Everyone’s At Fault, No-one’s To Blame…

The court heard Melody's two friends, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Port, frantically tried to get help when the attack began on October 12, 2010, but neither had a mobile phone.

Instead, the pair took the decision to drive her to hospital. On the way to the city centre hospital, Melody was in 'severe distress' as she held her head out of the window battling for air. She even tried to get out of the vehicle in panic.

When they arrived at the hospital car park in Mount Vernon, Grace ran into the reception to plead for help for her stricken friend.

As you would. I mean, here you are, at a hospital, run by that wonder of the world - the NHS - that Michael Moore has told all your countrymen should be replicated in your own country immediately.

You’re saved, right? You’re in the right place!

Well….no:

The medical student was told she had to call 999 and despite her screams of dismay was turned back to the car, where Elizabeth was supporting 'swaying' Melody to the entrance.

She collapsed before reaching the door and an ambulance arrived to take her the few yards to the A&E department.

But it’s not the fault of the NHS! Perish the thought:

…Liverpool Coroner’s Court heard the decision to take Melody to the hospital by car rather than call paramedics 'was the wrong one' and the coroner said he would not attach 'culpability' to the NHS.

And yet…

The hospital has since reviewed its policy for responding to medical emergencies within the hospital grounds.

Hmmm. They aren’t at fault. The coroner said so. Why change?

And…who is at fault, if anyone?

Mr Rebello told the court of the findings presented in the report by Dr Taggart, who claimed that the 'decision to put Melody in the car was the wrong one'.

He continued: 'Paramedics carry the appropriate equipment in case of an asthma attack of this nature and calling 999 would mean the medicine is brought to them.' Similarly, the findings from Dr Good stated that 'lack of awareness' was a factor in deaths caused by asthma attacks.

Dr Good wrote: 'The decision to travel by car is a common factor in deaths through asthma attacks.

'At the time of arrival, she was one to two minutes from respiratory arrest and no amount of emergency care would have saved her.'

So, it’s the fault of her two friends. Right?

Nope. Not really them, either:

Tearful Mr Davis asked the coroner if staff at the Royal Liverpool Hospital were at fault, but Mr Rebello said he would not to attach 'culpability' to the NHS.

He also told the grieving father, who lives with his wife Dorothea in San Jose, that Melody’s friends acted in her best interests.

Mr Rebello told Melody’s father: 'I am sure you would have liked attention to have been given in a different way when Melody arrived at the hospital.

'But the experts say that was not causative to her death.

'I’m hoping that the tragedy and upset you have suffered will enable other parents to take heed of the advice and to phone 999.

'In that way Melody’s death would not have been in vain.'

Seems like it was in vain to me…

Oh, You're Wrong., It IS A Freak Show...

Large dust sheets and tarpaulins were put up outside her home in Aberdare, South Wales, so the operation could be conducted in private.

'This is not a freak show,' said a police officer.

Builders had to remove a window before tearing down an external and internal wall to free Miss Davis from her semi-detached council house. Scaffolding and a makeshift bridge were used to move her safely, and while there was a crane on site, it is not thought it was used to lift her.

Residents said the operation to move Miss Davis began just after 9am, and she was seen leaving the scene in an ambulance just after 5pm.

The cost of the operation – involving police, fire service and ambulance crews – is likely to run into tens of thousands of pounds to cover manpower, plus the emergency call-out and the reconstruction of the demolished walls.

...but the freak isn't young Georgia Davies, but the grotesque priorities of the NHS itself. The NHS happy to sit idly by as her carers slowly kill her as assuredly as if they were beating her daily:

In August 2008, a 33st Georgia was told by doctors to 'lose 20 stones or die'.

Spurred into action, Georgia attended a £3,600-a-month Wellspring diet academy in the US for nine months, during which time she shrank to 18st and beat her Type 2 diabetes. She was seen by behavioural coaches, food psychologists and fitness trainers and encouraged to walk 10,000 steps every day.

She returned to the UK in June 2009 to look after her mother who has a heart condition.

But she reverted to old habits when she returned home.

'When I arrived my mum said she hadn't had time to prepare any healthy food so we had fish and chips instead,' she said. 'For that moment on, I had a niggling feeling that things weren't going to work out.'

