Safer out of hours primary care

On rare occasions single catastrophic errors rightly lead to a complete review of a healthcare service. One such case is the death of David Gray, who was wrongly injected with 100 mg diamorphine by Daniel Ubani, a doctor based in Germany and providing out of hours primary care in Cambridgeshire. Dr Ubani had never worked in the United Kingdom, did not practise primary care in Germany, and was not familiar with local health care or with diamorphine. Yet he could fly in on Friday evening and work unsupervised on Saturday without routine access to patient notes.

Several investigations have followed,1 2 and the Care Quality Commission’s final report is due shortly. The recommendations so far aim to improve safeguards to ensure the competence of out of hours doctors and strengthen existing quality standards (table⇓). However, we believe that wider changes to out of hours primary care are needed to systematically ensure quality and safety. The medical profession has a duty to lead these changes.