Showing posts with label 'Shame on us nurses'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Shame on us nurses'. Show all posts

Wednesday 24 April 2013


Party leaders in Commons clash over Stafford Hospital scandal

David Cameron and Ed Miliband clash on NHS spending figures and casualty waiting times

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David Cameron has said the Stafford Hospital scandal shows Labour cannot be trusted over the NHS as he clashed with Ed Miliband in the Commons.
The prime minister said the failings at Stafford, which led to the death of hundreds of people 2005 and 2008, would be "repeated again" under Labour.
Mr Miliband said that case was terrible but accused the PM of a "disgraceful slur" on Labour's record on the NHS.
And he said A&E services were "in crisis" under the current government.
At the first Prime Minister's Questions for more than a month, the two men clashed over which party was better placed to run the health service, exchanging views on their parties' respective records while in power.
Mr Cameron suggested that if Labour was returned to power at the next election, there was a risk of further tragedies like that at Stafford - which took place while the last Labour government was in power.
"If anyone wants a memory of Labour's record in the NHS, they only have to read the report into the Stafford Hospital," he told MPs.
Under Labour, he suggested, there would be "cuts to the NHS, longer waiting lists and all the problems we saw at Stafford Hospital will be repeated over again".
Mr Miliband said what had happened in Stafford was "terrible" but accused the prime minister of misrepresenting the "transformation" that took place in the health service under the last government and a "disgraceful slur on the doctors and nurses that made that happen".
The Francis report into the Stafford scandal earlier this year criticised the culture of care at the hospital and the proliferation of central targets but did not blame ministers or specific managers for what went wrong.
'In distress'
The Labour leader said accident and emergency services in hospitals were now in crisis, with the number of people waiting for four hours - a government target - rising from 340,000 in 2009-2010 to 888,000 last year.
"Accident and emergency is the barometer of the NHS," Mr Miliband told MPs during heated exchanges.
"This barometer is telling us that it is a system in distress."
The coalition had also presided over a fall in the number of nurses while the NHS helpline was in chaos, he added.
But Mr Cameron said a million more people were being seen at A&E departments now than when Labour was in power while the number of day cases had increased by 500,000 over the past three years.
Waiting times for inpatient operations had fallen since 2010 while waiting times for outpatients were stable, he added.
"The NHS is performing better under this government than it ever did under Labour."

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Monday 25 February 2013

Sacked saline inquiry nurse Rebecca Leighton lodges appeal


Sacked saline inquiry nurse Rebecca Leighton lodges appeal

Rebecca LeightonRebecca Leighton was in prison for six weeks before charges were dropped

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Sacked Stepping Hill Hospital nurse Rebecca Leighton has lodged an appeal against her dismissal.
Ms Leighton was arrested during an inquiry into contaminated saline solution, linked to three patient deaths at the Stockport hospital.
Criminal charges against her were dropped, but she was sacked by the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust after admitting stealing opiate drugs.
The trust confirmed Ms Leighton's appeal will be heard in February.
A trust spokeswoman said she was unable to comment further until the appeal is concluded.
Poisonings investigated
The nurse, from Heaviley, Stockport, lost her job in early December after a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) heard her admit the drugs theft, which she said she carried out to treat her throat infection.
The NMC lifted a ban order preventing Ms Leighton from nursing, which it had imposed while she was being investigated by police.
She spent six weeks in custody until her release in September.
Police are continuing to investigate the deaths of Stepping Hill Hospital patients, Tracey Arden, 44, Arnold Lancaster, 71, and 83-year-old Derek Weaver, who police said were all administered insulin unlawfully.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed it is also examining the poisoning of 19 other patients, after they were first called in to the hospital on 12 July after an experienced nurse reported a higher than normal number of patients on a ward with "unexplained" low blood sugar levels.

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Sunday 10 February 2013

Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.


