Telegraph reports that appalling standards of care have been exposed at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals trust, where between 400 and 1,200 more patients died than would be expected in just three years, according to a damning report by the Healthcare Commission.
"It is not clear how many patients died as a direct result of the failures but the Commission found that mortality rates in emergency care were between 27 per cent and 45 per cent higher than would be expected, equating to between 400 and 1,200 excess deaths.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson offered his apologies to patients and staff who suffered as a result and the trust chief executive Martin Yeates, and chairman, Toni Brisby, both resigned earlier this year.
Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Healthcare Commission, said the report is a 'shocking story' and that there were failures at almost every stage of care of emergency patients. "There is no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result," he said.
The investigation of the trust now called the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, found overstretched and poorly trained nurses who turned off equipment because they did not know how to work it, newly qualified doctors left to care for patients recovering from surgery at night, patients left for hours in soiled bedclothes, reception staff expected to judge how seriousness of patients arriving at A&E, patients left without food or drink, others who received the wrong medication or none at all, blood and faeces left on lavatories and floors, and doctors diverted away from seriously ill patients in order to treat minor ones who were in danger of breaching the four hour waiting time target.
When high mortality rates triggered questions, the trust board of directors 'fobbed off' investigators by saying the rates were a result of statistical errors but the Healthcare Commission found this was not that case.
The report said there was a 'reluctance to acknowledge or even consider that the care of patients was poor'.
The trust was more concerned with hitting targets, gaining Foundation Trust status and marketing and had 'lost sight' of its responsibilities for patient care, the report said.
Sir Ian said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients.
"These are words I have not previously used in any report. There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients." "
In the many cases of serious failings in the NHS - and they don't get more serious than this! - there is always the ready response that it wasn't the really their fault, as here mentioned: 'reluctance to acknowledge or even consider that the care of patients was poor'. As I watched on TV earlier today, these failings were being attributed to shortage of staff. Yet as Sir Ian says, it was a matter of "appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients".
Patient welfare is not a priority for the NHS. Nor is it a priority for our medical profession. Hitting targets is the current priority.
Much stress tends to be laid on 'Medical Ethics' as part of what medical students study. But medical ethics does not seem to include compassionate treatment of patients. If hospital staff had imagined themselves as patients, enduring what the patients in this story endured, the shocking situation would have been remedied quickly, I am sure.
Written by Margaret Wilde
Margaret is the author of www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.
