[Closed] staffordshire general hospital and others,shame on you all.

C_G - maybe things are different in England, but I've spent a fair bit of time in various hospitals in Scotland and never had an issue even close to that.

a free Health service is a great idea but it is spoilt by bad management in [s]SOME [/s] what is thankfully, and hopefully a minority of Trusts

FTFY.

And this;

Lets be clear about this, Stafford was a failure in management....as a general rule Nursing standards are very good in the UK.

is correct.

It wasn't that long ago the head of the RCN was advocating relatives should help with feeding patients and take them to the toilet, some of the other coverage of his comments at the time was rather more damning. A key part of nursing is being with patients when they eat to ensure they are getting correct nutrition and spot problems.

Managers may be part of the problem but so are many of the frontline staff who it seems to be taboo to criticise. We've had some good experiences with individual NHS staff but it's not been the norm. Our son had a minor op on the NHS over Christmas which they subbed out to a private hodpital. The level of care and general courtesy from the staff was in a different league. It's not treating medicine as a business that's the issue, it's insisting it is somehow special that's lead to a culture of victimhood amongst many staff, terrible cost control and bad service. What the NHS does is very important to society but it doesn't mean that it's wrong to expect value for money (infact given what they're doing it should be a moral obligation to do as much as possible with the money allocated) or that those employeed can treat those they serve with disdain and contempt. I know these comments will outrage some of you but until we can openly talk about some of the major cultural problems at all levels and especially with front line staff it'll never be resolved. And I don't have a lot of time for all the whinging about constant change and erosion of perceived benefits, deal with it or get out, it's they same for nearly all employees in all sorts of sectors. At least in a private sector company if the employees lose the plot it eventually rebounds and the business goes under.

In the private sector they go under because of poor standards of care? Puhleese, you should read about the horror stories in the USA.

Once again, despite the fact we have one of the best performing healthcare systems in the world with plenty of evidence to support that....we have people who'd rather list their own individual issues with the NHS and state they are indicative of poor health system - when multiple studies categorically disagree.

Unfortunately with elderly parents (just one now though) I've seen it a few times.

This Nicholson bloke basically said it was right for him to stay in his job because he would learn from this. I don't think someone on his salary should be learning on the job. He should eff off, out of shame if nothing else.

Difficult kettle of fish the NHS. We can't fully or pseudo privatise it because that always results in a race to the bottom in terms of price, then inevitably quality of care. Can't leave it fully nationalised as it just inevitably evolves into a self-fulfilling black hole that swallows public money like there's no tomorrow.

How about decent management and accountability from top to bottom? Unfortunately that doesn't seem to chime too well with those involved or their political masters.

Bwaarp, unfortunately this report does not support your definitive conclusion about where the failure lies. It cast the blame widely and is not exclusively targeting the hospital or it's management. That is exactly why the report is important. Then report highlights very clearly weaknesses across the whole structure hence the call for fundamental changes in the culture of the NHS.

What happened at mid staffs was a disgrace. It was the combination of poor health policy (targets, having to make a surplus). The hospital ran the staffing to the bone to do this. Care inevitably suffered. What was even worse was that the health regulators who are supposed to ensure care standards didn't pick this up. It was the patients families that eventually complained.

It's a wake up call to everyone in the NHS as we are concerned small Mid Staffs could happen anywhere. There will be many changes to make everyone accountable from the coal face up to the boardroom. We will be listening and engaging with patients much more in the future. The NHS is world class and will learn from this.

Problem is, for every nurse gossiping at the work station, there are many others who get a five minute break on a 13 hour plus shift - stupidly dangerous if you ask me.

Series 1, Ep 1:

4 years ago my wife was left in a corridor with no food or nappies for newborn premature twins, for 8 hours. At the time an NHS Dr, on here. said: “While i empathise with your situation, what do you expect the doctors to do.”

Summed up IDGAF attitude of frontline staff in the NHS for me. Just drones doing a job

To quote Robert Francis from his report

"There was a lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership"

Sorry but the apologists for front line staff on here have got to wake up and smell the coffee. It wasn't just a failure of management or lack of money that was behind this but a surprising degree of callousness from so-called professional carers.

Five other trusts are under investigation so its likely that this is not an isolated occurrence.

