So the report into Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust is public, and it makes for grim reading for the public and a valediction for many coal-face, NHS workers. For anyone about to become an inpatient it must make them feel extremely nervous. When in hospital you are basically reliant on the care provided for you by the staff, so to read that patient deaths were caused by neglecting the basic standards and that patients were left unfed, unwashed and unmedicated, must be horrifying. At this point is it easy to dump all the blame on those who physically failed to provide care, in this case nurses, but hallelulah, the report then goes on to get to the crux of the matter by finding fault with the Trust Board and the Local Health Authority and then recognising that the Department of Health is ‘remote from the reality of the service at the front line’.
Here is the author of the report speaking at a press conference, he graphically enumerates the failings at Mid-Staffordshire, neglect that makes me shudder, failures in compassion and caring, a culture where patient care was obviously not the top priority. Some of this may well be down to a few front-line workers, to a culture within that institution that has been allowed to continue without investigation, and yes, there should have been investigation, many patients and their relatives had made complaints. Why would this situation been allowed to continue? Lack of leadership, I’m going to qualify that, lack of effective leadership but, being a clinical NHS worker, the words which leap out are ‘Insufficient staff to deliver effective patient care’, ‘a focus on reaching targets, achieving financial balance…. at a cost of delivering acceptable standards of care’.
For years I have been writing about staff shortages and paperwork but in The Safety of Services blog entry I highlighted the government and DoH as being culpable for many failings within the NHS. In fact, reading it now, 5 years after I wrote it as a response to a report from the King’s Fund, I am truly depressed to see how nothing has changed. Substitute NHS for Maternity Services and you have the skeleton of today’s report.
There is a tiny piece of self-satisfaction, knowing that I can sit at home, tapping away in my spare time and come up with an immature version of an official report but there is also huge sadness. It just goes to show that those who are a position to influence and drive positive change in the NHS never listen to front-line workers as what I write thousands voice.
A Midwife's Muse 