Yet which, while it's happy to leap into action once things reach critical mass, and free her from her prison with all the care of Seaworld staff assisting a stranded fin whale, it's strangely blasé about ensuring that patients already in their care don't starve to death, that they don't die through neglect and incompetence, that patients are properly diagnosed in the first place.

Yes, there's a freak show here, all right.

"I put my hand inside and felt an organ and I pulled it..."

File that one under 'things you don't want to hear at an inquest'...

Dr Carter said as a result of the death operating procedure had been modified slightly and the new method communicated "worldwide".

The 'new method', presumably, being 'Don't let the trainee have a go, and if you do and they mess it up, don't then rummage around in there like you were looking in your cutlery drawer for that pickle-fork you know you had just a few weeks ago'....

Oh, Well, So Long As The Paperwork's In Place....

A father has hit out after a York Hospital doctor failed to consult next of kin before filling in a “do not attempt resuscitation” form for his son.

Gosh, and they said this’d never happen!

… kidney patient Andrew Watson’s condition deteriorated one night while his parents, Peter and Sheila, were asleep at their home in Wigginton.

Peter Watson only found out the following afternoon about the decision not to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation if his son went into cardio respiratory arrest.

Whoops! However, the hospital has an excuse ready.

Not a good one, admittedly:

However, hospital bosses said a DNACPR form was not a consent form, but was intended as a record that a discussion about the decision had taken place.

*BZZZZZT!*

Still wrong. Because no discussion had…

Mr Watson said he disputed some of the findings of an investigation into the incident.

He said: “I do not intend to let this lie, as I do not want any patient, partner or next of kin to be put through the same distress that we had to suffer, and I don’t believe the trust will do anything constructive if left to manage it themselves.”

Does anyone? Anyone at all? Bueller?

Sarah Lovell, directorate manager for acute and general medicine, who investigated the matter, said in a report that Andrew had not been well enough for the decision to have been discussed with him and the doctor concerned had intended to discuss it with his next of kin.

Well, that road to hell is just paved with intentions, eh, Sarah?

She acknowledged staff could have made more pro-active attempts to arrange for a discussion much earlier in the day.

And could have, say, not simply filled the form in regardless….

Are The Words ‘No, Love, It’s Supposed To Look Like That’ So Hard Then..?

GPs should not refer women who are well but worried for female genital cosmetic surgery on the NHS, say experts.

Well, duh!

Specialists at a Central London teaching hospital say they received 30 such referrals, mainly from family doctors, over the past three years.

This included eight schoolgirls - one as young as 11 - the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology reports.

Experts say doctors need clear guidance on how best to care for women who mistakenly believe they need surgery.

Sorry, why? Don’t they do five years at medical school? How hard can it be?

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons says medics need to determine whether a problem exists or whether an alternative solution may be preferable, but offers no advice on how to judge the problem, say the researchers from University College London's Women's Health Institute.

If it’s not an actual clinical problem, what sort of advice should you need?

They say it may be simpler to ban the procedure in the NHS altogether, leaving it to private practices.

Well, I’m all for this on cost grounds, actually, but then what about those who do have a real, clinical problem? Where do they go?

I mean, good grief, why is it so bloody hard for supposed ‘professionals’ to just do the damned job they are paid for?

Dr Sarah Creighton and colleagues believe the future demand for so-called "designer vagina" operations or labial reductions is potentially infinite and is driven by society's wider and growing desire for cosmetic surgery in general and changing expectations about what is a desirable appearance for women.

Yes, you can certainly blame the media and women’s magazines and fads started by the permatanned chavs of Essex and Cheshire for the desire for such surgery.

But you can’t blame the GPs’ reluctance to address those issues with their patients, and to send them for unnecessary and costly surgery on the NHS, on that.

Can you?

Pass The Parcel With Real Lives…

A dying teenager was "lost" for an hour in an NHS hospital after a bed manager asked nursing staff to move her to an inappropriate ward, an inquest heard today.

Doctors caring for 17-year-old Clementine Nicholson were "astonished" that she had been taken from a resuscitation unit without their consent, Coventry Coroner's Court heard.

