News archive

  • Dear NHS, Happy 75 Birthday

    July 5, 2023 | Blog | Latest

    We at AvMA write to wish you a happy birthday. Well done for making it to this grand age; what an achievement. We doubt that many alive in 1948, the year of your birth, will have believed for one moment that you would have survived so many ups and downs, funding squeezes and political interferences (not all helpful), and made it to 75. 

  • Broken trust: making patient safety more than just a promise.

    June 29, 2023 | Latest

    AvMA welcomes and endorses the recommendations made today by England’s Health Ombudsman in their report, ‘Broken trust: making patient safety more than just a promise’.

  • What price justice?

    June 8, 2023 | Blog

    As a country, we pride ourselves in having an underpinning rule of law that supports our famously unwritten constitution. The rule of law is the concept of a framework and set of practices and institutions that underpins a fair society where public bodies are bound by accountable pre-existing, clear and known laws, and we, as citizens, are in-turn treated equally before those laws.

    But I wonder how well the rule of law really holds water when we look at it through the lens of the harmed patients who have the need financially – alongside the right morally – to litigate for the clinical negligence and related harm that they encountered.

  • Black maternal mortality disparities: 50 years on and we are still “counting” 

    April 24, 2023 | Blog

    I turned to the Annex of the Report, which sets out a comprehensive timeline on maternal health disparities. This shows that from as early as 1970-72, information about mothers’ countries of birth was included in the National systems into Maternal Deaths and that it was known that mothers born in what was then called the ‘New Commonwealth’ showed much higher mortality rates than mothers born in the UK. So, to be clear, this issue was first known about 50 years ago. And yet here we still are talking about strategies and plans to rectify this health inequality. So, what else is going on here?

  • Optimism was in the wind at the AvMA Conference in Bournemouth

    March 29, 2023 | Blog

    I opened the Conference by talking about some the challenges – as well as the opportunities – that I see across the patient safety and access to justice terrain. I talked about the real challenges and pressures the NHS is under, which are unprecedented in modern times. Combined with evidence that suggests that health inequalities are worsening post-COVID, it is hard to see how the drive for incremental patient safety improvements can hold. But I also pointed to the opportunities. I have been really encouraged and impressed by the people and organisations I have met who are so determined and passionate about continuing to drive positive change and better patient safety outcomes.  

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