Everyone knows what’s happened at Stafford DGH in the past. It was a terrible tragedy.

However many of the people of Stafford and surrounding areas feel that they will be unfairly penalised (and even risk further loss of life) by the proposed downgrade and movement of essential services such as A+E, maternity and ICU.

If you have time, please visit http://www.supportstaffordhospital.co.uk where you will find petitions, letter templates, posters etc

There is also a march on the 20th April in the town where hopefully around 40,000 people will be attending.

I’m sure not everyone will agree with the protest, but if you are a local and can give your support, please do. Maybe the bigwigs and MPs might finally listen for a change.

Thanks (and no I don’t work there, just live locally and a concerned parent)

It would be awful if we lost the hospital. The care I got was spot on, same for my friends and family.

Indeed.

What’s ridiculous about the current political rhetoric is how MidStaffs is being used as a stick to beat the NHS and justify the current reforms… without in any way explaining how the reforms will improve matters in areas like elderly care (hiving off profitable elective activity will do nothing for the frail patients currently ‘bed-blocking’ major hospitals). Indeed, judging by the current overload in acute care, they stand a good chance of making things much worse.

Some things go wrong because negligent staff don’t/won’t do their jobs properly… but far more goes wrong because there ain’t enough boots on the ground. And although there are good reasons for consolidating acute care in a smaller number of larger centres, that doesn’t really reflect the extent to which services are now being cut.

Interesting times. 😕

How is downgrading a Hospitals A&E going to improve care? It will only put the burden onto another HospitalsA&eand stretch the staff there. Maybe cutting the big boss salaries and employing more doctors andNurses, health care assistants etc instead of paying 100,000 salary to somwsomeone who has done a business degree and think he/she knows best when it comes to quality of care.

The amount of waste in the NHS is shocking.
I know of a chap who needs a £5,000 operation but the NHS can’t afford to pay for it.
They can afford though to pay over £20,000 (and rising) to relieve his pain on a regular basis, which the operation would alleviate. 🙄

Don’t get me started on their taxpayer funded staff parties… 👿

Good call OP.
My lad had four ops there, & the Staff were spot on.
Even in a busy A+E in Friday night.

Some things go wrong because negligent staff don’t/won’t do their jobs properly… but far more goes wrong because there ain’t enough boots on the ground. And although there are good reasons for consolidating acute care in a smaller number of larger centres, that doesn’t really reflect the extent to which services are now being cut.

Large companies close whole factories down for less yet those who allowed those poor people they where paid to care for and feed and clean kept their jobs.

You could always move closer to a better performing hospital if youre worried about care, or even complain, but complaining fell on deaf and blind ears and eyes and resulted in needless deaths and suffering.

My Dad was in there at the height of their problems with terminal cancer and they were fantastic with him, even in his last days over the road in the hospice in the grounds they were perfect.
When I heard the news I couldn’t believe that this was the same hosptial that looked after him so well.

You should be able to choose which hospital you want treating at when you get referred by your gp. I am registered at a Bolton gp and I’m under Royal Preston for my knee and a Colorectal surgeon. I’m under Salford Royal for 6 monthly checks of my adrenal glands. Preston have been brilliant for my knee and have got me sorted just waiting for results of a scan. Royal Blackburn A&E however did not inspire me didn’t do the proper diagnostic tests on my knee.

Don’t get me started on their taxpayer funded staff parties…

Wait, we get taxpayer funded staff parties? 😯

In my fourteen years in the NHS I have never known this happen. Although I confess I had a cheap-as-chips finger buffet on my induction day at a 1500 bedded district general hospital at the height of nu-labour’s funding bonanza: however I worked for the same trust four years later and you brought your own lunch so someone obviously recognised that wanton jizzing of publc funds and put a stop to it. Nowadays, if we want to make like a proper business and hold any sort of team-building day, the staff who go to it club together and fund it. I hope that makes you feel better.

I know of a chap who needs a £5,000 operation but the NHS can’t afford to pay for it.
They can afford though to pay over £20,000 (and rising) to relieve his pain on a regular basis, which the operation would alleviate.

Internal and increasingly expernal marketisation of hospitals and healthcare, innit. Resource and targets-led ‘decisions’ made Stafford what it is, and are quite possibly at the root of this poor chap’s ridiculous situation too.

Large companies close whole factories down for less yet those who allowed those poor people they where paid to care for and feed and clean kept their jobs.
You could always move closer to a better performing hospital if youre worried about care, or even complain, but complaining fell on deaf and blind ears and eyes and resulted in needless deaths and suffering.

So because of the careless and feckless actions of the few (ie a minority of doctors and nurses and a bunch of greedy, target driven, cash chasing management) the majority has to suffer – again.

And how would moving help? I’m pretty certain Stoke, Wolverhampton, Burton or Walsall staff and A+E departments are already over stretched and an influx of more patients won’t help.

Also – there’s supposed to be another 1000 troops coming into Stafford in 2015. How the hell are we going to cope with that?

