[Closed] how many more have to die at the hands of the NHS?

Because if you put every Dr in the big house for 25 years each time they made a mistake that decreased someones chances of survival rather than increasing it, they'd either all be in jail, or become accountants, and we'd all end up dead (but with very accurate tax returns).

And it's not like plumbing in a boiler, there's not an instruction book with the patient telling them how to fix them.

why does nobody EVER get punished if they did it would soon stop

Because nobody complains loud enough and long enough, its almost seen as negative to complain about poor service in the NHS, yet when you get some dodgy fruit in Lidl, a thread starts, or the local bike shop, car garage, dealership, workmate or manager screws up we get threads.
Lets also remember those that investigate complaints in
the NHS are usually the senior managers responsible for their failings to train and supervise their staff, think stafford hospital, shipman, stoke manderville, jimmy savile (pervert), etc, etc.

Well initially I call troll, but I can't seem to help myself from responding.

I agree with thisisnotaspoon.
I think the idea that the NHS needs to be mistake proof is costing the NHS and all of us dearly. It is a very, very hard job, there are umpteen unpredictable factors, and the hand wavers in this country appear to be killing the NHS.
Before long we will have a system that delivers similar (OR NOT AS GOOD) levels of service as the NHS, but we will each have to pay individually for our services.

So my message to you OP is, shut up, or get involved with developing systems that could help improve things, insead of handing out outrage and blame.

In fact the familiy concerned have said in your own link "We didn't want it to be about blame, we wanted it to result in good learning."

If we start punishing Dr's and Nurses for mistakes or institutional errors, people will leave the NHS and we will be left with a worse srvice.

Given that the NHS has been rated as the best in the world I feel very lucky to be a recipient of its services, and think we should be working to improve it rather than moan about it.

Thisisnotaspoon, lots of jobs dont have a text book answer, but with experience, and training things get done,advice is sought and very occasiionaly something may go wrong, thats when the H and S, police, regulatory bodies and customers step in and ask questions and sometimes prosecute, sometimers resulting in prison sentances or bankruptcy, nhs staff just move somewhere else.

ex nhs employee.

From that article you posted -
" - 37,000 people are estimated to die of sepsis each year in the UK
- From the time sepsis first takes hold, healthcare workers have just hours to deliver the right care"

if as a plumber i make an error fitting a boiler that doesnt but may injure someone i expect to be in court

In my years working in construction I have known plumbers to make a multitude of mistakes, I can't recall any of them ending up in court.

Are you allowed to make "small" mistakes ?

What small mistakes are health care workers allowed to make ?

I know a few doctors, they all work incredibly hard and long hours. As far as I can see there are no hard and fast rules in anything much, least of all medicine. Unless someone is willfully negligent or worse how you can you demand they get prosecuted?

I refer you to a very good post from an earlier thread - move to America, you'll fit right in.

Given that the NHS has been rated as the best in the world I feel very lucky to be a recipient of its services, and think we should be working to improve it rather than moan about it.

This^^ Not that bad practise and accidents should be ignored, but people tend to lock on to the horror stories, like the one that the OP posted ,or people left in corridors and forgotten about, or an ambulance response time that then changes an outcome. Mistakes are made and shit does happen ,yet incredible work is going on every day that will never get a mention.

certainly not a troll i write as a regular user of the nhs, i ve seen the good brilliant and the cack and ugly and frankly i ve been in a cardiac are unit on an night preying that i dont have an issue as the nurse/doctor in charge have already proven thier incompetance to me..

i m staggered that none of these killers are held accountable, not even taken for retraining, suspended never mind criminal proceedings, phone hackings worth tying up the courts for 9 months but levels of incompetance that lead to a healthy lads death are not?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10073202/Incompetent-plumber-blew-up-businessmans-mansion.html

i ve been in a cardiac are unit on an night preying that i dont have an issue as the nurse/doctor in charge have already proven thier incompetance to me..