4 years ago my wife was left in a corridor with no food or nappies for newborn premature twins, for 8 hours. At the time an NHS Dr, on here. said: “While i empathise with your situation, what do you expect the doctors to do.”

Yeah and me and everyone in my family have had good service from Nurses, including the time I spent a week in a neuro ward. I'll take that as evidence that the entire system is ****ing fine....just like some of you are citing personal experience as evidence....instead of using real evidence such as epidemiological or public health surveys.

Bwaarp, unfortunately this report does not support your definitive conclusion about where the failure lies. It cast the blame widely and is not exclusively targeting the hospital or it's management. That is exactly why the report is important. Then report highlights very clearly weaknesses across the whole structure hence the call for fundamental changes in the culture of the NHS.

Bollocks, the way I read it - it was primarily a breakdown in leadership as per the tone of the press release.

http://www.midstaffsinquiry.com/pressrelease.html

Also watch this whole saga backfire when staff are made liable to more criminal accusations/witch hunts when a patient dies - there will be a big blurring of the lines between deaths/injuries associated with normal risks and gross misconduct.

And then the government will use the whole saga to privatize the NHS and the public will get an even shitter standard of care.

Bollocks, the way I read it

My father spent the last four days of his life in the Norfolk and Norwich NHS hospital and it was an utter hell!!

I witnessed neglect and abuse of elderly patients on two separate wards and in the admissions section for the elderly (elderly did not go in to A and E. An old lady was begging me to help her because the staff wouldn't help, another man the same. The old lady eventually got a nurse who berated her for causing so much fuss and actually said that she had only just seen to her 5 minutes earlier - a total lie! the nurse was a bully! actually, i was in hospital myself 30 years ago and an old man dying of cancer got similar treatment - maybe the night nurses choose those shifts because they are lazy. There were numerous eople laying in their own mess for several hours. Notes not filled in - should father be on a drip or shouldn't he?

At 4 am on. The first night, a nurse who i could barely understand called my mobile to tell me my father was being violent and that they had needed to sedate him. Really?? A weak 78 year old man, a retired General Practitioner, who had a serious gastrointestinal and urinary tract infection (that his local clinic had failed to identify weeks earlier). They insisted that I went in, but why? He was like a zombie after the drugged him up from that point until he died, but the notes on his bed were still not filled in. This was according to my late sister who was a physiotherapist.

He was a risk because he desperately wanted to get up and go home. We told the staff that he was going to hurt himself and he needed close attention. They said they were understaffed, so my mother and i spent hours there tending to him. He eventually got out of bed after we left for the night and had a fall. Was it a fall? Probably, but he had severe swelling and looked like he'd taken a beating. We couldn't get a word out of him to find out what had happened because he was drugged up. He was then allocated 24hr one to one care along with another patient. The nurse we got was an expert in mental health nursing called Ian. He was a good man, who did what one would have expected of a medical professional.. He was very angry at the way things were in that ward and I know he just wanted to tell us his grievances, but he remained professional. He did say he was going to get out of nursing though.

They left food for the patients, but didn't feed the ones who were helpless, then took the food away untouched, not saying a word. As my father had been nil by mouth, but then his notes were untouched, they didn't know if he should be fed or not.

Eventually my father succumbed to pneumonia. The family was called on his final day and we sat with him for ten hours as he struggled to breath. They cleared his airways periodically which gave him respite, but it just got worse again. Then as he was suffocating, they put an oxygen mask on him. Fxxk knows why they did this at this stage! Was it to prolong his agony?!? Unable to speak to us, he finally passed out and was gone, just managing to utter my mother's name.

The duty doctor came up and said to us that he would have not suffered and would have not been aware of what was happening. I was so traumatised at that point and my sisters and mother were equally distraught, but I wanted to scream at the guy "how the fxxk can you say that when you haven't even set foot in the ward". The one to one nurse Ian had not been on shift, so my father didn't get the high standard of care he had received during his attendance.

The majority of the nurses showed no compassion, no humanity, but spent most of their time tapping into their computer and complaining they were short staffed. The patients didn't seem like they were worth bothering with and to think many were soon to die in such undignified circumstances, neglected and in some cases bullied.

If my mother had not been so upset, I would have made a formal complaint and raised the issue with her local MP. My father worked diligently for the NHS all of his adult working life. He was an intelligent man who was very academic and qualified as a junior doctor by the very early age of 21. He showed great compassion and care for his patients, always striving to deliver the best service possible. He was an old school doctor with a good bedside manner. It was a travesty of justice that the very organisation he so trusted and championed, treated him with such disregard, who failed spectacularly to deliver basic levels of care!

