Clearly not working
Finally an acknowledgement of mistakes made.
Pride of place today goes to the interview in the Telegraph with Patricia Hewitt.
The new system, she says, “is clearly not working but the problems are being worked on day and night.”
As for calls for her resignation, she says: “When things go wrong people will call for your head. This shouldn’t have happened and I am desperately sorry that it did but the real priority now is to sort it out.”
“You don’t solve these problems by saying, ‘let’s charge people,’ you do it by spending more money and becoming more effective,” she says. “To go for a private insurance model like the States would be a disgrace.”
“People are the most important factor in any business - whether they are junior doctors, office workers, secretaries or even politicians, everyone needs to be cared for.”
Ha!
Tony Blair learns the wrong lessons from his handling of deprivation.
“What I have learned over those 10 years is that the original analysis I had was incomplete and therefore literally misguided, ie, guiding us to the wrong policy conclusion.”
A quote that is begging to be applied to practically every policy enacted for the NHS.
Gordon Brown gets ambushed by a patient’s mother as he visits the Heartlands hospital iin Birmingham. The decision made by the hospital to remove televisions from wards but not replace them with any similar services is typical of the penny pinching happening all over the country & Brown does have to bear some of the blame. I am sure that Patientline could have done without it too.
Similarly, an argument for starting with the basics.
Sir - I am a patient in a ward of a large East Midlands hospital. My bedding has not been changed for six days and the hand disinfectant provided at the bottom of the bed is almost never used.
The daily cleaning of the ward consists of a cursory dry mop, followed by an even more cursory wipe over with a wet mop loaded with dirty water.
Visiting one of the hospital departments, I found so much litter in the corridors that I picked up some and put it in a bin to avoid embarrassing visitors. There is one shower for more than 30 patients, and cutlery and glass-wear seems poorly washed.
By my bed is a cotton-wool swab that has been there since I arrived. I am leaving it to see how long it is before a “cleaner” removes it. I expect the swab to be my longest hospital acquaintance when I leave.
Exotic diseases must be expected in such disgraceful conditions.
E. C. Coleman, Bishop Norton, Lincolnshire
The job of management is to remove all the unnecessary crap and paperwork from the responsibilities of the frontline staff & let them do their work properly. It is not to stand in judgement or force them to complete endless reams of paperwork while chasing targets remotely connected with clinical matters.
The BMA Junior Doctors Committee meets in London today with strong words (of sorts) from James Johnson & Jo Hilbourne.
WPA’s cancer drugs policy gets more detailed coverage.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
‘of sorts’ is the key part I think.
The BMA seem to ballot their member about once a century.
The complicated structure and protocol means that the view of juniors never gets properly represented by this small group of tweed wearing twerps.
Are my comments harsh? Maybe, but the BMA deserve it.
Remedy Uk have shown them up big time, and if you ask BMA reps about this they seem to try to avoid the question.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
I watched a significant proportion of the conference via the webcast & have been biting my tongue at the clubbiness & sheer amateurish nature of it.
I could set up a proper infrastructure for them to interact with all BMA members for the amount of money spent on just Saturday’s conference.
And yes, the tail does wag the dog. Members of the executive have grown up with the comforting limits of the rulebook & do not understand the world outside.