care Certificate to ensure that Healthcare Assistants and Social Care Support Workers have the right fundamental training and skills in order to give personal care to patients and service users; and the Care Bill will introduce a new criminal offence applicable to care providers that supply or publish certain types of information that is false or misleading, where that information is required to comply with a statutory or other legal obligation. It looks at preventing problems; detecting problems quickly; taking action promptly; ensuring robust accountability and ensuring staff are trained and motivated

This book presents the proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018), held on August 26-30, 2018, in Florence, Italy. By highlighting the latest theories and models, as well as cutting-edge technologies and applications, and by combining findings from a range of disciplines including engineering, design, robotics, healthcare, management, computer science, human biology and behavioral science, it provides researchers and practitioners alike with a comprehensive, timely guide on human factors and ergonomics. It also offers an excellent source of innovative ideas to stimulate future discussions and developments aimed at applying knowledge and techniques to optimize system performance, while at the same time promoting the health, safety and wellbeing of individuals. The proceedings include papers from researchers and practitioners, scientists and physicians, institutional leaders, managers and policy makers that contribute to constructing the Human Factors and Ergonomics approach across a variety of methodologies, domains and productive sectors. This volume includes papers addressing Healthcare Ergonomics.

A fierce, honest, elegant and often hilarious debunking of the great fallacies that drive modern medicine. By the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now. Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be 'conquered' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion. 'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times.

On cover and title page: House, committees of the whole House, general committees and select committees. On title page: Returns to orders of the House of Commons dated 14 May 2013 (the Chairman of Ways and Means)

Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain is the first detailed exploration of the hundreds of charges of neglect against doctors who were contracted to the 'new' poor law after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The author moves beyond the hyperbole of Victorian public 'scandal' to use medical negligence as a prism through which to view hidden aspects of poor law doctors and their patients. This provides a uniquely grounded perspective, from the day-to-day experience of medical practice – for both doctor and patient – to the context of the medico-political, socio-legal and cultural processes that underpinned the social construction of negligence at this time. The result is a clearly enunciated description of what negligence meant to the Victorians and how they sought to define and deal with negligent care, moving the topic from the sidelines of English welfare history to the centre-stage role it played in Victorian society. Thematically and chronologically arranged in two parts, the book uses extensive new archival material with a particular focus on the official inquiries into neglect conducted by poor law inspectors. It offers a fresh perspective on the poor laws that has repercussions for wider histories of welfare, medicine and legal medicine.

Over the last fifty years, British patients have been transformed into consumers. This book considers how and why the figure of the patient-consumer was brought into being, paying particular attention to the role played by patient organisations. Making the patient-consumer explores the development of patient-consumerism from the 1960s to 2010 in relation to seven key areas. Patient autonomy, representation, complaint, rights, information, voice and choice were all central to the making of the patient-consumer. These concepts were used initially by patient organisations, but by the 1990s the government had taken over as the main actor shaping ideas about patient-consumerism. This volume is the first empirical, historical account of a fundamental shift in modern British health policy and practice. The book will be of use to historians, public policy analysts and all those attempting to better understand the nature of contemporary healthcare.

This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care.

This book explores how concerns can be raised about the NHS, why raising concerns hasn't always improved standards, and how a no-fault open culture approach could drive improvements. The book describes a wide range of mechanisms for raising concerns about the NHS, including complaints, the ombudsman, litigation, HSIB, and the major inquiries since 2000, across the various UK jurisdictions. The NHS approach is contextualised within the broader societal developments in dispute resolution, accountability, and regulation. The authors take a holistic view, and outline practical solutions for reforming how the NHS responds to problems. These should improve the situation for those raising concerns and for those working within the NHS, as well as providing cost savings. The no-fault approaches proposed in the book provide long-term sustainable solutions to systemic problems, which are particularly timely given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the NHS. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, ADR practitioners, practising lawyers, and policy makers.