The health watchdog visited the ward, at the Newsam Centre near Seacroft Hospital, as part of a series of 150 unannounced inspections into hospitals and care homes for people with learning disabilities. It found at the Leeds ward that action had not been taken promptly after allegations of bullying and there were no records of any measures taken to safeguard vulnerable patients; so it concluded that patients were not being adequately protected.

The CQC also said it had added concerns over the fact that patients and their relatives did not appear to be involved in their own care planning. The Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Newsam Centre, said it took the issue of safeguarding very seriously and that, since the report was released, it had been altered to ensure that there were no further delays in the process. It had also taken steps to make sure that service users and their families were involved in planning.

The statement, perhaps naturally, does not explain how the abuse was allowed to happen in the first place. This is a topic of great concern and positive action to stop it happening on any level, in any care setting, is greatly needed.

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A RCN survey of 1,700 nurses found that staff shortages were affecting wards for the elderly in particular and that it has led to patients failing to receive help in eating and walking. The survey showed that 78% of those questioned said that they did not spend time comforting or talking to patients, while 59% claimed that they did not give patients help with their mobility.

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the RCN, said the figures highlighted the need for a guaranteed minimum number of nurses on wards. He said that patients on elderly wards were being let down by systemic failings as “safe staffing levels and mandatory patient-to-staff ratios are fundamental safeguards to provide quality patient care”.

However, his claims are not receiving unanimous support. Jo Webber of the NHS Confederation said that it was simplistic to suggest that we need more nurses everywhere, while Dean Royles, director of NHS Employers, said that mandatory staffing cannot guarantee safe care. Paul Burstow, the care services minister said that the ratio of nurses to beds was improving. Which side of the argument are you on? Staffing levels can’t guarantee good care, but they can surely help. Are you with the RCN on this or not?

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The man, who has not been named, was left on the trolley for 20 hours while there was a wait for him to be transferred to Belfast City Hospital but he died before being taken. His widow said that there had been “no dignity” in the way he had been treated.

She also said that the A&E department where he was left waiting was in an awful state with trolleys everywhere and there were some patients who had plates of food on their chests but were unable to feed themselves.

The Belfast Trust’s medical director denied that the man had died alone after being neglected by hospital staff, but did say there would be a full and thorough investigation into the incident. The man should have been checked every half an hour and one of the investigation’s tasks would be to determine whether or not those checks took place. Was this an unavoidable consequence of bed shortages, staff shortages or a definite case of negligence? What do you think?

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Lord Beecham, in the House, claimed that another peer, Lord Wigley, had used a figure of 10% of NHS patients every year who suffered from clinical negligence, while the figure of 10% was also used by Professor Richard Thomson, in 2008, when addressing the Health Select Committee. In that instance he said that around one in ten experienced some form of harm, associated more with medical management than with underlying disease processes.

This is however a little vague as compared to the test outlined by the NHS Litigation Authority which says that a doctor must have acted in a way which falls short of acceptable professional standards, while their actions must be shown on the balance of probabilities to be directly linked to the harm suffered.

That test, coming as it does from the organisation which handles negligence cases for the NHS, would appear to be an authoritative one. Do you follow that definition or do you have another, more suitable one? We d like to hear from you.

Miss Henderson had gone into Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London for an operation to remove her gallbladder and when she woke up after sedation everything appeared normal. However, just four days later, she was dead and a coroner later found that she had died from multiple organ failure resulting from intra-surgical complications .

It emerged that the surgeon who had performed the operation had severed key blood vessels and also staff at the hospital had not passed on important blood tests which may have enabled her to have had life-saving surgery quicker.

The coroner also criticised the high turnover of medical staff during Miss Henderson s time in hospital, which was a direct result of the European Union s working time directive, which restricts a doctor s hours but also, as in this case, meant that the patient did not receive the continuous care that used to be the case.

One can only feel incredible sympathy for Miss Henderson s family who are suing the NHS trust for medical negligence. The coroner s comments on the working time directive and the impact that is having on patient care are especially interesting? On that or any other issues relating to medical negligence we d love to hear from you.

Stanley Tilston, aged 79, who was suffering from dementia, fell out of the window of his bedroom at Plas Rhosnesi care home in June 2008 and died in hospital a short time later. He had broken the window s chain restrictor on previous occasions and had told staff and family that he wanted to leave. However, despite this, staff had failed to move him to a ground floor room.

The HSE, in an investigation, found that the company had not held a risk assessment on the possibility of residents falling from windows and had not reviewed its window restrictor policy.

Care Homes Wrexham Ltd, the company which owned the home, pleaded guilty to a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined 66,000 and ordered to pay costs of 43,287.

The HSE said that injury and death caused in this way was too common in the nursing and care home sector and that staff needed suitable training to recognise the hazard.

The report, Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), which comes from the Public Accounts Committee, says that the figure, which is about a seventh of the health service s whole annual budget, is at least partly due to the compensation culture, fuelled by no win, no fee lawyers, and it blames the Treasury for not reacting to this new trend and having no plans on how to scale back the costs. It is estimated that about a third of the compensation paid out ends up being paid to lawyers.

The NHS received over 8,500 medical negligence claims last year, up by a third on 2009/10 and the bill is a calculation based on the number of claims the NHS thinks that it won t be able to successfully defend, so it is possible that the 15.7bn figure actually underestimates the true picture.

The Department of Health responded to the report by saying that whilst the vast majority of patients receive good quality care, it is only right that those who don t should receive the compensation they are entitled to and added that the government s proposals for reforming the civil litigation system would support the NHS in settling claims.

So, are no win, no fee layers partly to blame? No doubt those who text or cold-call asking if an individual has had an accident in the last five years are helping to fuel, what is referred to as this country s compensation culture , but it is unfair to pass that blame onto the many reputable law firms which don t resort to such underhand tactics. What do you think? It would be good to hear from you.

Puvaneswary Markandoo was said to be behind failings at Guy’s Hospital in London which led to the deaths of two notable women; Observer journalist Ruth Picardie and Beth Wagstaff, a woman who co-founded a trust in honour of Picardie, but who also died from breast cancer two years later.

The General Medical Council (GMC) heard that there had been 30 complaints about Markandoo during her time at Barnsley Hospital and the local NHS trust had paid out almost £700,000 in compensation to women who had been left with scarring and infections as a result of the surgeon’s breast surgery.

She was employed at Guy’s before her time in South Yorkshire and lawyers for Picardie and Wagstaff successfully sued the local NHS trust for medical negligence, though the surgeon left before the case was settled. The GMC panel, in striking her off the register, said that there had been fundamental failings in basic clinical medicine which were irremediable and which made her a danger to patients.