I'm a Paramedic, and there is always that nagging doubt with certain patients of "what if". Thankfully there are more good news outcomes than bad in emergency medicine. They don't sell as many newspapers though.
All too often the press report on RTC victims being taken to hospital. They never mention the previous hour taken to maintain a life and extricate the casualty from a lump of twisted metal.

i m staggered that none of these killers are held accountable, not even taken for retraining, suspended never mind criminal proceedings, phone hackings worth tying up the courts for 9 months but levels of incompetance that lead to a healthy lads death are not?

1) He had sepsis, I've never heard of it befor the article so won't go read wiki and become and internet expert, but the BBC article says 37,000 die each year from it, there are only 145,000 Dr's in the NHS, so if you want to prosecute each one each time someone dies of sepsis then you'd better plan on moving to another country as the NHS won't have any Dr's left in 5 years.

2) They didn't kill a healthy lad, they failed to cure a very sick one.

FYI My youngest girl nearly died of sepsis, there was a way the Dr's could have seen it coming. My husband wrote to the PCT and pointed out how they could have seen it coming. As far as I know they have plans to incorporate his suggestions.

i m staggered that none of these killers are held accountable

It's annoying to see people attacking the NHS when they are lucky enough to be able to benefit from the best free healthcare in the world. Anywhere else in the world you need to be either extremely wealthy or extremely lucky, otherwise your doctor or hospital really could kill you through sheer incompetence. Friends of mine in Africa will pay a fortune and take massive risks just to get out of Africa for medical treatment.

It's doubly annoying when you have friends and family who are health professionals and you have first-hand knowledge of their dedication and have seen the stress they suffer when things do go wrong for them.

The OP ought to ask the mods to remove or re-write the title to this thread as it offends me and many others, I'm sure.

The Stafford 1200 anyone? Our we all happy with what happened there, are we happy with the persecution of the person that went public?

"It's annoying to see people attacking the NHS when they are lucky enough to be able to benefit from the best free healthcare in the world."

It's good but not the best, it's not luck it's bought and paid for out of our taxes. It can be outstanding but can also be the complete opposite for some, they and their families can be treated better when things go wrong.
It's not a sacred cow never to be criticised, the NHS must open to comment and criticism when things go wrong, that's part of how the service will improve. I'd not like to be without it but I'd like to be better as I'm sure you all would.

Surely the problem here is not that individuals in the NHS are incompetent and making mistakes, it's that the service as a whole is stretched to breaking point.

If so then the answer is not punishing or blaming anyone, but to increase investment in the service.

By its own admission, one in 20 deaths in NHS hospitals are avoidable, and that is very likely to be a conservative estimate given the massive under reporting of adverse events.

What's key is how quickly learning is applied to avoid mistakes being repeated and on that front the NHS scores very badly - it takes decades for best practice to be uniformly adopted by all Trusts - great if you're a patient in one of the better trusts and risky if you're in one of the Trusts that are improving slowly.

Up to 2/3 of NHS staff at some Trusts would recommend their own organisation to their families based on the quality of care and thats speaks volumes about the size of the problem and opportunity for a step change in quality and safety.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9901354/Doctors-dont-trust-their-own-hospitals.html

Thisisnotaspoon, lots of jobs dont have a text book answer, but with experience, and training things get done,advice is sought and very occasiionaly something may go wrong, thats when the H and S, police, regulatory bodies and customers step in and ask questions and sometimes prosecute, sometimers resulting in prison sentances or bankruptcy, nhs staff just move somewhere else.

The NHS deals with millions of people 24 hours a day 365 days a year. If you are indeed an Ex-NHS employee then you're a blinkered one. Very occasionally things go wrong in the NHS, they get fined massively, compensation claims go in and staff are struck off. Having dealt with a disciplinary case for just such a thing I know this to be very much true. That's a tragic story but very few details are given on it. Sepsis is now a very high priority part of the NHS, there's some very strict protocols to follow, I'd not be surprised if that case was partially behind it.