When these stories of neglect keep popping up, it is pretty clear that geriatric patients do not get looked after in NHS hospitals. If it is remotely feasible and if my mother is hospitalised when she is facing her final days, I will be taking my mother home where she will be surrounded by those who love her and care for her!!

****ing waste of space politicians, sort it out!!!!!!

Actually the care of geriatric patients outside of hospital to free up the wards has been repeatedly discussed.

Guess who objected though?

Bwaarp, I am sorry but it is rare for someone to post a link that contradicts the point that they are making so categorically. I hope that your arguments are tighter in your UBS interview. (back to sleep now, dogs done their stuff!)

Bwaarp, I am sorry but it is rare for someone to post a link that contradicts the point that they are making so categorically. I hope that your arguments are tighter in your UBS interview. (back to sleep now, dogs done their stuff!)

“The trust stabilised its finances and successfully focussed on becoming a foundation trust. However, it lost sight of what should have been its main priority: to provide high quality care to all of its patients. It took decisions to significantly reduce staff without properly assessing the consequences. Its strategic focus was on financial and business matters at a time when the quality of care of its patients admitted as emergencies was well below acceptable standards”.

Bite me, it was PRIMARILY a failure in leadership despite any personal grievances/bias you might have.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-21199572 ]Stafford hospital, 4 month old baby with dummy taped to it's mouth[/url]

My personal experiences, from working within the NHS are that it's not just "management failings". There is a percentage of the workforce that just see the patient interaction bit of the job as a frustration, which comes out as demands for patients to stop making a fuss, rather than the having the basic human compassion to comfort the person in distress (where reasonably practicable, as other issues can demand that one person has to rush past. It doesn't stop them expressing concern to a colleague though for them to help)

I have met some amazingly skilled, talented and truly caring professionals, these are the people who have to try and also feel they must make up the shortfall in basic standards of caring and human compassion.

It's not just nursing though....it's "us" how many of those complaining would show the basic human compassion to go and help or comfort a distressed stranger in the street, or a crying child on their own?

Yes there were significant failings at Mid staffs, but before we all tut-tut and feel superior, lets all just make sure our own behaviour has decency and compassion in it to others and we don't rush past someone in need, or an elderly neighbour who's isolated, because we're too busy or it's not our job.

Bwaarp, you criticise us for using our limited experiences of the NHS to make a judgement, what else are we supposed to do, we don't have easy access to a lot of the reports etc and many are so political. At the end of the day you can quote reports till you're blue in the face, if personal experience doesn't tally the don't count for much with the individual.

It is also clear from the coverage if the larest report that everyone is to blame, not just the managers, that feels like a shift in focus.

if only the worlds most expensive health care scheme had a little more money..

That will be Germany and The United States then? I thought this thread was about the NHS. 😉

Earlier points about better treatments extending life and costing more are right on the money, pardon the pun.

IMH(professional)O, the targets and financial consequences set by governments of both red and blue flavour over recent years for meeting/missing them are all messed up. It is clear that you need measurables, but they are set by people who lack the breadth or depth of experience to know what is realisitic, what is a measure of efficiency and which targets wil be 'helpful' and which will be counterproductive. The rewards and penalties are so great that senior managers (again often many years out of actual 'practice' if they have ever practiced as a healthcare professional or doctor at all: our 'interim' deputy chief executive is an accountant, I kid ye not) are either 'seduced' into or forced into bad decisions. And then the poo rolls downwards, I have seen plenty of consultants and ward sister or matron-level staff bullied into prioritising care for targets not clinical need against their better judgement: waiting/trolley times being the example most on here will be able to identify with.

FWIW I have participated in the fringes of a time and motion study as a community nurse six or so years ago and even then, even overseen by senior managers who had once been clinicians themselves, the study failed spectacularly to identify those who worked hard and moved patients and cases on, and those who racked up a succession of five-minute visits and phone calls to little effect on the progress of people's recovery.

The NHS is vast and in an organisation that large there will be good, bad and mediocre.... same for teaching, the police, armed forces etc etc.
I'd go as far as to say you can't eliminate that aspect of human nature in organisations that big....perhaps the solution is to break the NHS down into smaller parts but invariably the number of managers would increase as that's the bizarre way the NHS seems to work these days.