And how did this happen?

Computer said ‘Yes’, innit?

Dr Mair Edmunds, associate director for clinical performance at the hospital, expressed her regret that Clementine had been moved by an electronic bed management system.

Well, no.

She might have been incorrectly marked for movement by a computer system, but real live people – supposedly, professional NHS staff – would have done the actual moving.

I mean, surely they check that someone’s well enough to be moved before they…

Oh:

Dr Edmunds said the hospital now had a nurse controller to oversee such moves and that more robust procedures were now in place to ensure patients were well enough to be transferred.

Before, no one checked?

/facepalm

Take Your Medicine Like Good Boys And Girls!

The government has more than 30 million swine flu vaccines left over after responding to the outbreak of the swine flu pandemic last year.

Hmmm, what to do, what to do....

I know! *snaps fingers*

Combining immunisation against the flu with the swine flu vaccine would prevent people from being able to turn down the swine flu jab without also missing out on the usual protection against winter flu viruses.

Capital idea! If they won't take their medicine, Nanny NHS will hold their nose until they do!

She said: "By March this year, that vaccine had been given out 5.5million times and there have been no reported cases of narcolepsy in Britain. There is very little change to the seasonal flu vaccination which will still protect against a large number of flu viruses. It is simply that the swine flu vaccine has been added. People will be notified of this when they receive their invitation letters to get the jab so it won't be a surprise."

This sort of breathtaking audacity still comes as a surprise, love, even to me....

‘It's like they thought, she's got dementia, she's dying, why do we need to do anything?’

Dora Duggan, 81, who was terminally ill and suffering from dementia, was moved from her ward to a room which was full of boxes and was being used for storage at the time.

The hospital also left a bag full of tablets within her grasp, prevented more than two members of her family visiting her bedside at the same time and did not put a wristband on her during her four day stay in hospital.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the caring profession.

Nottingham University Hospitals Trust has now apologised ‘unreservedly’ for the great-grandmother’s treatment which they admit was ‘not acceptable’.

No s***, Sherlock.

Mrs Young, 46, a civil servant, said: ‘They treated her like an animal and shut her in a room that wasn’t even sterile.

‘I don’t believe they wheeled the bed in along with all her other stuff – there wasn’t room and there were only three nurses on that night.

‘She was supposed to be on oxygen, so I’ve no idea how they’d have got that in.’

She added: ‘The nurses hadn’t even written on the notes that night that she’d been moved into the cupboard. They added that later on - after I’d made a complaint.’

Gearing Up For Withdrawal Of Goodwill?

Working to rule is the most favoured method of industrial action among the 5,185 nurses and midwives who took part in Nursing Times’ exclusive survey.

Asked what duties they would refuse to do as part of formal industrial action, 59 per cent of respondents said they would refuse to work unpaid overtime and 53 per cent said they would insist on leaving the ward or clinic for breaks - something nurses in practice are often unable to do.

Other targets for bolshy nurses may be ‘non-nursing duties’:

Just over half said they would refuse to carry out non-nursing duties such as cleaning and portering - another role nurses are frequently asked to do when workplaces are short staffed.

Of course, should this take place, patients are unlikely to notice the difference:

A report by the National Health Service has found that millions of patients suffer falls or malnutrition during their stay in hospital, according to the Daily Mail.

When you have to remind people exactly what their jobs are, you may well ask how they’d have the nerve to go on strike in the first place…

The report, entitled High Impact Actions for Nursing and Midwifery: The Essential Collection, concluded that many of the injuries could have been avoided and reminded staff of their duties.

Almost a quarter of patients are malnourished the report, which was sent to hospitals last month, found.

It admitted: "Most patients, carers, health care professionals, commissioners, senior managers and chief executives do not realise how common it is in the UK and so it goes unrecognised and untreated."

Labour hid ugly truth about NHS

DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected.

They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives.

One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets.

It says “several interviewees” cited the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [NHS Trust in Kent where 269 deaths during 2005-6 were caused by infection with Clostridium difficile bacteria].

“Managers crowded in patients in order to meet waiting-time targets and, in the process, lost sight of the fundamental hygiene requirements for infection prevention,” the report stated.

