Vocal Voices

This whole episode of the systematic uncaring neglect of patients in the pursuit of cost-cutting and Foundation Hospital status is horrific. And it wasn't just Stafford, believe me. Redditch Hospital is under investigation, and there will be others out there. Your neighbourhood hospital?

At our local hospital, they have just closed the children's ward because the staffing ratio has fallen to 60% of what it should be. They say they are "recruiting like mad" - but what will be the standard of the new recruits?

But above all, nobody has taken responsibility for what happened at Stafford. The senior management conveniently resigned before the first report came out.

Cameron has said sorry. Miiliband has said sorry. Our politicians think they can say sorry and that's all right then. But sorry just doesn't cut it - we're talking deaths of loved ones at the hands of the British welfare state.

We need prosecutions, not only at the top but further down the strata as well. OK, I have some sympathy for staff on the front line if they were working in impossible conditions, but where deliberate neglect took place .....

I support the brave spokesperson of the Cure the NHS campaign, Julie Bailey, in calling for the resignation of the head of the NHS for starters. In this case, there needs to be retribution.

Don't get me started!

There are calls for NHS managements to come under similar laws as Corporate Manslaughter. This is absolutely the minimum and is correct. They should never, ever, be able to resign prior to any investigations, and if found guilty they should be sacked - no pay off, no pension, no clean CV.

I would apply these rules to many other areas of work as well.

It's hard to avoid the reports but I'm trying not to listen too much as it makes my blood boil.
People have been shouting very loudly for years that things are very much wrong in many, many hospitals.

From direct experience, the biggest problem is not so much budgets as that there has seeped in an uncaring attitude, at all levels, and this must have happened from the top downwards. All companies reflect the attitudes of those at the very top.

It's not every person who works in any hospital, of course it's not, some of them are absolutely fantastic. But at one of those I've had the misfortune to be involved with, it was actually impossible to find anyone who showed any care or concern at all.

Diflower wrote:From direct experience, the biggest problem is not so much budgets as that there has seeped in an uncaring attitude, at all levels, and this must have happened from the top downwards. All companies reflect the attitudes of those at the very top.

It's not every person who works in any hospital, of course it's not, some of them are absolutely fantastic. But at one of those I've had the misfortune to be involved with, it was actually impossible to find anyone who showed any care or concern at all.

I have had both wonderful care at Salisbury and Winchester hospitals and dire care at Nottingham City hospital. My FiL lives in Stafford and he is due to have a hip replacement at some point. We will try very hard to get him down here to us, if not for the operation itself, but for the after care at least. He is on his own now and very sadly I don't trust anyone to give the care they should

Workingman wrote:Don't get me started!

There are calls for NHS managements to come under similar laws as Corporate Manslaughter. This is absolutely the minimum and is correct. They should never, ever, be able to resign prior to any investigations, and if found guilty they should be sacked - no pay off, no pension, no clean CV.

I would apply these rules to many other areas of work as well.

i totally agree WM was saying the same to my DIL
no golden handshakes sack the lot
its one big cover up
the slimeballs

When I saw the Prime Minister speaking in Parliament yesterday, he mentioned the horror
and unacceptablility of patients being in agony because of terrible thirst.

This rang a bell with me, and I thought of the Liverpool Pathway that our Kate has told us about,
where hospitals make financial gains from finishing-off patients?

Could this be the well-concealed real reason for all these deaths ?

I think it probaly is, but no-one dare admit it.

What a state this country has become.

A lot of this comes about, imo, from the political desire to control everything and everybody.
Who is 'Sir' David Nicholson anyway? Is he a doctor? No, so why is he in charge of a hospital?
He is there to make sure national political initiaves are carried out, whether this be box-ticking or the Liverpool 'Care' Pathway.
This is noting to do with patient care and everything to do with political control; it is an inevitable result of a system driven by targets set by people with no knowledge of patient care and a head full of political dogma.
People like Sir David Nicholson are very often not the sharpest knife in the drawer; they are very often not nice people; they are there purely and simply because they will do what they are told by the people who put them there. No matter how stupid their instructions are, they will carry them out.

Cromwell wrote:A lot of this comes about, imo, from the political desire to control everything and everybody.

And the easiest way to do that is to micro-manage, that is the real reason the NATIONAL Health Service was broken up into independent Trusts. At a stroke any notion of the NHS was lost, but we were sold the idea with the mantras of 'choice' and 'local hospitals for local people'.

Nothing was said about losing the benefits of economies of scale for purchasing when groups of hospitals became stand-alone economic units. Nothing was said about the explosion in management positions as each Trust had to have its own team. Nothing about PFI or the true costs. There were no downsides so we al bought in.

What has depressed me most over the years is that the clinicians -doctors, nurses and carers - have not stood up for what they believed in. As one of the biggest employee groups in the whole world they could, and should, have put up an effective opposition to some of the more stupid changes than they have done.

"WE HAVE LESSONS TO LEARN

Kate wrote:"WE HAVE LESSONS TO LEARN

Yes, cover your back and push the blame onto someone else.