My son was born there 6 years ago and my daughter was born in Stoke hospital 10 years ago.

Where would I rather be? Stafford any day!

It was clean, the staff were friendly and it was a wonderful experience. Stoke felt like we were in a third world country.

But the best bit about the Maternity Unit at Stafford was the woman that ran it. My wife had to go to theatre and whilst I was waiting a lady who I assumed was a cleaner (she was walking around and tidying) came in to ask if I was okay. She didn’t have a hospital uniform on and as we chatted I explained how good I thought the staff and hospital in general was.

She then explained that she ran the Maternity Unit and had done for the past 10+ years.

To top that off she then went and organised a breakfast for me complete with a paper whilst I waited!

My wife’s face when she came back was a picture!!!

Thems the problems with the NHS, staff are always most excellent, it’s the management that always fail to deliver.

Good luck with your cause.

mulv1976 – Member

Large companies close whole factories down for less yet those who allowed those poor people they where paid to care for and feed and clean kept their jobs.
You could always move closer to a better performing hospital if youre worried about care, or even complain, but complaining fell on deaf and blind ears and eyes and resulted in needless deaths and suffering.

So because of the careless and feckless actions of the few (ie a minority of doctors and nurses and a bunch of greedy, target driven, cash chasing management) the majority has to suffer – again.

And how would moving help? I’m pretty certain Stoke, Wolverhampton, Burton or Walsall staff and A+E departments are already over stretched and an influx of more patients won’t help.

Also – there’s supposed to be another 1000 troops coming into Stafford in 2015. How the hell are we going to cope with that?

Like i said complain and just get ignored, plans in the nhs are made years before, probably staford is lined up for privatisation, as it failed in its duty and will easily be sold of or handed over with the help of the media, there is no profit to be made on a and e services as you dont know the outcome till you start treatment, and then who is going to pay an expanded bill for treatment .
So close a nd e transfer services elsewhere, get rid of all the time waster patients at a nd e and farm them out to drop in centres etc already happening around the uk.

and the way the armed forces are being culled it will 100 unemployed troops in the next few years.

I too have been missing out of these taxpayer funded staff parties.

Details please sbob so I can complain to my managers.

I assume you are a fellow NHS employee given that you know the costs of treatments.

dangerousbeans – Member

I too have been missing out of these taxpayer funded staff parties.

Details please sbob so I can complain to my managers.

I can’t give details for obvious reasons, but suffice to say there are a few people who are in for a lot of trouble.

I assume you are a fellow NHS employee given that you know the costs of treatments.

Nope, they were the figures quoted to the person I know who is in need of an op.

My friend is a thorassic physiotherapist in West Cumbria. She is putting herself through her Masters on her own finances because the NHS employer wont pay, yet she still needs to keep her skills current. She does this from her own pocket because she knows her job needs her skills.

The Nhs is not a fekkin business! It will never make a profit because its not supposed to!
Why have sucessive govts treated it as such!
Edit- signed btw.

I can’t give details for obvious reasons, but suffice to say there are a few people who are in for a lot of trouble.

Phew, for a minute there I thought you were suggesting that this happened in other hospitals besides Stafford.

What is likely to emerge as time goes on is that there will have been large parts of Stafford that functioned excellently, as witnessed by the experiences of other posters on this thread. However to use general medicine or geriatric care as an example, there are at least two issues which can rapidly destabilise care outcomes and basically increease deaths. 🙁

One is the the notion of “heads in beds”: during those terrible times many hospitals had poor methods for measuring ‘patient weightings’: not how fat they were, but how there was often little distinction between a general medical patient in their 30’s who could take themselves to the loo and feed themselves, compared to one on their 80’s who was suffering from the same complaint/illness, on the same ward, but needed large amounts of personal care. Feeding was IME one of the last issues to be properly looked at: I lost count of the times in the early noughties that I moved patients around bays purely so that I could sit between two of them and feed them both at the same time, before chasing the lunch trolley to the other end of the ward to repeat the exercise for another 2 old dears before their mash and gravy went cold. On a ward with five or six staff and 35-40 patients, if you put any more than ten or twelve patients in who can’t feed themselves (old people invariably also need the loo as soon as mealtimes start!) you are garaunteed to end up with some eating cold or missing their dinner. You try telling a bed manager that though!

The other is the impact of nursing numbers: staffing is the largest cost in hospital care, and the less dependent a clinical outcome is on the quality of surgery, effective use of chemotherapy or other expensive interventions, the more it hinges on the numbers and quality of nursing and medical staff. But you try explaining that to an accountant who sees one 35 bedded ward of relatively healthy surgical patients as no different from (and requiring no more nursing staff than) a 35 bedded ward of stroke, “collapse query cause” or bipapped copd patients.

These last three are the patients with no voice, some of the least likely to complain and the easiest to blame their death on age and frailty rather than poor care: it is no wonder that the targets-led incentives and sanctions of the last three governments led to managers ignoring their staff’s concerns in fear of their budgets and jobs.

http://www.monitor-nhsft.gov.uk/home/news-events-publications/latest-press-releases/monitor-announces-appointment-trust-special-admi

Seems as if those with some clout are actually starting to use their powers.