Most of the UK media has reported on the Francis inquiry into significant failures in care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
The report suggests a raft of radical changes to help improve patient safety. These include proposals to make serious but avoidable medical mistakes a criminal offence.
The Healthcare Commission (the hospital regulator at the time) first raised concerns about the trust in 2007, after determining it had unusually high death rates.
These concerns led to a series of reports, undertaken by different bodies, which all found widespread evidence of significant failures in care, including:
  • patients being left in soiled bedding
  • patients not given ready access to food and water
  • chronic staff shortages
  • failure in the leadership of the hospital
  • a culture in which staff members who had concerns about failures in care were discouraged from speaking out
This current inquiry was commissioned in 2010 to investigate wider issues that may have contributed towards these serious problems. The inquiry, carried out by the barrister Robert Francis QC, was asked to come up with recommendations which could help prevent similar failings from happening in the future.
The findings of the inquiry have now been published.


What is a public inquiry?

Public inquiries are wide-ranging investigations commanded by the government to look at very serious issues, particularly where there have been numerous deaths.

Due to their scale and level of detail, they are not often carried out. The most recent health-related public inquiry was the 2005 Shipman Inquiry into the case of Hyde GP Harold Shipman who was imprisoned for murdering 15 patients.

What were the main findings of the inquiry?

The findings of the inquiry can fairly be described as damning. It highlights what amounts to a ‘perfect storm’ of systematic failures of care at multiple levels, including:
  • a ‘Somebody Else's Problem’ attitude among hospital staff – perceived problems were too often assumed to be the responsibility of others
  • an institutional culture that cared more about the needs of the hospital staff than the patients
  • an unacceptable willingness to tolerate poor standards of patient care
  • a failure to accept and respond to legitimate complaints
  • a failure of different teams within the hospital, as well as in the wider community, to communicate and share their concerns
  • a failure of leadership – in particular, financial changes needed to achieve Foundation Trust status were seen, by the inquiry, to take precedence over patient care
Mr Francis concludes that, ‘The extent of the failure of the system shown in this report suggests that a fundamental culture change is needed. This does not require a root and branch reorganisation – the system has had many of those – but it requires changes which can largely be implemented within the system that has now been created by the new reforms.’

What recommendations does the inquiry make?

The inquiry makes a total of 290 individual recommendations. These include:
  • causing harm or death to a patient due to avoidable failures in care should be a dealt with as a criminal offence (rather than a regulatory or civil matter)
  • NHS staff, including doctors and nurses, should have a legal ‘duty of candour’ – so they are obliged to be honest, open and truthful in all their dealings with patients and the public
  • a single regulator of both quality of care and financial matters should be created
  • non-disclosure agreements (‘gagging orders’) – where NHS staff agree not to discuss certain matters – should be banned
  • there should be a ‘fit and proper’ test for hospital directors, similar to those set for football club directors
  • a clear line of leadership needs to be established, so it is always clear who is ultimately ‘in charge’ when it comes to a particular patient
  • uniforms and titles of healthcare support workers should be clearly distinguished from those of registered nurses

What happens next?

The final report of the public inquiry has now been published, and the government has said it will respond to the recommendations of the inquiry in March 2013. Changes required by earlier reports into the failings at Mid Staffs are already underway.
The Prime Minister David Cameron has said that “quality of care” should be on a par with “quality of treatment”.
He said: “We have set this out explicitly in the Mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board, together with a new vision for compassionate nursing.
“We have introduced a tough new programme for tracking and eliminating falls, pressure sores and hospital infections.
“And we have demanded nursing rounds every hour, in every ward of every hospital.”
Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on twitter.

Links to the headlines

Stafford Hospital: Hiding mistakes 'should be criminal offence'. BBC News, February 6 2013
Mid Staffordshire NHS trust inquiry report published. The Guardian, February 6 2013
David Cameron apologises for Mid Staffs scandal after damning report. The Daily Telegraph, February 6 2013
Medical staff must face criminal charges for failures, says care scandal report. The Independent, February 6 2013

Further reading

Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry Executive summary (PDF, 839Kb). Published 
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Sunday 13 January 2013

17 hospitals with unsafe staffing, says Care Quality Commission


17 hospitals with unsafe staffing, says Care Quality Commission

DoctorThe government says there are nearly 5,000 more doctors since the coalition came to power

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Seventeen NHS hospitals are among 26 healthcare providers in England failing to operate with safe staffing levels, the Care Quality Commission has said.
The health watchdog issued the hospitals with warnings in November, after carrying out inspections.
About 16% of hospitals failed to come up to the necessary level.
Labour said the findings reflected a "toxic" combination of reorganisation and cuts, but ministers said the number of clinical staff had risen since 2010.
Late last year the commission highlighted staffing problems in NHS hospitals in its review of services. This list gives further details about those findings.