My wife developed sepsis after our first child, the GP nearly missed it I annoyingly didn't spot it either. It did just look like anaemia from childbirth. I was out for the day with our 5 day old child when I got a phone call from my wife saying she felt worse, I advised her to visit the local MIIU. She did and the same GP came to see her and this time spotted it, the GP was mortified she'd missed it.

My second child developed it the night after she was born, a HCA spotted it and alerted the Midwife who contacted SCBU. Within 10 minute she'd had IV antibiotics which saved her life, she looked bloody awful when I got there.

Tragic when things go badly wrong in the NHS but no matter how many protocols you set up they will happen, Patients don't always tell you there history, how the feel or what past medics history they have. Al this can make it very difficult to asses, diagnose a patient. Then there's the case that sometimes symptoms don't actually show how you'd expect for a certain illness or injury.

The only serious criticism of the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive. On a composite "healthy lives" score, which includes deaths among infants and patients who would have survived had they received timely and effective healthcare, the UK came 10th.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10907823/Britains-NHS-is-the-worlds-best-health-care-system-says-report.html

You've got to compare NHS to other healthcare systems as well to understand whether it is good or bad on this. (as per Telegraph story above)

And to contradict myself - the NHS is not a single entity, certainly the healthcare delivery part of it isn't. It's hundreds of hospitals and other secondary care units plus 1000s of primary care providers - over 1 million staff.

The way to minimise problems in such a system is through (a) enough and properly trained staff (b) creating culture of incident reporting and review - the first is something that can be done for the NHS as a whole, but healthcare is expensive, how much tax do you want to pay? The second, although can be encouraged and monitored, is substantially down to culture and governance in the individual organisations.

It's not a sacred cow never to be criticised, the NHS must open to comment and criticism when things go wrong, that's part of how the service will improve. I'd not like to be without it but I'd like to be better as I'm sure you all would.

But this isn't about improvement, the OP and his ilk, are merely attacking it because it is "socialised healthcare".

Up to 2/3 of NHS staff at some Trusts would recommend their own organisation to their families based on the quality of care and thats speaks volumes about the size of the problem and opportunity for a step change in quality and safety.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9901354/Doctors-dont-trust-their-own-hospitals.html

I've looked at your link and I can't see any evidence that refers to alleged negligence by healthcare workers, which is the OP's point and what this thread is supposedly about.

There can be all manner of reasons why doctors and nurses might not recommend their hospital to their friends and families, eg, understaffing, lack of funding resulting in poor hygiene levels, lack of available procedures, poor patient food, lack of medical equipment, etc, none of which is necessarily the result of negligence by healthcare workers - the OP's point.

i m staggered that none of these killers are held accountable,

one in 20 deaths in NHS hospitals are avoidable

12 per cent said they disagreed or disagreed strongly

Probably a more accurate way of reporting it if slightly less sensationalist

Tragic when things go badly wrong in the NHS but no matter how many protocols you set up they will happen,

Also, the 2/3rds point is misleading as well - only 12% expressed a negative view - with 25% as neither positive or negative - and for this to be any use you've got to benchmark the results against other systems.

What is more useful and interesting is the variation between the trusts and looking at why those that score very badly did so.

THIS we need to be able to differentiate between tragic error and incompetence Knee jerk reactions from NHS haters is unlikely to be helpful in doing this.

/takes deep breath.

I agree with Junkyard.

The media is very deliberate in some of their reports in hiding details the investigation will be there for the public to see so not sure why they do this other than to sell papers. This leads to people ranting "Bloody NHS", there's ways to complain all trusts now have policies and contact points. I here people moan every day about the service they receive but they choose not do anything official because they can't be arsed. Good on this family for pursuing such a thing, there's another mother who set up a contact point for NHS trusts to contact her about a rare condition her son died of after it was missed but the NHS. Not sure I can give details so I won't.

