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Police action IS needed.
- Thread starter gasbanni
- Start date
M
mdf290
Criminal investigation for what?
Being crap at your job only results (In the private sector at least) in sacking.
There would have to be evidence of individuals willfully killing people.
Failing in duty of care is only a contractural issue.
The HSE under Health and Safety Laws however could invoke 'Corporate Manslaughter' laws.
This is usually only used for directors of companies whose negligence results in an employees or clients/customer death however I see no reason for that not to be acted upon here.
The fact that no employees were disciplined proves that the top management were not taking any steps to combat the situation.
I was fined (my company) many years ago by the HSE. An employee returned from the toilet and did not put on his safety glasses which were mandatory under our HSE policy.
He got a staple in his eye and lost the sight in his affected eye.
When questioned about our PPE policy we stated that the wearing of PPE was mandatory.
When questioned how we enforced it we said that if we ever saw employees without protection they were told to immediately comply.
We were asked if the particular employee had been told to wear protection previously (other than our written policy in the employee handbook) to which we replied on two previous occasions he had been reminded.
We were fined on the basis that because we did not discipline the employee we had not enforced the rules.
So I see no difference today with how the management controlled or did not control the hospital scenario.
Being crap at your job only results (In the private sector at least) in sacking.
There would have to be evidence of individuals willfully killing people.
Failing in duty of care is only a contractural issue.
The HSE under Health and Safety Laws however could invoke 'Corporate Manslaughter' laws.
This is usually only used for directors of companies whose negligence results in an employees or clients/customer death however I see no reason for that not to be acted upon here.
The fact that no employees were disciplined proves that the top management were not taking any steps to combat the situation.
I was fined (my company) many years ago by the HSE. An employee returned from the toilet and did not put on his safety glasses which were mandatory under our HSE policy.
He got a staple in his eye and lost the sight in his affected eye.
When questioned about our PPE policy we stated that the wearing of PPE was mandatory.
When questioned how we enforced it we said that if we ever saw employees without protection they were told to immediately comply.
We were asked if the particular employee had been told to wear protection previously (other than our written policy in the employee handbook) to which we replied on two previous occasions he had been reminded.
We were fined on the basis that because we did not discipline the employee we had not enforced the rules.
So I see no difference today with how the management controlled or did not control the hospital scenario.
I've often thought the only way some companies or public sector services will only behave appropriately is to make it so that upper management will face jail terms if they eff up.
Then I read stuff like this and see what will actually happen is the big boys will go free anyway, and honest people will be ****ed over by employee incompetency.
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Needless deaths of 1,200 due to gross negligence, when the death certificate cites starvation or dehydration and people are drinking from flower vases because the staff cant be arsed to give them water, some arses need kicking in to jail.
Rather than post a generalized comments you should read up on some of the things that happened.
M
mdf290
I agree with you and I would be happy to see nurses where necessary kicked out of the NHS.
All I am pointing out is the problems associated with that course of action.
When nurses change shifts continually and it takes 3 days to die of dehydration which nurse would you prosecute?
In my mind every single one of them but trying to historically get a confession would be impossible.
As I mentioned before Nurses are lazy and like to just keep leaving their responsibilities to the nurse coming on the next shift - trouble is they ALL do that and nothing gets done.
There is a communication book I used to have at work for the receptionists I managed and I read it and found a task that had been communicated was just repeatedly passed on in the system. Everyone claimed they did not know how to do it and kept leaving it for someone else literally rewriting it in the book at the end of each day.
The problem was is was a task they had all been trained to do so noone would confess they could not complete it so they kept passing it on to someone else hoping they would do it.
I stepped in and refreshed the memory of the staff member on site that day watched then complete the task and then made them the lead for that job in future.
Everyone in the NHS has policy overload.
As a manager of three GP surgeries I had to tick to read which policies I had read. The policy book was ridiculous with around 250 individual policies relating to operating the service. I will confess I never even read them all. It would have taken two months solid reading to do that.
I read the important ones and left the other to be read if such an event occured.
The problem is you read a policy perhaps for example recussitating a collapsed patient on site and then no patients collapse for over a year...Have you remembered that policy? or would you be better to have a quick look when the event occurs?
Do something NOT in line with a policy though and you risk a disciplinary.
So what do nurses and doctors do . . nothing in case they do it wrong.
I would scrap the policies down to 20 maximum.
I remember as the manager having to write up an 'Ambulance' Policy for the surgeries so that the Ambulance drivers would know how to get to the patients when called.
I mean they seem to manage to use their initiative when visiting private homes so why did our surgeries present a problem?