There were subsequent failings at health trusts in Basildon in Essex, and Mid Staffordshire. Filthy wards and nurse shortages led to up to 1,200 deaths at Stafford hospital.

Lord Darzi, the former health minister, commissioned the three reports from international consultancies to assess the progress of the NHS as it approached its 60th anniversary in 2008. They have come to light after a freedom of information request.

One must wonder at the pointlessness of a Labour Lord commissioning reports if his own party then contrives to hide unfavourable conclusions.

Source: The Times

Novices do nurses’ job after week’s training

HEALTHCARE assistants in the National Health Service with as little as one week’s training are performing technical nursing tasks on patients, including heart tests, blood checks and changing dripfeeding bags.

The service is also relying on unqualified nursing staff to carry out basic duties such as washing patients and taking them to the toilet.

Despite being responsible for such intimate treatment, the 150,000 healthcare assistants and nursing auxiliaries working in the NHS are not registered with any professional body.

The unregulated staff have been brought into hospitals partly to cut costs. However, criticism has also been levelled at ambitious nurses who perceive more menial tasks to be “beneath them”.

Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said that supermarket shelf-stackers receive more instruction than healthcare assistants. Now he is demanding a substantial minimum training period, as well as the introduction of a code of conduct.

“Hospitals take well-meaning people off the street, give them a uniform and put them on a ward,” said Carter.

“Supermarkets give all of their staff training. They wouldn’t dream of taking someone on, not even someone stacking the shelves, by just saying ‘find your way around’.”

One healthcare assistant, who received only a week’s training before starting work at an Essex hospital, told The Sunday Times how unqualified nurses are being relied on to wash and feed patients.

They are also used to adjust the amount of food that patients receive through a nasal tube and can even be asked to carry out echocardiograms (ECGs), which test the function of the heart.

The whistleblower, who did not want to be named, said she often felt inadequately trained for the tasks she performs.

“You only get about a week’s training and that is to train you how to take blood pressure and to take blood sugar levels,” she said. “You are shown how to wash patients, how to manually handle the patients and how to use a hoist.

“There are things I come up against that I am very unsure of. I did not get trained in how to carry out ECGs.

“We are supposed to put the patients onto the ECG machine and get a [heart] tracing. The other day I was asked to do one and I wasn’t up to doing it because I haven’t been trained. I didn’t want to do it wrong.”

Last week the Patients Association published a report detailing the lack of basic nursing care received by NHS patients. It revealed how patients were often being left in soiled bedclothes, deprived of sufficient food and drink and having repeated falls.

Katherine Murphy, director of the association, said it had received calls from healthcare assistants and auxiliaries complaining that they are being left to carry out duties they are not qualified to perform.

“Healthcare assistants are being asked to do a lot of the work that trained nurses should be doing,” she said. “We had healthcare assistants phoning us up who were put on a high-dependency unit with no introduction to the technology and no understanding of what they were meant to do.”

Unison, the public services union, claims the training of healthcare assistants and nursing auxiliaries is “patchy”. Many opt to complete national vocational qualifications, but this is not obligatory.

The union is concerned that nurses and healthcare assistants do not have standard uniforms across the NHS, leading to confusion among patients about whether or not they are being cared for by a qualified professional. One nurse, writing on the Nursing Times website, said that even she has found it difficult to distinguish between qualified and unqualified nurses.

The nurse wrote: “I may be being cynical, but the reason why employers are going to resist this is so that they can continue to confuse patients and relatives about the true staffing levels on wards.

“Even though I am a nurse, when I have visited relatives in hospital I have found it extremely difficult to identify the qualified from the unqualified staff.”

The healthcare assistant who spoke to The Sunday Times said qualified nurses fill out paperwork while healthcare assistants wash and feed patients. She explained that on one occasion, when a qualified nurse had been assisting with the washing of patients, she was called away to sign paperwork by another nurse who said: “Washing isn’t your job, that is not part of your job description.”

Claire Rayner, president of the Patients Association and a former nurse and newspaper agony aunt, admitted that such views were widely held by nurses. “It is an appalling attitude to say it is not your job to wash patients. I am afraid this is spreading widely and I disapprove of it strongly. Unfortunately, today’s nurses think it is too menial,” Rayner said.