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There can be no excuse for not providing appropriate staff levels when across the NHS generally there are now more clinical staff working than there were in May 2010”
Jeremy HuntHealth Secretary
The 17 hospitals are listed in the Sunday Telegraph. They are named as: Scarborough Hospital; Milton Keynes Hospital; Royal Cornwall Hospital; Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool; Queen's Hospital, Romford; Stamford & Rutland Hospital; Southampton General Hospital; Croydon University Hospital; Bodmin Hospital; Northampton General Hospital; St Peter's Hospital, Maldon; Queen Mary's Hospital, London; Chase Farm Hospital, London; Westmorland General Hospital, Cumbria; Pilgrim Hospital, Lincolnshire; St Anne's House, East Sussex; and Princess Royal Hospital, West Sussex.
Also named is the London Ambulance Service and eight mental health trusts. They are: Ainslie and Highams Inpatient Facility, London; Campbell Centre, Bedford; Forston Clinic, Dorset; Cavell Centre, Peterborough; Bradgate Mental Health Unit, Leicestershire; Avon and Wiltshire NHS Mental Health Trust; Blackberry Hill Hospital, Bristol; and Park House, Manchester.
'Publish evidence'
A spokesman for the CQC said it had told the hospitals they must comply with its standards, and show how they were going to achieve this.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he expected "swift action" to be taken by those named.
"There can be no excuse for not providing appropriate staff levels when across the NHS generally there are now more clinical staff working than there were in May 2010 - including nearly 5,000 more doctors and almost 900 extra midwives," he said.
"Nursing leaders have been very clear that hospitals should publish staffing levels and the evidence to support them twice a year.
"We fully support this and will put an extra £12.5 billion into the health service by 2015."
Mike Farrar, NHS Confederation: "I'm absolutely convinced that the hospitals in these cases will have taken swift action"
Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents managers, said he was "absolutely convinced that the hospitals in these cases will have taken swift action to improve the levels of service and indeed the levels of staffing on those wards".
Labour - which released the information - points out that nursing numbers in England are down nearly 7,000 since the coalition came to power. It says providers could not provide the standards of care everyone wanted to see if they were overstretched.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "The government is doing its best to lay the blame for the ills of the NHS at the door of the nursing profession. But nurses will not be able to provide the standards of care we all want to see when they are so overstretched and the wards so short-staffed."
And Labour leader Ed Miliband told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that the figures were a "shocking set of findings".
He added: "The government's got to explain what's happening in our hospitals, why this is being allowed to happen. It's got to take action to do something about it."

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Saturday 15 December 2012

guilty of killing baby


Grace Adeleye guilty of killing baby in botched circumcision

Grace AdeleyeGrace Adeleye denied causing Goodluck Caubergs' death

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A nurse has been found guilty of manslaughter after causing a baby's death by botching his circumcision.
Grace Adeleye, 67, carried out the procedure on four-week-old Goodluck Caubergs at an address in Chadderton, Oldham, in April 2010.
The boy bled to death before he could reach hospital the following day.
Adeleye was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence at Manchester Crown Court.
The nurse, who denied the charge, had told the jury she had done "more than 1,000" circumcision operations without incident.
The court heard that Adeleye and Goodluck's parents were from Nigeria, where the circumcision of newborns is the tradition for Christian families.
Adeleye, of Sarnia Court, Salford, was paid £100 to do the operation.
The jury was told that she carried out the procedure using a pair of scissors, forceps and olive oil and without anaesthetic.
She had claimed there had been "no problem" when she left the infant and that his parents had been pleased with the operation.