The NHS is very much under huge threat of going private, you will then need to pay for you care in cash, loans of insurance. Good looks in getting a cheap insurance if you have any genetic problems are you family has a complex medical history. And don't think for one minute the care you will get will be any better, it won't as everything will be done for profit so they'll have to financial justify why they used certain procedures and items.

stupid headline stupid reporting and stupid forum title,

I just wish people would stop thinking everyone can be cured and that people die from diseases etc.
Its not down to money or bedside manner, or incompetence, its just incredibly difficult to save peoples lives when the diseases are so difficult to pin point and treat effectively.

hopefully the totalshell can learn a bit more before posting such stupid nonsense

The NHS is staffed by people. People make mistakes. You show me someone who never makes mistakes and I'll show you a liar.

My job involves assessing people to determine if they are safe to go home from hospital with any one of a hundred levels of support. I have to use my judgement to make a decision. I have an incomplete set of information on which to base that decision. Patients lie and patient's family members lie. I don't always get it 100% correct and people do occasionally end up back in hospital. Some people go home and instantly get a different illness which sends them to intensive care. Some people leave hospital really safe on their feet without any walking aids and completely independent with all daily tasks but as soon as they go home they fall and bang their head and die - could you see that coming or cope with the mental doubt that you could have done something different when you couldn't possibly have predicted that outcome? And all that for less than £30k/yr...

I hope there are no perfect people working in the NHS as it is not the place for them.

I assume the OP has private medical insurance,which is freely available in this country,and so has decided to avoid the risky NHS.I have looked after a few people who have had poor experiences of private medicine,but I am sure he doesn't want to hear about them.

Mistakes / misjudgements happen because human beings are involved and human beings will always make mistakes. Some of us have jobs where the consequences of these errors are minor and insignificant, others have jobs where the consequences can be life changing / ending. To combat this you have to have back up systems but these cost money and each back up system you add has diminishing returns attached to it so at some point it's not worth adding a back up system to the 1,2 or 3+ systems already in existence.

We all have multiple ways of gaining access to the NHS be it GP, ambulance, A&E, NHS Direct, midwife, community nurse etc. unfortunately if they all make the same / similar mistake / misjudgement (maybe the patient presents atypically). then the consequences can be tragic.

Out of interest, would the kid on the OP have been able to be treated privately, or would he have been sent to the NHS because there was no profit in treating him or he was too complex a case?

stupid headline stupid reporting and stupid forum title,

+1

To the OP: Yes, there are staff in the NHS that could be deemed incompetent, to use your terminology. However, there are thousands more that do an incredible job under sometimes extreme circumstances that never attract the attention of the media. Tell me, in your job, do you ever have to make decisions that could result in this kind of tragedy? I do, day in day out, and guess what? Sometimes things go wrong. Before you start writing inflammatory thread titles and using phrases like 'these killers', stop and think for a minute. How would you feel, knowing that you had set out in your career wanting to help people and 'do no harm' that your actions may have contributed to a persons death? Cases like this are tragic enough without resorting to hysteria, scapegoating and branding people killers.

I suggest the OP takes a few minutes to read this:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/man-whose-wife-and-unborn-daughter-died-from-sepsis-sets-up-charity.1373384780

Making a mistake under pressure whilst trying to save someone's life who would otherwise die - as many would without the NHS - is very different from the institutional bad practise and cover ups such as Stafford. The former is unfortunate to say the least but is preferable to a US style the NHS being destroyed by ambulance chasers, the latter should be eradicated and those responsible prosecuted accordingly.

If the NHS has one serious fault, I'd say it's a blame culture in senior maangement who see problems as being someone's fault and resolution is by way of finger pointing and scapegoating, instead of maybe being systemic problem that may need changes to the organisation, practices, whatever. And that can act as a pretty effective block to implementing the changes which need to be made to improve the service. All of which can be prety demoralising for front line staff, many of whom not only work incredibly hard but do so often under extreme stress, and in return are accussed of incompetence for making mistakes that most of us would never put ourselves in a position to make.

