NHS doctors ‘should be more adept at apologising’

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has issued guidance to the NHS about the appropriate criteria for apologising to patients when something goes wrong.

According to the NPSA, NHS doctors have been cautious about apologising in the past due to any legal issues that may subsequently arise.

However, Martin Fletcher, head of the NPSA, is quoted by the Telegraph as saying: “Apologising after an incident has happened must not be about blaming others for errors […] it would only drive the issue underground and we would never get to the heart of the problem.”

In other NHS news, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled out the possibility of supplying the liver drug nexavar to patients using the health service this week.

NICE stated that this is because the treatment, which was developed by the pharmaceutical firm Bayer, is too expensive, at a cost of £3,000 per person each month.