I have been shouted down on here before for praising the way a private firm works that I do some bank hours for. They have a few managers based at their HQ in Essex, they then have clinical hands-on managers in each county they have contracts and the rest are frontline staff.
Important training like BLS (basic life support) and ALS (advanced life support) are taken care of on study days organised by the firm but for the rest of a clinician's development the onus is on the individual....we are supposedly registered healthcare professionals....sometimes the firm will prompt you with emailed down training packages but we're treated like adults....if one doesn't keep up to date and something goes wrong then rightly so the clinician at fault carries the can.... this is seen as abhorrent in the NHS where organisations like the NMC want their members recognised and paid as professionals on the one hand but shepherded and hand held through training on the other....it fosters an atmosphere where frontline staff feel they can't be sacked and any failings are due to 'management'.

Roles in the clinical setting have become blurred much to the detriment of the patient, often the Dr is seen as the decision maker leaving the nurses to do everything else...an example might be a Dr making the decision for a patient to have a drug and leaving the nurse to do it, said nurse has to get the drug, find the Dr again to have it signed off and then administer the drug.... meanwhile the patient isn't being 'nursed'.... how about if the Dr who made the decision to give the drug then actually booked the drug out themselves and gave the drug leaving the nurse to care for the patient?....radical idea I know.

Of the 3 hospitals I take patients into on a regular basis 2 are excellent and 1 is hideous....worrying if this ratio is the same nationwide!
The two decent hospitals are the ones where the doctors are far more hands-on, there are bad doctors obviously but in a clinical setting having those with the most knowledge lead those around them has made for excellent A&E departments where everybody is learning from each other rather than leaving it all to one group of staff and having bad habits creep in.

The problem with the very senior NHS managers is that they are on salaries totalling hundreds of thousand a year and have become careerist in their thinking, it is no longer about the patients in their trust but about their next career move.
Appoint clinicians to these roles, pay them a decent but not exorbitant salary and see who actually cares enough to want to do these job when all roads don't automatically lead to a cushy number in Whitehall eventually.

The NHS does a decent job but could be better, part of the problem is that any change is met by resistance by the various professional bodies involved, they have become self serving and patients have been forgotten about.

My elderly Dad has had exceptionally good care on the various occasions he has been in hospital in Shrewsbury and would undoubtedly have been dead over 20 years ago but for their effectiveness.

Just by way of balance.

@stumpyjon, you don't often start or post on a thread about a bike shop if you just get the service you expected. The same applies for schools, banks, churches, petrol stations and indeed hospitals.

fwiw I partly agree about the 'everyone to blame' part, however I have seen great teams of great motivated compassionate nurses turned into bad and lazy ones by great old manager/sister leaving and introduction of either bullying or ineffective managers. Thus without having started out as bad or lazy people, the individual frontline staff members become complicit in the poor care. No different to any other business or organisation in that respect.

In recent years I've seen my father have a series of cardiac problems, he ended in HDU and CCU in 2 different hospitals, the care was exceptional and the after care remains to be. My younger brother has had a liver transplant last year and again the care was exceptional.

I've worked in the NHS for almost 24 years, I've seen some questionable care but most of that was many years ago. I always address any small things I see with any staff I work with, it's sad fact that yes there are staff who work in any NHS trust that really aren't up to their job.

I'm not sure you can blame everyone, there's management decision take place that staff try to prevent but go ahead anyway. Staff will do somethings that management don't hear about how can they correct it if it's not reported?

I do however think that there is so many targets set now that at times management are too busy looking at achieving these and forget that what we really should be doing is looking after patients.

My nan died in Stafford Hospital in 06. My mom was really bothered about her treatment - and to be honest, we thought it was my mom moaning about nothing...and told her to shut up.

Now can't tell you how bad I feel on many levels....

It only takes one bad nurse/doctor/surgeon to destroy someone's faith in the NHS. Unfortunately, it seems there are countless arseholes on the loose.

My experiences (admittedly over only about 5 days at Woolwich hospital) were that most of the older nurses were amazing. One love;u lady even called her, equally lovely, colleague on her day off to check I was ok. As I said, amazing. She really pushed the younger nurses to work their arses off, and seemed like she'd taken on the matron role for the ward. It was a heartening experience.