Missidentify a patient's x-rays, patient who needs cancer treatment doesn't get it, dies, while patient who doesn't have cancer starts an invasive, distressing and totally unneccessary course of treatment. If that was you who got that wrong, could you live with it?

OP - if you could click your fingers and close the NHS to new patients right now, would you?

Are you aware that the NHS is being privatised on a massive scale, right now? Does that information make you happy? Tell me the ways in which you think your healthcare provision is going to improve over the next few years? I'm genuinely interested to know what your take is on this.

Are you aware that the NHS is being privatised on a massive scale, right now?

Really who's running the share shop? Where do you register for shares?

Very droll. The press will be crying out for an eagle-eyed subeditor like you to correct their lazy headlines. 😉

Oh, fwiw if you really are interested, news just in
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28012752 ]Spire healthcare floating on stock market.[/url]

[quote=totalshell ]why does nobody EVER get punished if they did it would soon stop ..

Yeah - the same principle should also be applied to people killing other people whilst driving. Send a few of them to prison and it would soon stop. Oh hang on...

I'm a GP who is involved in the NCEPOD review into sepsis deaths and who has spent a considerable amount of time over the past few years working with the UK Sepsis Trust on improving sepsis diagnosis and treatment in primary care. In fact, the only reason you're even reading this story is because of the work of the UK Sepsis Trust and it saddens me that people so often react as the OP has done. It's tragic, but there's nothing straightforward or easy about any of this and blaming individuals is almost always not the way to go if you want to make things safer for people. We should be extremely cautious about making judgements with the benefit of hindsight.

[quote=bonjye ]blaming individuals is almost always not the way to go if you want to make things safer for people

[/thread]

Seems to be a culture of 'we are overworked/too long hours' as a catch all for mistakes.

I say if its dangerous etc why dont the staff ALL speak up?/fight. Kickback?

Or is whistleblowing seen as wrong/senior management and/or ... dont say owt/dont rock the boat/not my job to say most like it?

The latter sounds like the culture around the Saville scandal acutely.

Seems to be a culture of 'we are overworked/too long hours' as a catch all for mistakes.

Blaming that alone is almost as wrong as blaming the people alone. Looking at these things in isolation is human nature I think, but probably represents the most significant impediment to improving safety.

as the OP i say again the nhs is a brilliant institution bringing health and life to millions every day. it is not free though as one post proclaims, 100 billion quid a year is not a small sum it is though fair value

however all those folks who write of excellent staff etc your quite right they do exist in thier tens of thousands and make up the sizeable majority

however when i read of and personally experienced catastrophic individual bad practice why is that i continually see/hear many of the points /arguments above. when will the majority actually recognise that negligent care by an individual, to a standard that causes death is not acceptable and that the individuals should be held to account for thier actions.

i m not questioning the difficulties faced in taking histories, difficulty in diagnosing, prescribing appropriate medication any competant practioner will do thier best and upmost to do the right thing, and be able to justify thier actions. but all those working within the nhs must recognise as do all of us in other proffessions that amongst the brilliant great and good lurk the incompetant and negligent.

i owe my life to a significant number who did what they belived to be the right thing and tried thier best in stressful difficult conditions. i saw the look of horror on a registrar face as my artery opened in front of him and he fought to stem it in a situation he and i clearly had no experience of, the nurse late on xmas eve who spent the extra 10 minutes seeking out someone who could better read a routine ecg, the nurse who worked with me for a whole shift when my lungs collapsed in hdu.

i can also recognise negligence/incompetance that has threatened that life saved. recent events have hilighted what regular patients have known for a long time there are days/ times of day that it is dangerous to be ill in hospital equally there are members of staff who through negligence/incompetance are equally dangerous and they should clearly and visible be held to account for thier actions

it is not free though as one post proclaims

It is free at the point of delivery. And it is perfectly valid to draw attention to this founding principle when discussing the NHS - it is quite indispensable and ultimately bound to its core values.

negligence/incompetance are equally dangerous and they should clearly and visible be held to account for thier actions

Which they are if found, reported and upheld. The case you highlighted for your hyperbole it would appear that maybe there was negligence. The problem is we don't know as the press haven't bothered with any details.

