Eliminating cervical cancer – raising awareness is the key

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) has shared insights into safety concerns raised by women and families and other stakeholders about maternity and neonatal care within NHS England, highlighting once again the need for meaningful change.

A recent article in the British Journal of Surgery  states that there have been increasing numbers of legal claims being made against the NHS in relation to bile duct injuries ‘in spite of 30 years of experience and training’. Bile duct injury is a dangerous complication of cholecystectomy – a common abdominal operation to remove the gallbladder, usually in order to treat gallstone disease. 

As the evidence of failing maternity services appears to be mounting, the Government is now pledging to prioritise improvements to maternity care as part of it’s womens health strategy  for 2024.

This week is cervical cancer prevention week, which comes close on the heels of an NHS pledge to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040.

Hip replacement surgery, whereby a damaged hip joint is replaced with an artificial one, is common in the UK, with the majority of procedures being carried out on people between the ages of 60 and 80 years.

Sepsis is a leading cause of death in the UK and many of those that survive are left with life changing injuries. NHS Resolution, reports that sepsis is among the three most common cases brought against the NHS. Claims relating to sepsis are often because of failings in diagnosis or treatment.

The government has announced plans to scrap many current cancer targets - including the ‘two week wait’ when being referred for suspected cancer - in favour of a ‘Faster Diagnosis Standard’. As a lawyer specialising in cases relating to delayed diagnosis of cancer, I am particularly interested in these changes and what impact they might have on legal claims.

Kingsley Napley’s James Bell has been interviewed by Shelagh Fogarty on LBC radio to give his views, as head of clinical negligence, on shocking evidence that the NHS failed to respond sufficiently to concerns raised by staff - including consultants - regarding neonatal nurse Lucy Letby. Letby has been convicted of the murder of seven newborn babies and the attempted murders of six more. A number of surviving victims have been left with life changing disabilities, including cerebral palsy.

Recent reports from the NHS Race and Health Observatory (an independent body created to examine ethnic inequalities), and the Government’s Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) highlight that ethnic minority babies are at a greater risk of inaccurate assessments, late diagnosis of conditions and poorer outcomes than white babies.

There are critical staff shortages across the NHS, including radiologists, resulting in delays for cancer patients. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can be extremely serious and even fatal. Sadly, all clinical negligence solicitors have seen such cases on a regular basis. However, revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can read scans, detect cancer, target radiotherapy and even predict disease risk appear to provide real hope for our currently overstretched NHS cancer services.

We are currently working on claims for failures in the treatment of aortic dissection and here we discuss what the condition involves and why legal cases for medical negligence arise.    

What is an aortic dissection?

The aorta is the main artery which carries oxygenated blood away from the heart to the rest of the body. It is a muscular tube that has three layers of tissue. An aortic dissection occurs when the inner layer of this artery tears, causing blood to leak, leading to the inner and middle layers separating. If the outer wall is ruptured then the condition is often fatal.

Despite ongoing improvements in patient safety, medical harm remains a leading cause of death worldwide, according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). As a result, the institute is redoubling its efforts to highlight the problem during its annual event – Patient Safety Awareness Week – running from 12 – 18 March 2023.

As clinical negligence specialists, we help those who have sadly been injured as a result of problems with the standard of medical treatment that they have received. It is with concern that we observe the difficulties that are continuing to unfold within our National Health Service this winter.

Sustaining a spinal injury is a life changing event.  A variety of symptoms can present.  For example, loss of limb function, sensory disturbance or loss of bowel and bladder function.  This makes it essential that an individual who has suffered a spinal injury accesses specialist medical and rehabilitative treatment as soon as possible to achieve the best possible outcome.

We heard from the BBC news today that a report that they had finally gained access to, revealed a lack of trust and low staff morale contributing to a series of problems in maternity care at North Devon Health Care NHS Trust between 2013 and 2018.  

Cancer Research UK estimate that 42,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK. The director of research and external affairs at Bowel Cancer UK, Dr Lisa Wilde, has stated that “Bowel cancer is the UK’s second biggest cancer killer but it doesn’t need to be: it is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early.”

The Ministry of Justice has announced that there will be no substantial reform to the current bereavement damages system in England and Wales.

A recent Guardian article revealed that managers at West Suffolk Hospital had demanded fingerprints and handwriting samples from staff in order to uncover a whistleblower. The widower of a 57 year old woman, Susan Warby who died five weeks after an operation to treat a perforated bowel in 2018, received an anonymous letter outlining what went wrong during his wife’s treatment. 

The Trust (which the Care Quality Commission rates as “Requiring Improvement”) manages five different hospitals.  The BBC article startlingly sets out that from as long ago as 2015 the  Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists were reviewing  maternity care, amid "concerns over the working culture". 

There are 1.2 million stroke survivors in the UK, according to the Stroke Association, with someone suffering a stroke every 5 minutes. So it’s concerning that nearly half of all Hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has at least one stroke Consultant post unfilled.