Among the failures, credit is due

Mary Dixon-Woods has harsh words for the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2755).1 An investigation into its maternity services concluded that outcomes would have been better in roughly half of the cases reviewed if minimum standards of care had been achieved. Most of the maternal and neonatal deaths were judged preventable. Bullying, harassment, and unprofessional behaviour by consultants were common and tolerated. These issues had been identified in a 2014 investigation, yet nothing has changed. Dixon-Woods condemns the trust’s decade long failure to tackle these problems as particularly egregious. The failures were cultural and institutional, she says, and solutions must be as well. “Diagnoses are useless unless effective treatment follows—and that requires leadership commitment and sound systems, both of which East Kent lacked.”Another reckoning is coming soon, in the form of the UK covid inquiry. Wang and colleagues say the inquiry should focus on the “infodemic” of both…
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