The founding values are indeed the best bit, but behind that the picture is mixed and the NHS shouldn't be immune from scrutiny and criticism. From this weeks FT

NHS is the world’s best healthcare system” was a headline last week in The Guardian newspaper. However, six paragraphs in, the authors observed: “The only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive.” Further investigation was clearly required.

Turns out that we are not actually that good at keeping people alive, which is quite important. But that is not just the fault of the NHS obviously.

Thanks Julian, I am aware of Swire. Still not privatisation though is it, so yes sloppy headlines etc.

The original idea of the NHS was around a shorter life expectancy and a higher proportion of working people to the young and old, something which has changed Since 1960 the average life expectancy in the UK has risen by more than 10 year (World Bank) this puts more people in the retired non working so not contributing as much section and becomes a strain on resources.

The sheer number of different illnesses and conditions no healthcare professional will know everyone, and cannot reasonable be expected to know them all especially when so many things have similar symptoms.
My wife was showing signs of a pulled muscle, turns out it was DVT which was diagnosed by a second Dr in seconds.

The best way of increasing the quality of care is to add more front line staff, Dr's and nurses are whats needed, not managers and office staff. My wife is a nurse on a small specialist ward with a small number of staff but the ward manager has other roles so is not on the ward nursing, the same with the sister, coupled with a freeze on recruiting new staff, maternity and paternity leave and then holidays, and it means they are under staffed everyday, which adds to the stress.
Another ward last year recruited lots of HCA's instead of nurses, due to budget constraints but this meant the few nurses left were run ragged, the ward manager complaint and then resigned.

What would help to pay for more staffing and training of the staff would be better use of money within the NHS. Tesco sell a lot of paracetamol each year but the NHS use loads more (i'm guessing) so why does it cost the NHS more than they could buy them from Tesco? The same with other drugs, some life changing drugs are not given to patients due to cost. In my view if the government pumped a load of money in to the NHS for drug research and production they could save a lot of money in the long term and also sell drugs to other countries. Alternatively look at the supply chain to make savings.

One thing that irks me are health professionals complaining about drunks/drunk injuries and 'self inflicted'* (i.e sports injuries).

If you drastically reduced the above you wouldn't need half the hospital staff so you could make vast swathes redundant. The resulting staff would still have to work at the same tempo.

'Drunks' still pay taxes through the vat etc etc and spend in the pubs that got them drunk.

*I was told this by the Triage nurse and would be prioritised accordingly. It became a 5hour wait, I got up and left at the 5th hour walking out of an empty waiting room on a Sunday morning past the wall to wall Solicitor/got a claim signs that they had plastered in A&E.

Funnily enough a couple of years later they had the A&E shut there.

I had a very similar story to the article last year and almost died. In my personal experience the problem was with my initial contact with the GPs.

I very, very rarely go to the doctors (last time was probably 10 years ago). So when I called to make an appointment because I was feeling unwell it was because I was REALLY feeling unwell. My surgery had just implemented a a telephone triage service and I was told over the phone my a doctor that I had a virus and did not need to see a doctor.

The next day I collapsed with a suspected heart attack. The paramedics took almost an hour to stabilise me before I could be moved and then rushed to the cardiac intensive care. After an angio (sp?) it showed my heart was not working correctly (no heart attack) along with most other organs. Eventually sepsis was diagnosed and I was transferred to intensive car and pumped full of 4 different IV antibiotics for days.

