Good morning, happy international nurses day, and welcome to my regular patient safety update. This week we look at the latest Select Committee session on medical education, the Nottingham Maternity Inquiry, midwifery recruitment, suicide prevention funding and our usual - but starting to get boring - look at Covid.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL? Wednesday’s Select Committee session on workforce looked at a completely different area, but one that many think long overdue for reform namely medical education. Does it need substantive change and could we shorten the time it takes to train a doctor? Overwhelming support for more medical school places but some interesting takes on what else is needed. And it is good to hear that Sunderland, one of the schools I established, is managing to recruit 50% of its cohort locally. Of course such reforms are by definition long term but we did not ignore the short term pressures with some harrowing interviews about the impact of staff shortages in the social care sector.

NOTTINGHAM MATERNITY CHAOS Last week Julie Dent, the Chair of the inquiry into the maternity deaths at Nottingham University Hospital Trust, stepped down citing “personal reasons”. I’m sure not having the confidence of the families involved played a part, not because of any personal failing on her part but because they want Donna Ockenden to do the job instead. To his credit Sajid Javid met with the families last week to listen directly to their concerns. Why reinvent the wheel when, as his boss would say, there is an ‘oven-ready’ plan?

ENGLISH BABIES NEED YOU! The NHS has announced that 500 midwives from around the world are set to join the NHS as part of a £5.4m initiative to attract recruits from overseas. They will be joining over the next six months from countries such as Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Italy, India and the Philippines. This is sort of welcome - at least from the NHS point of view - and I am sure the new arrivals will do a brilliant job but is it really ethical to depend on much poorer countries to train the health staff we need? Surely a grown up health system should be training the numbers it needs, something the government continues to put its head in the sand over.

SUICIDE PREVENTION FUNDING To mark Mental Health Awareness Week the government announced that 113 charities have shared in £5.4m of funding to help prevent suicide which is welcome but I was concerned to see that the brilliant Zero Suicide Alliance was not on the list. The government also announced a call for evidence that will help inform their new suicide prevention plan which will be published later this year. Reminder: there are about 6,000 suicides in England and Wales every year or 16 a day.

SIR ROBERT FRANCIS Has announced his intention to step down from the Board of the CQC and as Chair of Healthwatch England. Sir Robert has been a great friend to patient safety over the years and he will undoubtedly be missed. In his letter to the Secretary of State he argues that the Healthwatch and CQC systems have improved significantly in recent times but does lament the funding reductions faced by Healthwatch. Well worth a read and from all of us in the Patient Safety world thank you for your extraordinary commitment to our cause over many years (and putting up with me as Secretary of State with such good grace!).

QUEEN’S SPEECH Now that the Health and Care Act has been granted Royal Assent this parliamentary session will turn to mental health with the Queen’s speech promising “draft legislation to reform the Mental Health Act”. The notes to the speech explain that this Bill will give patients greater control over their treatment and “make it easier for people with learning disabilities and autism to be discharged from hospital”. It will also amend “the definition of mental disorder so that people can no longer be detained solely because they have a learning disability or because they are  autistic”. These are very welcome reforms but the devil, as they say will be in precisely how many of the 2000 autistic and LD people actually get released from their human rights breaching ‘secure units’ to proper community accommodation as a result.

COVID LATEST New cases continue to plummet with the ONS reporting that 1 in 35 people in England had the virus in the last week of April compared to 1 in 25 in the previous week. 

THE ADMIN Lots going on again so please do sign up to receive this update via our website here. Patient safety matters! And look out for the serialisation of my new book Zero, starting in the Times this weekend.

Jeremy Hunt