It was a ridiculous waste of my time and an insult to the ambulance crews initiative.
One of my surgeries had a height restriction so a full sized ambulance would have had to stop at the main entrance with a 20yd passage to the surgery doors. It was a no brainer there were no steps and a passage. Put the patient on a trolley or wheelchair and wheel him out then eh? no brainer?
Apparently not I had to create a policy indicating alternative entrances half way round the large industrial site we were based in , which as it happened were blocked by automatic electric gates on timers so I had to list the names of people who could be contacted to get the gates opened and when the gates were open and shut and who the gate engineers were and etc etc etc when in reality the crew would have simply arrived at the main entrance and used a trolley or wheelchair anyway as that was the QUICKEST way!.
All I am pointing out is the problems associated with that course of action.
When nurses change shifts continually and it takes 3 days to die of dehydration which nurse would you prosecute?
In my mind every single one of them but trying to historically get a confession would be impossible.
As I mentioned before Nurses are lazy and like to just keep leaving their responsibilities to the nurse coming on the next shift - trouble is they ALL do that and nothing gets done.
There is a communication book I used to have at work for the receptionists I managed and I read it and found a task that had been communicated was just repeatedly passed on in the system. Everyone claimed they did not know how to do it and kept leaving it for someone else literally rewriting it in the book at the end of each day.
The problem was is was a task they had all been trained to do so noone would confess they could not complete it so they kept passing it on to someone else hoping they would do it.
I stepped in and refreshed the memory of the staff member on site that day watched then complete the task and then made them the lead for that job in future.
Everyone in the NHS has policy overload.
As a manager of three GP surgeries I had to tick to read which policies I had read. The policy book was ridiculous with around 250 individual policies relating to operating the service. I will confess I never even read them all. It would have taken two months solid reading to do that.
I read the important ones and left the other to be read if such an event occured.
The problem is you read a policy perhaps for example recussitating a collapsed patient on site and then no patients collapse for over a year...Have you remembered that policy? or would you be better to have a quick look when the event occurs?
Do something NOT in line with a policy though and you risk a disciplinary.
So what do nurses and doctors do . . nothing in case they do it wrong.
I would scrap the policies down to 20 maximum.
I remember as the manager having to write up an 'Ambulance' Policy for the surgeries so that the Ambulance drivers would know how to get to the patients when called.
I mean they seem to manage to use their initiative when visiting private homes so why did our surgeries present a problem?
It was a ridiculous waste of my time and an insult to the ambulance crews initiative.
One of my surgeries had a height restriction so a full sized ambulance would have had to stop at the main entrance with a 20yd passage to the surgery doors. It was a no brainer there were no steps and a passage. Put the patient on a trolley or wheelchair and wheel him out then eh? no brainer?
Apparently not I had to create a policy indicating alternative entrances half way round the large industrial site we were based in , which as it happened were blocked by automatic electric gates on timers so I had to list the names of people who could be contacted to get the gates opened and when the gates were open and shut and who the gate engineers were and etc etc etc when in reality the crew would have simply arrived at the main entrance and used a trolley or wheelchair anyway as that was the QUICKEST way!.
mdf290
Honest question, not trolling.
Why don't you campaign against such madness, it's all well and good joe public going "cut the red tape" when most of us don't really know what that red tape is, as an insider with his head screwed on right, are you not in a position to do something?
Honest question, not trolling.
Why don't you campaign against such madness, it's all well and good joe public going "cut the red tape" when most of us don't really know what that red tape is, as an insider with his head screwed on right, are you not in a position to do something?
M
mdf290
I probably am but being right doesn't keep you in employment nor does making waves.
If any policy making politicians want to speak to me than I would be very happy to explain my concerns.
They will fall on deaf ears though because the Lawyers have effectively screwed up the NHS like they have everything else.
You cant change GPs because the BMA supports them and they don't want to change. As for nursing what do you do?.
If you sack all the crap ones the shortage will mean more locum and agency staff filling posts and the lack of accountability will continue.
It needs a complete reformation from the bottom up.
I would love to join a group , organisation or body who's aim is to improve the NHS.
That would bring a real focus and sense of fulfillment to my life.
My immediate solution would bring a lot of pain
Sacking crap nurses would create upheaval and backlash through the unions.
It would add to welfare costs.
It would initially add to NHS costs in terms of fighting tribunerals.
It would add to NHS costs replacing employees with agency staff.
I would like to see a cap on rates for agency worlers both GPs and nurses set at £30 for nurses of top grade and £65 for GPs.