Once in the hand of the paramedics/hospital I could not fault the NHS, they were brilliant. My problem was breaking down the GP barrier, that is where the problem seems to lie. GPs tend to be regarded as a joke now, the first appointment (if you can get one) is a waste of time as you usually get 'see how you are in a week's time' line.

'Drunks' still pay taxes through the vat etc etc and spend in the pubs that got them drunk.

It's every man's patriotic duty to get drunk and help the Chancellor of the Exchequer clear the nation's deficit.

Well considering we pay c£7 tax on a bottle of spirits, c46p per pint and c£2 per bottle of wine.

Then there are the fags that you need to accompany..

One thing that irks me are health professionals complaining about drunks/drunk injuries and 'self inflicted'* (i.e sports injuries).

If you drastically reduced the above you wouldn't need half the hospital staff so you could make vast swathes redundant. The resulting staff would still have to work at the same tempo.

Bollocks. There's more than enough workload to keep us busy, we complain about drunks putting unnecessary pressure on those resources. I've never heard anyone ever complain about someone being injured through a sport.

I had a very similar story to the article last year and almost died. In my personal experience the problem was with my initial contact with the GPs.

I'm not criticising you but did you look at other pathways of care when you felt so unwell but couldn't get a GP appointment? GP appointment issues are something else that is leading to pressure on other areas of the NHS but there are Walk in Centre, Out of Hours Dr's and Minor Injuries Units available if your feeling Really unwell.

I've never heard anyone ever complain about someone being injured through a sport.

It's not a sacred cow never to be criticised, the NHS must open to comment and criticism when things go wrong, that's part of how the service will improve. I'd not like to be without it but I'd like to be better as I'm sure you all would.

The founding values are indeed the best bit, but behind that the picture is mixed and the NHS shouldn't be immune from scrutiny and criticism.

i m staggered that none of these killers are held accountable,

i can also recognise negligence/incompetance

It was a slip of an admission by the Triage nurse and a Rugby-playing Pyshio that I saw said he'd had this too through his rugby injuries. contact sport etc is treated as self-inflicted and not 'accidents'.

They were talking shite.

Even drunks who have had an accident I don't mind, what I don't like it those have drank so much they have become unconscious or they're 'friends' ringing as "they're not normally like this, she can take her drink ya nah. She must have been spiked"

What ever happened to taking your mate home when they have a whitey?

Frank and open discussion of individual cases with poor and avoidable outcomes is a very useful thing, but an entrenched blame culture tends to make this almost impossible - staff won't admit their own personal mistakes or misjudgements for fear of the kind of response demonstrated in the OP.

Putting aside people with a pattern of poor practice, we have to accept that in any organisation with a human component, particularly healthcare, very occasional mistakes will be made by even the most skilled individuals.

Perversely, though, if we demonise any NHS worker who makes an error, the closed, risk-averse culture this produces could even make the situation worse.

however when i read of and personally experienced catastrophic individual bad practice

Is it bad practice, or a mistake? There is a difference.

did you look at other pathways of care when you felt so unwell but couldn't get a GP appointment?

I'm not sure many people KNOW the pathways. We don't get trained on how to use the NHS, unfortunately.. I suspect lives would be saved if we were.

Of course, it doesn't help that it's different everywhere you go, which is a bit daft.

I'm not sure many people KNOW the pathways. We don't get trained on how to use the NHS, unfortunately.. I suspect lives would be saved if we were.

Of course, it doesn't help that it's different everywhere you go, which is a bit daft.

Oh I agree with all that very much.

One thing that irks me are health professionals complaining about drunks/drunk injuries and 'self inflicted'* (i.e sports injuries).

If you drastically reduced the above you wouldn't need half the hospital staff so you could make vast swathes redundant. The resulting staff would still have to work at the same tempo.

Drac - Moderator

I'm not criticising you but did you look at other pathways of care when you felt so unwell but couldn't get a GP appointment? GP appointment issues are something else that is leading to pressure on other areas of the NHS but there are Walk in Centre, Out of Hours Dr's and Minor Injuries Units available if your feeling Really unwell.

