We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

We have read in the last two days the most recent reports of extreme cruelty to which elderly patients have been subjected in an NHS hospital, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch. See these reports in the Telegraph: Here, Here and Here. Yet we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. We may wonder why no UK government in all the years since the NHS was founded in 1948 has done anything useful to stop the cruelty and negligence, the damaged health, the pain and suffering, the shattered lives of innocent patients. - Why? When we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. 

 

Why the official pretence that there are only a few bad (guilty) apples among a shiningly dedicated workforce? We all know that bad apples spread their rottenness to the other apples unless they are promptly removed. We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

Why are the most guilty (and usually the best paid) personnel moved sideways to jobs in other localities? - jobs exactly similar to those at which they have signally failed? And why are they paid golden severance settlements? We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

Can there be another country that treats elderly patients worse than the UK?

Frankly, I doubt it. So many times I have blogged about elderly patients in UK hospitals being left unfed or underfed, dehydrated because no one gave them a drink of water, lying in bed in pain and in misery, humiliation and excreta, because no one had the decency or compassion to take them to the toilet or help them onto a commode or bedpan, often with bedsores or avoidable injuries because of poor nursing. Over and over and over and over again we read accounts of such awful suffering. It makes you sick to the stomach and sick at heart. This is our much-vaunted NHS! These are our healthcare professionals.

Yesterday was another of these days of shame, the news media full of the scandalous 'care' accorded to elderly patients in 3 hospitals in particular - 3 in particular out of 12 hospitals that the Care Quality Commission inspected unannounced and were appalled by. See this BBC News report. Yes, I know that not every British hospital and not every nurse treats elderly vulnerable patients in this disgracefully cruel way, but how does that excuse the ones that do?

What do we routinely hear after such sordid revelations? - It is usually a statement couched in strange jargon-ridden gobbledygook that favours weasel words and the passive voice. We are told that 'lessons have been learned' and other lies. And nothing changes. No one is arraigned and charged for their cruelty and neglect, no one is even sacked, for their dereliction of duty, for their failure to fulfil their duty of care. We all pay a great deal of money by way of taxes for our massively flawed NHS. Some of us, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, are getting a very poor deal indeed.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the Christian season that is customarily a time of reflection, repentance and self-denial. It symbolises the 40 days in which Jesus fasted in the wilderness and was tempted by the Devil. He withstood the three tests and banished the devil with the words, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

It was on Ash Wednesday years ago that the then Bishop of Sheffield, David Lunn, came to see me in my home.

I had been seeking his help in my endeavours to put an end to the appallingly cruel treatment being meted out to some patients at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital in order to cover up sustained clinical negligence. See the account of my personal experience of this. He had not wanted to help, but had not wanted to admit that he did not want to help. He had made several excuses first. Then at last he had had me to see him at the Bishop's Palace. I was shown into the library there, and waited a little while there, on my own, until he came into the room. I found it a forbidding room, with its daunting collection of commentaries on St Paul. I'd have felt happier with books about Jesus.

He had already checked up on me with Professor Eric Wilkes, whom we both knew and respected: checked that I was a person who told the truth, and Prof had assured him I was. I had told Prof that I was seeking the Bishop's help. At that meeting in his library, I left some further information with him and he later wrote to me arranging the Ash Wednesday visit.

He arrived in his purple bishop's cassock and stayed a long time - I forget how long. He said he would need some of the lords in the House of Lords to help him to deal with the matter. I had asked him to ensure that patients with agonising toothache, needing dental help, would not be told at that dental hospital (or indeed any other) that they were not in pain and were 'just depressed', without properly examining the patients' teeth! and to give the dentists a statutory duty to examine the patients' teeth. Mr Reg Dinsdale, the negligent consultant dentist who did me the most harm, had told me he was not going to 'indulge' me by having necessary X-rays done! (I have written about him in my short story, Long in the Toothache.)

So I set about getting some lords to help the bishop. I was already in contact with the secretary of a society - I think it was called something like The Human Rights Society. I had already helped her to help a guy in the North-East who had been so atrociously treated in his dealings with the NHS and was so sick of being ignored or insulted (but never helped) by the useless NHS Complaints Procedures, and by his MP, that he had gone to London to the Houses of Parliament and had nailed his hand to a door there! to try to get someone to do something about all the NHS cruelty. - He still didn't get any help... - I had talked about him on local radio, and sent him a recording of the interview, and it had lifted his spirits to know that his shocking treatment was at least no longer completely ignored.

I asked that secretary if she could help me. She said the society was only small and not very active, but it had several lords among its membership. She asked these lords if they would help and they said they would, but that the Bishop would have to introduce the matter in the House of Lords and then they would support him in the matter. When the Bishop had left me that Ash Wednesday, he had said to me that in approaching anyone about the matter after that day, I could quote him at any time and in any context (I remember those were his exact words) that he had investigated the matter and knew that I was telling the truth and he would support me in the matter. I asked him to write me a short note to that effect and sign it but he said that that would not be necessary; I could trust him to keep his word.

Excitedly, I wrote to him to tell him that there were these lords happy to support him in the House of Lords. I never heard from him again!

I wrote to him again. He did not reply. I rang him. His newly-appointed secretary had clearly been told by him that I was a nutter, and she spoke to me as though I was half-witted. Neither she nor he answered my letters and he refused to speak to me on the phone. I can only surmise that he had supposed that I would be unable to get any lords to back him up in the House of Lords and so had felt safe in assuming that his promise to speak on the matter would never need to be kept. And he had most shamefully lied to me when he had told me that I could quote him at any time and in any context that he had investigated the matter and knew that I was telling the truth and he would support me in the matter.