RCEM calculates 268 people are likely to have died each week in 2023 while waiting up to 12 hours for a bed

Almost 14,000 people died needlessly last year in England while waiting in A&E for up to 12 hours for a hospital bed, a new estimate suggests.

Calculations by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) based on a large study of excess deaths and waiting times show that 268 people are likely to have died each week in 2023 because of excessive waits in emergency departments.

Christopher Sidle was refused crisis admission to hospital despite warnings and died after self-harming

A series of failings by a troubled NHS mental health trust contributed to the death of a former government climate change adviser, a coroner has found.

Christopher Sidle, 51, who had a history of psychosis, fatally self-harmed on 1 July last year during a psychotic episode two days after being refused a crisis admission by Norfolk and Suffolk foundation trust (NSFT) despite warnings from his family and a trust psychiatrist, Norfolk coroner’s court heard.

Exclusive: Rob Behrens says ministers and health leaders are doing too little to end ‘cover-up culture’ in England

• NHS ombudsman Rob Behrens: ‘There are serious issues of concern’

Hospitals are cynically burying evidence about poor care in a “cover-up culture” that leads to avoidable deaths, and families being denied the truth about their loved ones, the NHS ombudsman has warned.

Ministers, NHS leaders and hospital boards are doing too little to end the health service’s deeply ingrained “cover-up culture” and victimisation of staff who turn whistleblower, he added.

Avoidable deaths are too common, especially in maternity care, mental health and cases of sepsis (blood poisoning).

The NHS sometimes does “dreadful” and “cynical” things in obstructing families’ pursuit of the full facts about a death, including lying and concealing evidence.

The service’s legal “duty of candour” was not forcing hospitals to be open when things went wrong.

Readers respond to Nell Frizzell’s article on pop music being played as she waited for a medical appointment

If you think listening to Carly Rae Jepsen in a hospital waiting room is bad ( Sweating with fear, I waited to hear the doctor’s verdict. Then the radio started playing Call Me Maybe …, 13 March ), try being wheeled in for an abortion to the sound of – I kid you not – Barry White. A moment so surreal that I often think I must have imagined it. But I know it happened because it was before they gave me the drugs. Everything went smoothly, as you can imagine.
Name and address supplied

• Eight years ago in Fairbanks, Alaska, I was about to go under to have a cataract removed. I was asked what music I’d like. The Buena Vista Social Club , I replied. Less than 60 seconds later, I drifted off to those warm notes before I had time to be surprised that first, the specialist knew of it, and second, that they had it to hand. I like to think my improved eyesight owes a little to that relaxing music.
Flora Grabowska
Crovie, Aberdeenshire

Only a single hospital in Port-au-Prince remains open, with others devoid of staff as patients look for care and the dead pile up

Haiti’s healthcare system has all but collapsed amid the ferocious gang insurrection which forced the resignation of the country’s prime minister, leaving victims of the violence with little hope of medical attention, according to aid workers in the stricken Caribbean country.

In the past two weeks hospitals have been set ablaze, doctors murdered and the most basic medical supplies have now dried up. Only a single public hospital in Haiti’s capital now remains operational – and that too is expected to shut its doors soon.

Simon Bramhall was a high-flying transplant specialist who risked it all – and lost his career. Why did he do it?

On the morning of 21 August 2013, a patient with acute liver failure was on the urgent transplant list at Queen Elizabeth hospital, Birmingham (QEHB). If a donor couldn’t be found within 72 hours, she would die. But she got lucky. By 7pm the woman – later known in court as Patient A – was anaesthetised and unconscious on the operating table, with a healthy, deep-red donor liver glistening on ice for her nearby.

QEHB had one of the UK’s leading liver units, and Simon Bramhall, the hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) surgeon on call that evening, was one of only about two dozen in the country at the time who specialised in liver transplants. At 49 years old, Bramhall had already performed the operation nearly 400 times. On any given day, there would be at least 10 trainees from around the world working with him, learning from his experience. In a centre of excellence, he was one of the best.

Doctors told to ration liquid form of salbutamol, which plays vital role in treating asthma, emphysema and bronchitis

NHS hospitals have been hit by a UK-wide shortage of a life-saving drug used to keep alive patients who are at risk of dying because they cannot breathe without medical intervention.

Doctors have been told to ration their use of the liquid form of salbutamol , which plays a vital role in treating people suffering from severe asthma attacks or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which usually involves emphysema or chronic bronchitis.

Wean all patients off nebulisers as soon as their condition has stabilised.

Consider no longer using nebuliser liquid for patients experiencing a mild to moderate asthma attack or flare-up of COPD and instead use a salbutamol pressurised metered-dose inhaler (pMDI).

When a patient does need nebuliser liquids, use them “when required rather than regularly”.

Supplies need to be used as far as possible only with “acute, severe exacerbations of COPD and asthma”, people who cannot breathe due to an attack of anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction to eating something – and those who cannot use a pMDI.

Queen’s Medical Centre had 1,800 incidents of aggression, violence and harassment in 2022-23

• ‘We’re an easy target’: an A&E nurse on life on the healthcare frontline

“I’ve seen patients take swings at doctors because they’re not happy with the time it’s taken or the doctor’s diagnosis. I’ve seen fire extinguishers set off and thrown at people, computers lifted and thrown across the emergency department and people run out of cubicles and punch other patients – people they don’t know – for no reason.”

Roger Webb, a security supervisor at the Queen’s Medical Centre hospital in Nottingham, is recalling some of the more unsavoury incidents he has witnessed in the course of his work.

Following a campaign by her family in memory of Martha Mills, the NHS is introducing Martha’s rule giving hospital patients in England access to a rapid review from a separate medical team if they are concerned with the care they are receiving

When Martha Mills fell off her bike on a family holiday in Wales in 2021, she damaged her pancreas and needed treatment in hospital. It was serious, beyond the expertise of the local hospital, so the 13-year-old was transferred to King’s College hospital in London.

The medics at King’s, one of the UK’s leading teaching hospitals, were reassuring. Although the injury was serious, it was treatable and Martha could expect to make a full recovery and be back at school within weeks.