Patient safety reports analysis: post COVID-19

As the Government takes further steps to ease the COVID-19 lockdown there is now more non-COVID-19 patient safety activity going on. A key matter to bear in mind when the new reports are published and the media stories read is the ‘new normal’ in the NHS. This is the new NHS climate of care that now exists after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed. We should now factor into our considerations whether the Government and the NHS now has an appetite, after all that has happened with COVID-19, to embark on major patient safety and health regulatory changes to meet recommendations made in newly published reports. The Government and the NHS have all taken risks to cope with the crisis, such as using retired staff, doctors working in other specialities, students as NHS staff and so on. This all could translate into an NHS and a Government taking a less risk-adverse approach to matters than they were doing before the pandemic. McLellan et al (2020) discussed these issues and the NHS and Government attitudes to patient safety in the Health Service Journal's ‘Health Check’ podcast episode covering the Cumberlege (2020) report.