As specialist solicitors in high value cerebral palsy claims, our aim is to secure compensation which will meet our severely disabled clients’ needs throughout their lives. Most of our clients with cerebral palsy or neurological disability from...
Former healthcare watchdog, HSIB, has now handed over its patient safety investigations programmes to HSSIB and MNSI. HSIB’s transformation to HSSIB finally took effect on 1st October 2023. This means that HSIB’s national investigations...
England’s healthcare safety watchdog, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), has published its maternity investigations programme’s 2022/23 annual review. The report highlights HSIB’s recent work to identify and alert the...
The NHS’s defence organisation, NHS Resolution, have published their annual report and accounts for the year 2022 to 2023. NHS Resolution’s annual round up sets out the financial cost of harm from medical negligence looking back over the last...
A review by the NHS Race and Health Observatory has found that babies of Black, Asian and ethnic minority ethnicity have a higher risk of delayed diagnosis of serious neonatal conditions which are diagnosed by assessment of skin colour. The...
A report by The King’s Fund has highlighted the need for better support for unpaid carers. The report, Caring in a Complex World , says that each year in England, unpaid family carers provide the equivalent of 4 million paid care workers or 7.9...
Less than two months since the government announced a six-month delay in MNSI’s takeover of Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch’s (HSIB) Maternity Investigation Programme, health ministers have now said that HSIB’s maternity...
Healthcare watchdog, HSIB, has reviewed over 200 recommendations made in its maternity programme investigations to identify how risk assessment affects safety in maternity care during pregnancy, labour and birth. HSIB’s findings are published in...
Read our latest article "HSIB's patient safety investigations are now handled by HSSIB and MNSI". The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has announced that HSIB’s imminent handover of its maternity and healthcare safety...
The NHS’s defence organisation, NHS Resolution, has published its latest report on the Early Notification (EN) Scheme . The second report: The evolution of the Early Notification Scheme promotes NHS Resolution’s efforts to reduce the length...
Healthcare safety watchdog, HSIB, has reported on a year of maternity safety incident investigations. The report, HSIB maternity investigation programme year in review 2021/22, looks back at HSIB’s investigations into the deaths of mothers, and the ...
The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has published its report on the Re:Birth Project which asked women and birthing people, their families and maternity professionals about the type of language that should be used in conversations and clinical records during...
The NHS’s defence organisation, NHS Resolution, has published its strategic plan for the next three years, ‘ Advise, Resolve and Learn ’. For the first time, maternity is at the top of the to do list as a stand-alone strategic...
This Action for Brain Injury Week, charities, campaigners and other supporters of people with acquired brain injury (ABI) are raising awareness of the hidden challenges that come with the condition, and inviting us to #SeeTheHiddenMe. It is well known for...
The final report of the Ockenden Maternity Review has found that Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust ‘failed to investigate, failed to learn and failed to improve and therefore often failed to safeguard mothers and their babies at one of the...
UPDATE - You can now read about HSIB's full report here. HSIB have launched an investigation into the way that ethnicity affects the detection of neonatal jaundice. The healthcare watchdog will explore the safety issues associated with delayed...
Healthcare watchdog, HSIB, have published their latest national investigation report, Emergency neonatal blood transfusion at birth following acute blood loss during labour and/or delivery . The national investigation was launched following...
NHS maternity services in England must stop limiting the number of caesarean sections they perform to meet ‘unsafe’ targets. According to media sources, including The Guardian newspaper and the BBC, a letter from NHS maternity chiefs has asked...
Healthcare watchdog, HSIB, has published its latest national investigation report, Maternity pre-arrival instructions by 999 call handlers . The national investigation followed an HSIB maternity investigation into the telephone advice given by a...
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid, has told Parliament that the government plans to set up a Special Health Authority to continue the work of the HSIB’s maternity investigation programme. The announcement appears to...
Maternity charity, Baby Lifeline’s report, Mind the Gap 2021: An Investigation into Maternity Training for Frontline Professionals Across the UK (2020/21), says gaps in maternity training in NHS hospitals are putting mothers and babies at risk. The...
In July 2021 the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee’s report into the safety of maternity services in England condemned the rate of improvement in NHS maternity care as too slow. Amongst its findings, the Committee, chaired by former...
Healthcare watchdog, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (also known as HSIB), has published its 2020/21 maternity programme review. The report looks back on the work that HSIB has carried out to investigate patient safety incidents arising from NHS...
Healthcare watchdog, HSIB, has published its latest national learning report into maternity safety, focussing on the suitability of continuous fetal heart rate monitoring equipment used in pregnancy and labour. HSIB’s report , Suitability of equipment...