I had the rather unedifiying experience of bartering with a GP to get him to work on a Bank holiday Monday. Our usual rate was £85. I had an embarassing half an hour mediating with an agency to get the GP down from £150 an hour to his lowest of £120 an hour otherwise I would have had to shut the service and risk the NHS contract we had to supply services.
The fallout would be strikes - cancelled treatments and perhaps even GPs leaving the country.
That is the problem
The NHS is caught by the short and curlies by the people whose so called oath is to make people better.....
When I opened the first GP surgery I had to do a quarterly report to the PCT.
It was a complete farce. We had only just opened up from scratch with zero patients after 3 months we had signed up around 300 patients.
The report I had to do even though we had so few patients and only some of them had chronic ailments had to include everything we had to report via QOF and also some extra contractuaral targets outside of a normal PMS contract.
I remember metioning to the panel in front of me that coming from a manufacturing background I could not believe how many non events I was having to report as within production we only reported volumes and failures.
In the NHS you report every single event that ever happens.
I had to create reports on the five aspecst of treatment recieved for example by chronic COPD patients when in fact we had not even signed any up. It meant just putting 0s in the boxes affecting our performance rating!!
The work required to get to those zeros had to be methodically the same as reposrting any other figures so I had to design templates and create reports joining database searches to arrive at the figures supplied by the database. The reports had to be run ethically to ensure the data was clean and correct etc etc.
It took weeks to create all the reporting templates and record searches and report back to the PCT how we arrived at the figures when in fact I could have written 5 0s in a box by hand in less than a minute.
Ok those reports will still be inuse now and give the correct figures when interogating the NHS database but it was an incredible waste of my time when the service was new.
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Not like usual then, but your rubbish at trolling anyway.
At least you've outed yourself
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You obviously know far more about what goes on in the Nh
Than I do, my experiences with family members have been superb
And by no means am I blaming all Nh staff members
But some of the things you read about mainly people's experiences are truly outrageous, do I believe what people are saying about what happened to their loved ones is true ? Yes
The post about the angel of death, was what came to mind about this attractive nurse who seemed to derive pleasure from tormenting confused old people. This was written by the lady that originated the cure the nhs campaign.
That it may be difficult to weed out some of these people should be no reason it's not done. What seems to have happened is that it's all been swept under the carpet internally. That way there's no awkward questions.
What is needed is a few guilty convictions to shake people up.
That cannot be a bad thing, some of the stories are horrific
Compassion seems to have gone out of the window, I truly hope I don't witness something going on I'd probably be arrested.
Than I do, my experiences with family members have been superb
And by no means am I blaming all Nh staff members
But some of the things you read about mainly people's experiences are truly outrageous, do I believe what people are saying about what happened to their loved ones is true ? Yes
The post about the angel of death, was what came to mind about this attractive nurse who seemed to derive pleasure from tormenting confused old people. This was written by the lady that originated the cure the nhs campaign.
That it may be difficult to weed out some of these people should be no reason it's not done. What seems to have happened is that it's all been swept under the carpet internally. That way there's no awkward questions.
What is needed is a few guilty convictions to shake people up.
That cannot be a bad thing, some of the stories are horrific
Compassion seems to have gone out of the window, I truly hope I don't witness something going on I'd probably be arrested.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the NHS (at one time a good idea to help those who needed help) cannot be supported financially or in some cases morally in today's world.
The sooner we opt for an insurance-based system, with help for those who REALLY can't afford it, the better. Sadly the NHS is seen as a sacred cow and no politician has the balls to stand up and say "It Can't Work"
Can you imagine the use all that money could be put to instead.....?
Stands back and waits to be shot down.....
The sooner we opt for an insurance-based system, with help for those who REALLY can't afford it, the better. Sadly the NHS is seen as a sacred cow and no politician has the balls to stand up and say "It Can't Work"
Can you imagine the use all that money could be put to instead.....?
Stands back and waits to be shot down.....
M
mdf290
I'd love to see a load of nurses sacked or even prosecuted. I am with you all the way there.
I used to ask nurses to maintain records when they used vaccines so we knew were we were with stock and could keep up to date.
As agency workers (Our employed nurse left the service when we began to scrutinise her work) they refused to do it saying they weren't employees and it was not their responsibility.
I raised this up the command chain but the response came back via HR that she was right and we could not enforce duties on her.
In the end I was keeping track of medicines usage even though I was not clinical. Although I could not make the decisions about what vaccines were needed. All i could do was make sure we did not run out.
After I left I heard a nurse had been asked to leave our service (she had been working via the agency for around 9 months but refused a salaried job offer) The reason she was barred was she had given a patient an out of date vaccine.
