John Tingle

Unstable foundations: the complaint system and the duty of candour

Examining the issue of corridor care, NHS patient safety and the law

NHS England (2024) has provided a key framework to support staff when ‘temporary escalation spaces’ (TES) are used. The guidance begins with the statement that care delivery in TES such as corridors...

Data trends and duty of candour: patient safety challenges in 2025

‘Sussex Police started looking in 2023 into an initial 105 cases, but BBC File On 4 Investigates has learned that number is now more than 200.’ .

Tackling some of the NHS patient safety problems in 2025

All the consultations touch on care quality and NHS patient safety. One will have a knock-on effect on another, so they should not be considered in isolation from each other. There all form part of a...

Big changes to the NHS patient safety landscape expected in 2025

Martha's Rule emerged from the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of 13-year-old Martha Mills from sepsis in 2021. The Coroner concluded that she would not have died had she been moved earlier...

Keeping up to date with patient safety reports: weathering the perfect storm?

We will never be able to stop the regular swathe of patient safety reports, policies, guidelines, recommendations etc – and nor should we. Health care is also everybody's business. We are all touched...

Untangling the complex web of NHS patient safety bodies

Confidence in the NHS patient safety, health regulatory and governance framework has been, in my view, seriously damaged by the performance shortcomings of the CQC, and only time will tell whether it...

Developing an NHS patient safety culture: swings and roundabouts

We are knocking on an open door when it comes to the need to develop an NHS patient safety culture. Everybody who works in or is connected with the NHS, including patients, would agree that this must...

The current state of patient safety in the NHS: the Darzi Report

Darzi (2024a) covers a lot of ground and issues in this wide-ranging report, which is unsurprising given the vast scope NHS activities. This column focuses on the finding on the NHS health...

Principles and collaborative practices: a roundup of summer publications

The Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) recently published a consultation paper on draft principles of better patient safety (PSC, 2024a). The principles will act as a guide, the PSC states, for senior...

The urgent need for review, rationalisation and consolidation of NHS patient safety organisations

No doubt the final Dash report on the CQC will also find that the NHS health regulatory, governance framework, patient safety system is too complex, overlapping, fragmented and ripe for reform. This...

Is patient safety in the NHS fundamentally broken?

‘I'm extremely anxious about maternity services. And what frightens me is the issues we've seen raised in relation to Nottingham and Kent – I think [they] are a risk factor right across the NHS, and...

A professional and legal duty to keep up to date

It will be impossible for any nurse or doctor to analyse everything that is relevant to their clinical practice area. They do, however, owe patients a legal duty of care and part of this will be the...

Manifestos for a safer NHS

A fundamental question I also ask when considering election manifestos is how much control governments have over NHS patient safety culture development. Governments come and go, as do patient safety...

Global progress and Never Events

The progress report from WHO offers important insights into strategies adopted, trends, issues, challenges, opportunities and so on. This will be a key resource for all stakeholders in patient safety...