A report by the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into maternity services in England, chaired by Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt , has condemned the rate of improvement in NHS maternity care as too slow. The committee’s conclusions are based...
In 2019 the National Institute of Health Research funded a trial to look at whether a regular test for group B strep (GBS) infection would improve the prevention of early onset group B streptococcal infections in babies. The trial was to be held across...
Each Baby Counts ( EBC ), the RCOG’s maternity improvement programme which hoped to halve the number of term babies who die or suffer brain injury during birth, has published its final report. The Each Baby Counts 2020 Final Progress...
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) has published its latest national learning report into maternity safety: Severe brain injury, early neonatal death and intrapartum stillbirth associated with larger babies and shoulder dystocia. ...
The Ockenden Review of Maternity Services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust has called for ‘immediate and essential’ action across maternity services in England to improve maternity safety. What is the Ockenden Review? The Ockenden...
The law relating to the amount of compensation that a severely injured person can claim for the extra cost of buying a home suitable for their disability has changed. The Court of Appeal has ruled that claimants whose injuries leave them with special...
NHS Resolution, the organisation which defends the NHS against clinical negligence claims, has published its annual report for 2019 to 2020. The report contains the usual headline-grabbing figures for compensation paid to patients injured by negligent care,...
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch’s (HSIB) latest national learning report has highlighted the need for better care to avoid harm to newborn babies from unsafe skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth. The report follows HSIB’s...
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch or HSIB have published a national learning report from their investigations of maternity and neonatal errors in GBS (group B strep) care resulting in serious birth and neonatal injury to babies. The national...
Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee has launched a new inquiry into the safety of maternity services in England. The announcement and ‘call for evidence’ follows a call by former Health Secretary , Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP,...
This week, the families of babies who died or suffered brain injury as a result of negligent maternity care at two maternity units run by East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust begin sharing their experiences with the panel of investigators...
We hear a lot about the importance of good hydration. People who are interested in health or fitness make sure that they are drinking plenty of water. In childbirth, excess water consumption can leave the bloodstream dangerously short of sodium (salt). This...
Parents who are trying to come to terms with a newborn baby’s brain injury often feel frustrated at the lack of clear information. They know that something serious happened at birth. They may even have been contacted by NHS Resolution , the NHS...
One in four births in the UK takes place by caesarean section. That means that 25% of mothers either need or want to have their baby by surgical operation. Some of these will try to give birth vaginally but find that concerns about their own or the...
Contractions of the mother’s uterus (womb) are a natural part of childbirth. Successful labour and vaginal delivery depend on the mother’s uterine contractions opening (dilating) the cervix and pushing the baby down into the birth canal. ...
According to the NHS , twin and multiple pregnancies are becoming more common. Today, 1 in 65 births in the UK are twins or multiple babies, compared with 1 in 100 in 1984. Twin pregnancies carry greater risks for the mother and baby than...
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) have published new guidelines setting out recommended minimum standards of safe antenatal and postnatal care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new guidelines...
When a pregnant woman is advised to have a vaginal delivery after her previous child was born by caesarean section, she must be properly advised and her labour carefully managed to reduce her risk of uterine rupture. The Royal College of Obstetricians...
Each Baby Counts, the maternity care improvement programme run by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) which aims to reduce the number of stillbirths, neonatal deaths and babies who are brain-damaged at birth, has published its latest...
HSIB has published its long-awaited first national learning report into maternity safety since taking over responsibility for investigating incidents of brain damage, stillbirth and neonatal injury to babies, and maternal deaths, in April 2018. The report...
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has recently told NHS maternity services in England to improve faster ‘to ensure that women and babies get consistently good, safe care’. In its March 2020 report, ‘ Getting safer faster: key areas...
We are all familiar with everyday vitamins, such as vitamins A, B, C, D and E, but how much do you know about vitamin K? Most adults who are eating a healthy diet will never need extra vitamin K because their bodies produce enough of it naturally. For...
Former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has called for an independent enquiry into maternity safety in the NHS. According to The Independent , he is calling for a probe into why poor care and cover-ups are being repeated at different hospitals to find out...
Susan Brown has dedicated her specialist legal career spanning over 25 years to helping brain-injured and severely disabled children and their families rebuild their lives after negligently caused birth and neonatal injury. Nationally acclaimed and...
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), a professional body of specialist lawyers who act for people harmed as a result of negligence, has called for NHS Resolution to tell them what they are advising parents of babies who have been brain-injured...
Over the years, I have helped hundreds of families whose lives have been shattered by their baby suffering a brain injury at birth. With experience, I have learned to recognise mistakes in maternity care, and the types of injury that are caused by many...