“Start Quote

Goodluck Caubergs was a healthy little boy whose tragic death was wholly unnecessary”
Jane WraggCrown Prosecution Service
However, the court heard that when Goodluck's parents had changed his nappy several hours later, they had found a large amount of blood and phoned Adeleye, who had told them to redress the wound.
Goodluck's parents called an ambulance the following morning and he was taken to the Royal Oldham Hospital, where he died a short time later.
A spokesman for NHS Oldham said had the family gone to the hospital and asked for a circumcision, "they would have been advised to go to an approved practitioner who would have charged £100, the same as Grace Adeleye".
Following the guilty verdict, Adeleye was bailed while pre-sentencing reports are prepared.
The Crown Prosecution Service's Jane Wragg said the case "was not about the rights or wrongs of circumcision, but the grossly negligent way in which the procedure was undertaken".
"Goodluck Caubergs was a healthy little boy whose tragic death was wholly unnecessary," she said.
"Goodluck died because the standard of care taken by Grace Adeleye in carrying out the circumcision fell far below the standard that should be applied.
"She also failed to inform his parents of the risks and possible complications, which ultimately led to his tragic death."

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Friday 7 December 2012

'Never mind the patient, tick the box'


'Never mind the patient, tick the box'

By Prof Sue BaileyPresident, Royal College of Psychiatrists
PaperworkRegulation and inspection are often increased after a crisis

Scrubbing Up

Scandals lead to inquiries and to recommendations - leading to a focus on filling in forms and ticking the right boxes.
But in this week's Scrubbing Up Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says it's time to listen to those receiving the care.
Why do care standards break down? We've all read heartbreaking stories of elderly people with dementia or patients with learning difficulties being neglected, mistreated and abused.
When things go wrong, inquiries are set up, reports are published and lessons learnt.
Think Winterbourne View; Mid-Staffordshire; childcare in Rochdale, or the Carlisle Report.
At heart, the recommendations boil down to improving communication, listening, learning and acting. It means taking notice of what patients and service users have to say.
Blame culture
But when trying to deliver the right kind of care, the health service often addresses regulation, standard setting, inspection and monitoring.
This approach aims to improve scrutiny and accountability, which most people would agree is a "good thing".

“Start Quote

The present blame culture doesn't help anyone.”
But there is a risk that a constant focus on targets, procedures and performance can lead to a tick box approach to healthcare.
This usually ends up placing more controls on healthcare workers, greater monitoring and prescriptive procedures.
Unfortunately, this is often at the expense of professional judgement, leading to dissatisfied and demoralised staff - with the all important relationship between the patient and healthcare worker forgotten.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be held to account for their actions, but the present blame culture doesn't help anyone.
Healthcare is, or should be, a moral as well as a practical undertaking.
It deals with uncertainty in which mistakes are inevitable - but this isn't a message anyone wants to hear. Positive change won't happen if we continue to exist in a risk-averse bubble.
As Professor Eileen Munro of the London School of Economics put it recently, defensive care practice doesn't avoid risk, it simply displaces it - usually onto those using the services.
Time sensitive
What is needed is something in very short supply in the health service - time.
It takes time to develop expertise and build relationships based on intelligent kindness, not just technical skills.
It takes time to build critical reasoning skills and provide effective supervision.
It takes time to allow staff doing a difficult and stressful job to reflect, offload and be mentored by those with more experience.
In an era of unprecedented NHS reform, how can we find the time?
I believe we need a greater focus on helping the workforce develop the skills, knowledge and personal qualities required to meet care needs, support new staff more and improve opportunities for career progression
Workforce development takes time and money, but it is an investment that could support safer and better care, and mutual respect between patient and carer or doctor.
Old fashioned?
Don't get me wrong; improved processes can help, too.
We need data in healthcare but what we want and need are useful, practical tools that help learning and improve care.

“Start Quote

Policy makers will have to be brave to think and act in the long term”
This learning should involve ongoing feedback from patients, which is acted on by people like me.
What's the bottom line? A health service in which the treatment and care of people - not systems and processes - are at the heart of what we do.
Does that seem terribly old fashioned?
It sounds an awful lot like what I came into medicine for 40-odd years ago, but which I have seen start to drift away.
I will be accused of being simple minded, but a just culture should replace a blame culture.
This will require a major shift in approach towards positive risk taking and being open and honest with ourselves and with our patients that not everything can be "cured".
It's not too late, but policy makers will have to be brave to think and act in the long term. But is anybody listening?
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