NHS TO BE NO MORE

[DavyR]

In terms of the NHS there was a major scandal quite recently at, something similar to, The North Staffs. Hospital Trust or whatever, you should go onto the WWW & plug the name is & see what you get back.

 

Just in case anyone has tried this and is wondering why the North Staffordshire NHS Trust in Stoke-on-Trent appears not to have been involved in a major scandal, try Googling the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust in Stafford instead.

 

Yet another case of a hospital ignoring the principle that caring for patients should be their main concern, in favour of focusing on achieving the latest set of meaningless Government targets and initiatives.

 

At the risk of repeating something I've said on here many times before, this all dates back to Margaret Thatcher's insistence that the NHS needed "General Management" (i.e. that it should be run like a big business). This piece of dogma resulted in the 1982 Griffiths Report which has set the tone for the NHS ever since.

 

As opponents of General Management said at the time (in reference to Sir Roy Griffiths, the Sainsbury's boss who produced the report), "You can't treat patients like cans of beans".

 

Well, you shouldn't, but that's exactly what successive Governments have been doing ever since.

[barry luxton]

Just in case anyone has tried this and is wondering why the North Staffordshire NHS Trust in Stoke-on-Trent appears not to have been involved in a major scandal, try Googling the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust in Stafford instead.

 

Yet another case of a hospital ignoring the principle that caring for patients should be their main concern, in favour of focusing on achieving the latest set of meaningless Government targets and initiatives.

 

At the risk of repeating something I've said on here many times before, this all dates back to Margaret Thatcher's insistence that the NHS needed "General Management" (i.e. that it should be run like a big business). This piece of dogma resulted in the 1982 Griffiths Report which has set the tone for the NHS ever since.

 

As opponents of General Management said at the time (in reference to Sir Roy Griffiths, the Sainsbury's boss who produced the report), "You can't treat patients like cans of beans".

 

Well, you shouldn't, but that's exactly what successive Governments have been doing ever since.

 

I was wondering what work trusts actally do and the extent of their usefulness, it's becoming clearer now.

[DavyR]

I was wondering what work trusts actally do and the extent of their usefulness, it's becoming clearer now.

 

It's hardly a new problem. I started working for the NHS in 1971:

 

"From 1974 to 2006 the NHS was in an almost continuous state of what some call redisorganisation. All the reorganisations have had as their objectives:

 

design around the patient

devolved responsibility

clinical leadership

better integrated care

better quality of care

less bureaucracy/management/costs

 

Sadly there is very little evidence that structural change produced any of these benefits, although it was seldom left in place long enough for anyone to be able to tell."

 

http://www.sochealth.co.uk/news/NHSreform.htm

 

Crazy, isn't it? We'd obviously all be better off without the NHS. Just let Natural Selection take over.

[big_cod]

And it was tories who gave us our beloved health trusts.

 

paul.

Edited April 5, 2011 by big_cod

[watatoad]

Personally I do not blame any one Government they are all as bad as each other.

 

What I will say has added considerably to the problems and trouble in the NHS is lazy, inefficient and unnecessary management and staff and departments (which was promoted mainly by the Labour party as is the unneeded increase in local government employees on fat salaries far above the private sector or the employees abilities and with a great pension to look forward to), whereas the Tories just do not seem to have any idea how to sort it out and waste money on researching and discussing the problems.

[Sportsman]

My father in law is in hospital at the moment with his second broken hip in a year.

Reports of the standard of nursing care he is receiving is not encouraging

The hospital is closed to all visitors due to an outbreak of sickness and diarrhea with 5 wards closed to new admissions

 

The NHS is the envy of the world?

 

Not any more

[DavyR]

The hospital is closed to all visitors due to an outbreak of sickness and diarrhea with 5 wards closed to new admissions

 

To be fair, a lot of that is caused by visitors who enter the hospital having knowingly been in contact with norovirus infections. Not a great deal the NHS or anyone else can do about that, other than barring visitors all together.

 

I agree with you (as you know) about the drop in nursing standards!

[Steve Walker]

We've just had 13 years of rule by the party which is most emphatic in its support for and belief in the NHS. Many of those years times of economic boom. Money from current income was thrown at it, and many new facilities were built at the expense of future generations.

 

So there was the will and there were the resources, and there was more than a decade to do it in, why is it still not fixed? How can standards have been allowed to drop?

[corydoras]

To be fair, a lot of that is caused by visitors who enter the hospital having knowingly been in contact with norovirus infections. Not a great deal the NHS or anyone else can do about that, other than barring visitors all together.

 

I agree with you (as you know) about the drop in nursing standards!

They can keep the place clean. When my Father-in-Law was in the hospice in Caen we went to visit him one night. I Waited about 45 minutes in the downstairs foyer for my turn to go up and see him. In that 45 minutes the floor in the foyer was washed and the lift was cleaned twice. The last time I was in an NHS hospital I saw dead cockroaches on the floor.

[Sportsman]

We've just had 13 years of rule by the party which is most emphatic in its support for and belief in the NHS. Many of those years times of economic boom. Money from current income was thrown at it, and many new facilities were built at the expense of future generations.

 

So there was the will and there were the resources, and there was more than a decade to do it in, why is it still not fixed? How can standards have been allowed to drop?

 

A lot of the money was spent on establishing targets and league tables and then employing enough managers to ensure that the targets were met (at the expense of good clinical practice)

Many millions (billions?) have been spent on computer systems that don't work.

The decline in nursing standards stems from making nursing a degree course and removing student nurses by and large from a ward environment where they learned to look after sick people.

We now have nursing staff who see themselves as highly educated professionals but we don't have any nurses who know how (or can be bothered ) to bath a patient in bed properly, wipe their bum or make them comfortable, which is what the sick person actually needs.

There is also a lack of discipline without any leadership from ward sisters or matrons who, in my day, would not have put up with conditions as they are now.