Lawford Kidd's Blog

The Scottish Government has announced that GPs in Scotland are set to become even safer as the world’s first patient safety programme for primary care is launched.

With around 100,000 GP visits every day in Scotland the programme will see safety measures implemented where the majority of NHS care is delivered.

GPs and their staff will undertake safety surveys and case note reviews to increase staff awareness and integrate patient safety into their daily work to reduce avoidable harm.

Some doctors in training are tired and stressed because of their working patterns, which could be putting patients at risk, the General Medical Council (GMC) has warned.

According to research commissioned by the GMC, some doctors may still be working nearly 100 hours a week during their busiest shifts - increasing the potential for mistakes.

The research was aimed at understanding the impact of the Working Time Regulations which are intended to promote health and safety by restricting the hours doctors work.

After a cautious and rigorous analysis of national malpractice claims, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient’s body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week.

The researchers, reporting online in the journal Surgery, say they estimate that 80,000 of these so-called "never events" occurred in American hospitals between 1990 and 2010 - and believe their estimates are likely on the low side.

The findings - the first of their kind, it is believed - quantify the national rate of "never events," occurrences for which there is universal professional agreement that they should never happen during surgery. Documenting the magnitude of the problem, the researchers say, is an important step in developing better systems to ensure never events live up to their name.

The Department of Health has launched a major review into cosmetic surgery and procedures in response to concerns raised about the industry following problems with PiP breast implants.

The review will look at many issues including whether the right amount of regulation is in place, if people have the right amount of information before going through with surgery and how to make sure patients get the right aftercare.

People are being asked to give their views on, and share their experiences of, the cosmetic surgery industry and cosmetic procedures. The call for evidence is asking for people’s views on:

A father and his eleven year old son are suing Raigmore hospital in Inverness for over £200,000 in compensation after the death of the boy's mother and the baby girl she was carrying, reports the Scotland on Sunday.