Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Investigation into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Quality of care and patient safety in the UK: the way forward after Mid Staffordshire.

In the past decade, quality of care and patient safety in British hospitals have become the focus of increasing public, professional, political, and regulatory concern. The 2001 inquiry into paediatric cardiac surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary concluded that the Department of Health was unable to respond to an issue of quality of care, even though the Department of Health accepted that ultimat...

Commentary MID STAFFS: DISASTER BY NUMBERS (OR ‘HOW TO CREATE A DRAMA OUT OF A STATISTIC’)? Summary: The campaign about poor care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

The campaign about poor care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust culminated in a statutory public inquiry. There were both qualitative data about poor care and quantitative data about mortality rates. The campaign focussed initial press coverage on the excess mortality figures with reports talking about hundreds of “unnecessary deaths”. This paper looks at the basis for those figures and ...

NHS Values, Compassion and Quality Indicators for Relationship Based Person-Centred Healthcare; Comment on “Morality and Markets in the NHS”

The paper by Gilbert et al. should be on the table of every politician and National Health Service (NHS) manager in the run up to the general election, when the NHS is at the hustings. They have raised profound moral dilemmas of the internal and external market in their present form, such as the practicalities of distributive justice and the enhancement of autonomy – to which are added the pres...

Visible leadership: going back to the front line.

The report into care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust called for strong leadership in nursing and the government's response acknowledged the importance of senior managers gaining front line experience of the NHS. This article discusses the background to the need for visible leadership and the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to engaging with the front line. Lessons ...