The number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths every year in the UK is more than twice the number of deaths on UK roads. While road safety attracts a huge amount of attention, resources and legislation, perinatal mortality still tends to be regarded as an unhappy fact of life about which little can be done.
But [...]

One of the important features of our baby’s death was something called a sub-aponeurotic haemorrhage. On the face of it, this is a relatively rare complication of vacuum assisted delivery - an invaluable technique in difficult births for delivering babies. As far as the hospital where our baby was born is concerned, this [...]

This is an extract from a report on healthcare professionals’ views about safety in maternity services, published in 2008. The report identifies, along with various staffing and management issues, that learning lessons from mistakes and near-misses is one of the key problems in maternity.
Learning from adverse incidents is one of the key components of [...]

Coroners are local independent judicial officers, appointed and paid for by the local authorities, who are responsible for investigating violent, unnatural deaths or sudden deaths of unknown cause and deaths in custody that are reported to them. It is in the general interests of the community that these deaths should be investigated and the role [...]

A Serious Untoward Incident (SUI) is the term used in the NHS where loss of life or serious injury has been unexpectedly sustained during care. It kicks off an investigation into what occurred, with the emphasis on learning from mistakes, rather than on apportioning blame. The SUI process is probably your best chance [...]

At the end of October 2008, the Commons Health Select Committee was informed that between 90 and 95 % of preventable deaths in the NHS go unreported.
Howard Stoate, a practising GP and Labour MP for Dartford, said the National Patient Safety Agency’s own estimates suggest there are 72,000 preventable deaths in the NHS each year. [...]