"The NHS's relentless focus on finance and productivity is failing patient safety," argues patient safety commissioner Henrietta Hughes in an interview for The BMJ today. "The patient's anecdote is the canary in the coal mine," she says. "It's the thing that tells us there's something going wrong.
But too often we hear about patients who have raised concerns being gaslighted, dismissed, and fobbed off." Hughes, a GP and former medical director at NHS England, became England's first independent patient safety commissioner in September 2022. The job was created after a recommendation in a 2020 review that looked into three devastating medical scandals: hormone pregnancy tests that are thought to be associated with birth defects and miscarriages; sodium valproate, an antiepileptic drug that can cause birth defects when taken by pregnant women ; and pelvic mesh implants, which have been linked to crippling complications.
Too often, patients raising concerns were passed off as "difficult women," says Hughes. "It shows a very dismissive and very old-fashioned, patronizing attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard." The three strands of work that Hughes is currently focusing on are developing a safety management system, including an overhaul of the complaints process and clinical negligence; embedding patient safety and the patient voice throughout the health care system ; and ensuring that patients' voices are heard in their own health ca.