The irony was not lost on me. I had recorded those vaccines as out of date on the inventory list before I left.
That one of the nurses who refused to take any responsibility for the medicines ended up making a huge foobar made me laugh and gave me some comfort. If she had taken responsibility for the medicines she would not have made that mistake but mistake she made and good riddance to her.
It fortunately was not a safety issue as it was a flu vaccine and being out of date would have simply meant the vaccine could have been weaker than necessary and not as effective. Still not good if the person was elderly and needed protection from flu though. However depending on the vaccine the result of an out of date vaccine could have been far worse.
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And now we have that Lincolnshire district whistle blower !
There was a letter in a local paper where a widow related how the consultant and his underling related in a very impersonal matter of fact way
Her husband would die and they walked off.
No compassion whatsoever inexcusable to me.
There was a letter in a local paper where a widow related how the consultant and his underling related in a very impersonal matter of fact way
Her husband would die and they walked off.
No compassion whatsoever inexcusable to me.
According to the insights offered by MDF, it appears that the problems with the NHS all stem from that particularly British 'cancer', bureaucracy.
I am just watching a recording of Casualty 1909 (I can multitask!), in which the London Hospital (like every other hospital in those days) was run by a Hospital Secretary/Chairman of Governors, the senior medical officers, and the matron, and their orders were beyond question.
Clearly, many improvements and discoveries have been made since those days, and I am sure that we are all grateful for them. However, what stands out like a sore thumb (excuse the pun) is our complete loss of a working hierarchy and discipline.
I do wonder whether it will ever be possible for us to regain these desirable things. If it is, and I'm afraid I rather doubt it, it will have to come from the top - the government.
I am just watching a recording of Casualty 1909 (I can multitask!), in which the London Hospital (like every other hospital in those days) was run by a Hospital Secretary/Chairman of Governors, the senior medical officers, and the matron, and their orders were beyond question.
Clearly, many improvements and discoveries have been made since those days, and I am sure that we are all grateful for them. However, what stands out like a sore thumb (excuse the pun) is our complete loss of a working hierarchy and discipline.
I do wonder whether it will ever be possible for us to regain these desirable things. If it is, and I'm afraid I rather doubt it, it will have to come from the top - the government.
yes I agree. The police and the coroner should provbe all deaths even those certified by hospital doctors, the coroner should employ indepenedent medical experts who should look at the medical history of every patient who dies in a hospital, study the complete medical records to see what the hospital staff did and what action they took, in many cases the doctors or the hospital medical staff do not give correct medication and oiften incorrect dosage!
PS.
My mother died in London Hospital through a delayed treatment, as when her situation deteriorated, i phoned the London Hospital and they told me definitely NOT to bring her into the kidney dialysis unit, despite her condition being quite serious, but they said do not bring her in as they would not be able to fit her in as they were very busy! So my mother had to wait one more day before her condition became extreme, and by the time she was admitted, the infection had take a good hold of her and she could not fight the infection despite giving her every kind of antibiotic!
simply because she should have been given the antibiotic when the infection hadn't had the time to develop full blown, this is to do with doctors being reluctant to give antibiotics readily due to bacteria developing resistance. But in her case she could have been saved if she had been given timely medicine.
Good job more people did not die, imagine if there was a serious emergency, like the London bombings, are they going to say sorry we are full, we can't take any more casualties in.
PS.
My mother died in London Hospital through a delayed treatment, as when her situation deteriorated, i phoned the London Hospital and they told me definitely NOT to bring her into the kidney dialysis unit, despite her condition being quite serious, but they said do not bring her in as they would not be able to fit her in as they were very busy! So my mother had to wait one more day before her condition became extreme, and by the time she was admitted, the infection had take a good hold of her and she could not fight the infection despite giving her every kind of antibiotic!
simply because she should have been given the antibiotic when the infection hadn't had the time to develop full blown, this is to do with doctors being reluctant to give antibiotics readily due to bacteria developing resistance. But in her case she could have been saved if she had been given timely medicine.
Good job more people did not die, imagine if there was a serious emergency, like the London bombings, are they going to say sorry we are full, we can't take any more casualties in.
M
mdf290
Really sorry to hear of your sad loss Mike.
Before 2004 you would have simply phoned your GP and they would have visited your mum at home where he would have prescribed the appropriate course of action.
However in 2004 there was a contractural wrangle between the Govt and the GPs (BMA)
The GPs wanted to be paid extra for making home visits out of hours but the Govt wanted home visits to be part of the existing pay structure.