Frank Field, the former Labour welfare reform minister, said: “It is a terrible indictment if the most qualified nurses on the ward are filling in the paperwork and the least qualified are doing the nursing.

“Cleaning people is an essential nursing function. At the same time nurses are talking to the patients and finding out what the patients’ worries are.”

On his blog, Field recalls how he had resorted to feeding the patient in the bed next to his mother, who had had a stroke, because nurses had failed to help her. He wrote: “The woman was paralysed and unable to reach her food. It was regularly placed there at meal times and then simply taken away uneaten. The nurses commented how kind it was of me to feed the old lady.

“I didn’t have the courage to tell them that it was their job; and that they had stood in a group gossiping, watching what I was doing. I was fearful that they would take it out on my mother if I did so.”

Department of Health spokesperson said: "The NHS is in a very healthy position regarding recruitment and retention, with supply broadly matching demand in most areas. Since 2007 we have seen a rise of 8,563 more qualified nurses.

"Local NHS organisations need to plan and develop their workforce to deliver the right staff with the right skills to meet the needs of their local populations and ensure high quality care for patients."

Source : The Times

A little departure

Why do people die

They die of ignorance.

Our schools do a very poor job of teaching critical thinking skills, but they do a fantastic job of churning out the next generation of illiterate wage slaves. And this, of course, is entirely the point. That's why you can't even call public schools a "failure" -- because they are actually quite good at what they're designed to do: Train people to be mind slaves who get along in society without asking too many questions.

The truth is that even really smart people are mind slaves, too, because you don't get through the world of academia by asking lots of questions. You survive academia by conforming. You get through medical school by swallowing whatever you're told and shutting down that part of your brain that used to ask skeptical questions. People who ask too many questions get flunked out.

Thus, all the people who become the top doctors, academics and leaders in our nation are, by definition, conformists. That's how they are so easily fooled by the disinformation campaigns waged by Big Pharma, the FDA and the medical journals. And that's how they end up with a double-doctorate degree in physics while chowing down a greasy, genetically-modified cheeseburger in the other.

The above is taken from this article

The NHS would prefer you not to read this because it would undermine their profits and their big pharmacy company grants.

Don't say you were not warned.

Mollie Sugden Dies

From the BBC

Actress Mollie Sugden has died at the age of 86, her agent has said.

She died at the Royal Surrey Hospital after a long illness.

Right theres the third death of a celebrity Farrah, Michael and Mollie

Obnoxio's Manifesto

OTC makes the sensible case for scrapping large chunks of the quangocracy; buried away in the comments is his fuller manifesto, which is pretty much the same as my own:
---------------
First step would be to leave the EU.

Second step would be to repeal every law based on EU directives. We can always re-implement later. Mass repeal of every law introduced by Labour since 1997. (Probably a lot of overlap!)

Third step would be to shit-can every consultancy contract with the government and renegotiate.

Every single drop of government funding for quangoes and charities stopped dead.

Massive tax simplification: flat tax of 25% on everything above £12,000 per annum. Dividends untaxed. Corporate tax abolished*. All duties abolished**. VAT abolished. National Insurance either abolished or replace the current Ponzi scheme with actual insurance.

Sell off the NHS.

Renationalise the trains and resell them in such a way that you don't have oligopolies on routes. Same thing for buses.

Deregulate schools and introduce vouchers.

Introduce citizens income, end ALL welfare programs. Implement program to gradually phase out citizen's income***.

Sack the entire civil service, district and town councils. Review the entire governance requirement.

Go to the market to get us out of the bank ownership business.
---------------
* I'd quibble with this. It would be far better to have a 20% flat tax on all income, personal or corporate, than 25% on personal incomes and 0% on corporate.

** 'Duties' that equate to user charges, such as fuel duties to pay for roads; a modest tax of a few percent on new goods to cover refuse collection costs; or indeed taxes on land values seem like 'good' taxes to me.

*** I'm not sure where this is going. A higher effective income tax-free personal allowance is an important corollary of a Citizen's Income-style welfare system; as nobody can be sure which is preferable, why not give people a choice?