Its going to be a tough time for those caring staff, and time for redundancy for those who failed repeatedly, and still kept thier jobs.

and time for redundancy for those who failed repeatedly, and still kept thier jobs.

In the case of the senior management – probably with a large pay off.

Truly sickening. Apparently much of the A+E staff were in tears the other night not knowing what the future brings…

i ve seen the inside of too many hospitals and frankly it was 14 years ago when i woke up to the fact that not all nurses are angels and 8 yrs ago that dr’s avoid the truth/ facts.

in recent years i ve recieved outstanding nursing care from about 3 staff ( all of non anglo saxon origin) passable from the majority and downright negligent from about half a dozen ( all of anglo saxon origin)

ive witnessed the same patient recive the most fantastic humane care and the worst abuse and neglect that i thought was the preserve of dogs requiring rescue..

the single crime is that NON of these peopel taking a damned good wage and abusing our most vulnerable are ever held to account let alone criminally held responsible .. that is the shame that the nhs must carry .. it cares more for its employees than its patients well being…

Totalshell must be talking about a different NHS to what I’ve experienced and worked for the last 24 years.

It saved me aged 4 when I fell fracturing my skull, it saved me when I was 18 removing a bone tumour, it’s patched me up many times. It saved my Dad 3 years ago and keeps him going and gave my Bro. a new liver last year. All of which have been excellent care from all involved.

the single crime is that NON of these peopel taking a damned good wage and abusing our most vulnerable are ever held to account let alone criminally held responsible

As for that, well that’s utter tosh having had to deal with the unpleasant side of someone letting a patient down.

Drac what about all the people who died at Stafford, all the patients shipman killed, only shipman got caught eventually, a lot of the stafordshire lot who abused patients,failed in their duty of care, didnt report concerns,and those who ignored thosew concerns are still probably in the system, very few got chucked out and non got prosecuted.

Yes it must be a seperate utopian NHS some of us live in,i will always supprt the nhs,when they do a good job, and the job they get paid for, failures should be drumbed out or retrained in care and support roles.

Just imagine if one supermarket store killed or allowed such conditions as happened at stafford.

Sadly stafford wont be the last, but the first to be caught out,and from that the management and governmnet must learn,also patients must feel able to complain and get results not ignored by pension siting management.

There are numerous threads started on here about bike shops and tradesmen, who sometimes fail yet with a hospital service you have very little chance of alternative services unless you want to travel long distances, something a lot of patients cant do.

Yes I can’t deny and as you’ll see I acknowledge there’s those that fail but your claiming it’s the whole of the NHS. It’s very far from that in reality, it’s terrible and true shame that even one happens but when you see how many people it deals with daily it’s unfortunate at times things will go wrong.

I cant ever remember reading of a hotel not providing food, not providing clean bed clothes, not helping people to get about,where management failed to take action, and still claimed their wages, etc, and some hotel chains are as big as hospitals.The hospital i used to work at when they decided to privatise laundry,catering cleaning they called it hotel services.

Its also not the whole of the NHS, its just parts, and those responsible need to be eradicated.

Its also not the whole of the NHS, its just parts, and those responsible need to be eradicated.

I agree.

i m afraid Drac that you are part of the contributory negligence.. to say you ve worked for years in the nhs and not witnessed poor care neglect abuse is frankly unbelievable..

people in stafford were reduced to drinking from flower vases…

i ve personally witnessed an elderly former MP paraded up and down the ward in soiled pyjamas and mocked by staff. ive seen drs and nursing staff deliberately ignore a blind deaf patient who was in great pain in his final hours

i ve seen staff take there breaks at the front door with patients and share cigarettes..

i ve been on wards with 24 medical staff working between 9-5 and the same ward had 3 medical staff at night.. i ve seen patients die at night as staff treated another cardiac event

i ve had a specific nurse instructed to remove a surgical appliance who deliberately and consistantly ignored my request to do so through out her shift and then for a jnr dr to have to remove it surgically once she had gone home..

i ve spent about 4/5 months in hospital in the last 15 years in pretty big lumps undoubtedly my life has been saved/ preserved by staff in that time but let me be clear.. hospitals can be dangerous places.

i m afraid Drac that you are part of the contributory negligence.. to say you ve worked for years in the nhs and not witnessed poor care neglect abuse is frankly unbelievable.

I’m afraid I’m not. I’ve dealt with issue when I’ve seen them, they were resolved in different ways. I’ve never seen any form of abuse it must be said.

I take it you did the same?

There are a number of people who still feel that their issues with that hospital have not been addressed. The place will not be able to move on until they have had there questions answered and those responsible made to answer. Whoever they are and what position they are in now. Remember it can be tough being one of those seen to be denigrating the NHS when all you are asking for is that your complaint about one hospital is taken seriously .