Here this is where things went badly wrong for the public.
The govt and Gps agreed that 6% of their earnings would be made up from fulfilling Out of hours home visits.
The GPs agreed on condition that an Opt Out clause was in the contract.
So what happened?
Every GP Opted out quite happy that they still got 94% of their earnings and did not have to do any more pesky home visits.
It was a massive setback for Joe Public and the GPs had cleverly totally wrongfooted the Govt.
Now of course being seen Out of Hours means instead of someone very ill being seen at home you have to Hawk your poorly family member out of bed and drag them down to A&E.
Running A&E departments though has become expensive as every drunk thinks its clever to waste taxpayers money practically living in these places. A&E depts aren't just a GP with a black bag as they need to have full teams on site in case a pile up happens on the Local MWay or another disaster occurs.
Being told you cannot bring someone that day 'because they are busy' is just not acceptable.
I would have just turned up anyway and refused to have gone.
But then I know that in order to get treatment or be seen you have to be that squeaky wheel that gets the oil.
When I opened the three GP surgeries the head of the local district nursing team came to my first meeting with the PCT
She gave a huffy little speech obviously not for my benefit but for the benefit of the PCT managers in the room who had commisioned our services.
It went basically 'We are already too busy so don't bother adding any patients to our workload'.
What that rather ignorant b*tch with a bad customer ethos failed to grasp was that she would not get any extra work off us, she would only be dealing with exactly the same local populace they just might be registered with a different GP than the one they previously used.
(Our GP surgeries were added into an area where it was deemed to be underdoctored with historical long waits to get GP appointments.)
Instead she ignorantly assumed saw opening up a new GP surgery would mean out of nowhere suddenly thousands more patients would need seeing.
My relationship with that harridan did not improve as she made a deal and reported me to the PCT when she wanted to visit one of our patients and asked for their telephone number. Unfortunately Patient Confidentiality rules meant I could not do that. Patients at that time had to give consent for their telephone numbers and medical records to be shared including their personal data including telephone numbers. She did not need a telephone number as the patient was housebound and would be in anyway. She probably only wanted the number to tell the patient they would not be arriving.
Before 2004 you would have simply phoned your GP and they would have visited your mum at home where he would have prescribed the appropriate course of action.
However in 2004 there was a contractural wrangle between the Govt and the GPs (BMA)
The GPs wanted to be paid extra for making home visits out of hours but the Govt wanted home visits to be part of the existing pay structure.
Here this is where things went badly wrong for the public.
The govt and Gps agreed that 6% of their earnings would be made up from fulfilling Out of hours home visits.
The GPs agreed on condition that an Opt Out clause was in the contract.
So what happened?
Every GP Opted out quite happy that they still got 94% of their earnings and did not have to do any more pesky home visits.
It was a massive setback for Joe Public and the GPs had cleverly totally wrongfooted the Govt.
Now of course being seen Out of Hours means instead of someone very ill being seen at home you have to Hawk your poorly family member out of bed and drag them down to A&E.
Running A&E departments though has become expensive as every drunk thinks its clever to waste taxpayers money practically living in these places. A&E depts aren't just a GP with a black bag as they need to have full teams on site in case a pile up happens on the Local MWay or another disaster occurs.
Being told you cannot bring someone that day 'because they are busy' is just not acceptable.
I would have just turned up anyway and refused to have gone.
But then I know that in order to get treatment or be seen you have to be that squeaky wheel that gets the oil.
When I opened the three GP surgeries the head of the local district nursing team came to my first meeting with the PCT
She gave a huffy little speech obviously not for my benefit but for the benefit of the PCT managers in the room who had commisioned our services.
It went basically 'We are already too busy so don't bother adding any patients to our workload'.
What that rather ignorant b*tch with a bad customer ethos failed to grasp was that she would not get any extra work off us, she would only be dealing with exactly the same local populace they just might be registered with a different GP than the one they previously used.
(Our GP surgeries were added into an area where it was deemed to be underdoctored with historical long waits to get GP appointments.)
Instead she ignorantly assumed saw opening up a new GP surgery would mean out of nowhere suddenly thousands more patients would need seeing.
My relationship with that harridan did not improve as she made a deal and reported me to the PCT when she wanted to visit one of our patients and asked for their telephone number. Unfortunately Patient Confidentiality rules meant I could not do that. Patients at that time had to give consent for their telephone numbers and medical records to be shared including their personal data including telephone numbers. She did not need a telephone number as the patient was housebound and would be in anyway. She probably only wanted the number to tell the patient they would not be arriving.
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