Quangoes of the week

From AOLNews:

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo will announce the new Alcohol Improvement Programme at the National Alcohol Conference in Nottingham. It is hoped the £6 million* measures will help reduce alcohol-related harm.

They include establishing regional alcohol managers, pulling together local information, and increasing access to specialist treatments. Twenty of the most deprived primary care trusts (PCTs) in the country will share £3 million of the funding...

Another £2.7 million will be spent on regional alcohol managers and £450,000 will go to the National Support Team.

An extra £1 million will fund a new Alcohol Learning Centre.

Via The Fat Bigot, who sumarises thusly: "Perhaps £1million out of the 6 will actually go directly into something that might improve patient care, the rest will be spent generating and circulating paper. What better example do we need of the futility and wastefulness of government-led, top-down management of a service?"

* Maybe they'll fund this from the 10p tax on plastic bags that they are thinking of introducing in Wales? See previous post.

Big Government f***s up, yet again (2)

The new contracts for NHS dentists which our very own government introduced* turn out to be a fraudsters' charter.

* Or indeed imposed, depending on your point of view. I know of nothing that suggests NHS dentists were actually lobbying for such changes, above and beyond the usual "Can we have some more money, please?"

"GPs paid more for working less"

This is hardly news, is it?

Average GP Partners salaries are now £114,000 a year, as against £56,000 in 2001. Adjust that for the fact the average working week is now 36.3 hours, not 43.1, that's equivalent to a payrise of 130%.

The generic headline "Government allows taxpayer to get conned out of billions by rent-seeking monopoly for umpteenth time" would cover it.

"Smoking costs the NHS billions"

The bansturbators are at it again.

FFS, the NHS is a taxpayer funded public body. So what they are really saying is "Smoking costs the taxpayer billions". If that figure of £2.7 billion for the 'cost' of treating smoking-related illnesses is correct*, let's compare it with the taxes that smokers pay;

1. Let's kick off with £9 billion tobacco duties, stick on £1.5 billion for the VAT on top, makes £10.5 billion.

2. We pay for smoking out of our net income, taxable at around 30%, so before we can buy our smokes, we've paid another £4.5 billion in income tax/National Insurance.

3. Add to this the fact that smokers live ten years less than non-smokers, that reduces the number of pensioners by a 15 per cent or so, reducing the cost to the taxpayer by a further £12 billion odd.

Tot that lot up, and you'll find that smokers save other taxpayers about £27 billion per annum. Is it too much to ask that ten per cent of that is spent on treatment?

The much quoted ASH are of course yet another quango - they received a cool £320,400 from the Dept of Health and The Wales Assembly Government (see page 15 of the 2007 accounts), which is more than half their income. And is probably included in the £2.7 billion figure.

* And doesn't get revised up by a factor of four, like they did with alcohol related NHS admissions.

Alan Johnson's speech at the Labour Party Conference

Just caught the umpteenth rerun of this, yadda yadda, blah blah blah, but this stuck in the craw:

In the mid 1990s infection rates rocketed in understaffed and dilapidated hospitals. Last week I announced that NHS staff had succeeded in cutting MRSA infections, not by half as envisaged but by 57% in three years.

Woah! Fact check!

Deaths from MRSA increased from 51 in 1993 to 800 in 2002 (BBC)

Deaths from MRSA increased from 955 in 2003 to 1,168 in 2004 (The Torygraph)

Deaths from MRSA fell slightly from 1,652 in 2006 to 1,593 in 2007 "the first time the number of MRSA-related deaths has fallen since the ONS began keeping records in 1993" (BBC).

So we are still way above the numbers back in 1997, eh lads?

Meanwhile, the number of death certificates mentioning Clostridium difficile increased from under 2,000 in 2003 to over 8,000 in 2007 (BBC).

If you're going to tell Big Fat Lies, don't lie about things that can be disproven by scratting around for twenty minutes on the internet, FFS! Ah well, at least Tractor Production is up, I suppose ...

"More people can choose to die at home"

I overlooked this fine article on a recent pronouncement by Health Secretary Alan Johnson MP (Lab, Kingston upon Hull West and Kessle).

Faced with headlines like these, a more accurate statement would be "More people will choose to take their chances at home".