I dialled on the Saturday morning having spent most of Friday night in extreme pain and discomfort. That service was good and they got me an appointment at my local walk-in-centre within an hour.

When I saw the GP there he told me I had a virus. I told him that I had really bad pain in my neck and arm and he said it was totally unrelated and did not even look at it.

The infection started congregating in my neck and I ended up with bad cellulitis in my neck (which was initially diagnosed as necrotising fasciitis, which was pretty bloody scarey).

So - two GPs, and the same (incorrect) diagnosis. One over the phone and a second face-to-face without investigating all of my symptoms.

Cheers for the update.

So - two GPs, and the same (incorrect) diagnosis. One over the phone and a second face-to-face without investigating all of my symptoms.

That does sound worrying.

Edited. Not entirely sure it's correct to discuss work issues on a public forum, even non specific ones.

Really who's running the share shop? Where do you register for shares?

The current reforms are a sleight-of-hand - essentially, "The NHS" is being turned into a kitemark brand, in turn displayed (prominently) by the private companies* who are being given the contracts. By a [i]strange[/i] coincidence, the ongoing fragmentation of services is leading to increased pressure on A&E. As was widely predicted, the reforms are a complete mess.

It's one thing to compare the NHS to (better-invested) social-insurance systems - it's quite another to justify what is quite clearly a yard-sale.

(*Spire are the epitome of the private sector cherrypickin' the easy stuff - they would be [i]screwed[/i] without NHS acute capacity & workforce training. See also Circle, Care_UK etc.)

I often wonder whether Hora tries to be this inept or if it just comes naturally to him

Junkyard - lazarus
I often wonder whether Hora tries to be this inept or if it just comes naturally to him

Once in the hand of the paramedics/hospital I could not fault the NHS, they were brilliant. My problem was breaking down the GP barrier, that is where the problem seems to lie. GPs tend to be regarded as a joke now, the first appointment (if you can get one) is a waste of time as you usually get 'see how you are in a week's time' line.

Sadly the family doctor doesn't seem to be held in the same regard by the public as a few decades ago. The "see how you are in a week" happens because GPs know that 95% of patients WILL feel better in a few days. This will always be a problem area for the NHS.

The current reforms are a sleight-of-hand - essentially,

This.

A massive shift from public to private is happening behind that NHS banner. They're calling it 'reform'. It's privatisation.

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[i]"Working in partnership...."[/i]

I fugging hate that phrase. 👿

I often wonder whether Hora tries to be this inept or if it just comes naturally to him

You are the Union rep. Not me, go and hand some pamphlets out you plastic-communist.

Privatisation behind closed doors?

Or partly to avoid the public sector pensions liabilities later on if these people were directly employed.

hora - Member
you plastic-communist.

What do you mean by that?

The purpose of the NCEPOD review I'm involved in is to try and quantify this problem and find out why people die of sepsis and where to focus our attention. Anecdotally, there are problems throughout the chain of care but more has been done further along it (sepsis 6 for example).

One of the problems of GP is that the haystack keeps growing, though there aren't many more needles to find. With sepsis specifically, it's almost indistinguishable from minor illnesses during its early stages in most cases. There are no definitive tests or scoring systems to detect it (though there are some promising innovations). In retrospect, it was always sepsis...

(Additionally, anecdotally, many patients with sepsis say their GP told them they had a virus. There's interesting early research suggesting that is the case, that the virus somehow enables a bacterial infection and then the overwhelming reaction to it- that is sepsis.)

What do you mean by that?

Guess? Take a guess? engage 1st gear and lift the clutch slowly?

Oh this looks a bit aggro will go else where.

I wouldn't like to guess at what you meant, please explain.

No, take the handbrake off. You forgot that. Oh forget it. You can't even engage brain and get going.

You can't even engage brain and get going.