Safety is a ‘significant concern’ in NHS and care sector

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) review found that three-quarters of the hospitals inspected under its new quality regime so far have safety issues. In addition, the CQC found that over 40 per cent of care and nursing homes and home care services had problems with safety, including one in three GP services.

A major issue identified in hospitals and care services was a lack of staff, while the managing of medicines and how mistakes occurred was also a problem that warranted investigation.

Cases that were flagged up included A&E patients being kept on trolleys overnight without proper assessments, GP staff not updating their training in basic life-support and the volume of medication mistakes within care homes.

Overall 13 per cent of hospitals, 10 per cent of social care services and six per cent of GP services were deemed unsafe. Including those those officially judged as unsafe, the figures of establishments suffering from safety problems are 74 per cent for hospitals, 43 per cent for social care services and 31 per cent for GPs.

The report concluded that improving leadership was key to tackling the problems. David Behan, CQC chief executive, said: “What we know from our report and from other research is that the leadership of an organisation sets the culture of that organisation.

"If the leadership says the important things around here are quality and safety, then that's what people attend to."

Royal College of Nursing general secretary Janet Davies highlighted that financial performance is a significant factor. Last week it was revealed trusts had already racked up a deficit of nearly £1 billion in the first three months of this financial year, greater than the overspend for the whole of 2014-15.

Davies believes that nursing care, whether in hospitals, care homes or the community, depended on having the right number of staff with the right skills and support.

She added: "There must be more investment in training nurses, keeping nurses and listening to nurses."

Katherine Rake, chief executive of Healthwatch England, the patient watchdog, explained that services needed to learn from mistakes. She described the problems highlighted as ‘unacceptable'.

She said: ”We would now like to see all services operate with the right culture of openness and transparency when things go wrong.”

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