“The NHS’s relentless focus on finance and productivity is failing patient safety,” argues patient safety commissioner Henrietta Hughes in an interview for The BMJ today. “The patient’s anecdote is the canary in the coal mine,” she says. “It’s the thing that tells us there’s something going wrong. But too often we hear about patients who have raised concerns being gaslighted, dismissed, and fobbed off.” Hughes, a GP and former medical director at NHS England, became England’s first independent patient safety commissioner in September 2022. The job was created after a Read More