However, once she was gone, things went rapidly downhill. Only two of the younger ones actually seemed to have any interest in the job whatsoever, and there were at least 5+ who were clearly watching the clock, and any patient requests were putting them out and resulted in much huffing and puffing.

I saw several of them, who were far happier chatting and eating the sandwiches meant for patients, tell a pair of chaps who'd had very recent double knee/hip replacement to go and get their own tea. I ended up having to get tea for the three of us, and I was off my tits on painkillers and had just had recent surgery for a completely shattered collarbone. This carried on for two days until one of the nice nurses asked why I wasn't in bed. The only thing the other nurses visibly enjoyed was forcing people who'd had barely any sleep to wake up.

Every time the shift changed, you were at the complete mercy of the incoming staff, and the variations in care quality were utterly shocking.

Don't get me started on Stafford. The receptionists there were the worst I've ever encountered, and the a&e doctor misread an x-ray so badly he couldn't even tell that my collarbone was shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces, and in no way was going to heal in a few weeks. As a result, I had to have emergency surgery in London.

have met some amazingly skilled, talented and truly caring professionals, these are the people who have to try and also feel they must make up the shortfall in basic standards of caring and human compassion.

It's not just nursing though....it's "us" how many of those complaining would show the basic human compassion to go and help or comfort a distressed stranger in the street, or a crying child on their own?

Yes, there definitely is a percentage of unprofessional arseholes within the NHS....however....sometimes I get the feeling the public expects every Nurse to be like Florence Nightingale....when in reality they have no idea what dealing with blood, guts and death day in day out is like.....it does things to the mind.....people have a tendency to dehumanise people so that they can deal with these situations on a daily basis.....and I'm not sure those complaining would be any better.

sometimes I get the feeling the public expects every Nurse to be like Florence Nightingale....when in reality they have no idea what dealing with blood, guts and death day in day out is like.....it does things to the mind.....people have a tendency to dehumanise people so that they can deal with these situations on a daily basis.....and I'm not sure those complaining would be any better.

Since Florence nightingale was on duty, absolutely nothing has changed in the job description of a nurse, they are still or should only accept payment for actually providing care for their patients.

The thing is bad staff just get promoted it seems from experience,and good ones get disheartened, and leave for other jobs.

The problem being if you get poor service from a shop, you can go to another one, its not so easy with the NHS.

Abysmall management at all levels, and nobody struck off,jailed,or facing legal action.Despite families losing dads, mums and loved ones,serious neglect,cost cutting,bullying and lots more.

Those responsible know who they are, and one day they will be old and frail,or just ill and lets see how they cope, with soiled bed sheets,poor care,no medication, no water,complaints ignored, and finaly death.

They have made our once great NHS, look a failure as we cant look after patients and keep them alive,in descent conditions.

Discuss.

NHS? What about that abysmal education system, failing pathetic trolls up and down the country?

The thing is bad staff just get promoted it seems from experience,and good ones get disheartened, and leave for other jobs.

There's certainly an element of this but again, I think it all comes down to poor management and leadership.

Let's just take a little crappy example for the masses - what happens when leadership and morale breaks down on the battlefield? As a general rule, hilarity ensues where by military discipline breaks down and either military operations collapse or.... if you are still somehow holding onto the fight, rapes and mass murders take place.

And to reign these problems in you have to punish some of those directly involved but the real issue and ultimate responsibility ends up lying further up the chain of command. Any attempts to deny this and pin all of the blame on grunts is usually done to cover the arseholes of the brass.

You can't trust the monkeys to do their jobs properly, you have to make sure they do. This whole idea that the NHS woes stems considerably from the immorality of front line staff is IMO a load of complete tosh.

I've worked in the NHS for almost 24 years, I've seen some questionable care but most of that was many years ago.

And that is why your dad had the [u]best[/u] of treatment. If you were Joe public he would have had good treatment (I like to believe that's the normal state of affairs) or he might have had appalling treatment and you would have been subject to the same attitudes detailed further up the thread.

Because of family connections my MIL saw the best ophthalmic surgeon in Ulster for her condition within 2 weeks of asking, her normal waiting list for NHS consultations is considerably longer than 2 weeks! Those in and close to the NHS do not get a true picture of it's service levels whenever they need treatment.