On this week’s podcast, we discuss the knock-on impact covid has had on staffing and services, after medical consultants at a major acute trust warned its leadership that specialist staff shortages are causing services to become unsafe.

Also, Greater Manchester’s coroner’s office has opened an unusually high number of inquests into patient deaths — higher than all the other coroners in Yorkshire, Humber and the North East combined.

Should this raise concerns that hundreds of other deaths around the region are not being properly investigated? We discuss the coronial system and the legacy of Harold Shipman in Greater Manchester and beyond.