'The envy of the world'

Two articles from a while back that make you wonder how those people who claim the NHS is 'the envy of the world' can sleep at night.

The first is from early July and reports:

'A young patient who died of dehydration at a leading teaching hospital phoned police from his bed because he was so thirsty, an inquest heard yesterday. Officers arrived at Kane Gorny's bedside, but were told by nurses that he was in a confused state and were sent away. The keen footballer and runner, 22, died of dehydration a few hours later. ... Yesterday an inquest was told how Mr Gorny died after blunders and neglect by 'lazy and careless' medical staff at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London. His mother Rita Cronin, a civil servant told Westminster Coroner's Court that staff tutted at her and repeatedly refused to listen to her concerns that her son hadn't been given vital medication. ... At one point he became so desperate and upset that staff sedated and restrained him – and on the night before his death, his mother said, he was not checked on by medical staff, despite being in a room on his own. Following his death, a nurse allegedly inquired whether the family, from Balham, South-West London, was 'finished' and asked a matron in front of them whether she could 'bag him up'. ... Miss Cronin said she sat in his room for three hours the night before he died without a single nurse checking on him or giving him vital medicine. She said she told a nurse who walked past the room that Mr Gorny had not had his medication. When Miss Cronin volunteered to return to the hospital should he wake, another nurse allegedly told her: 'You don't need to do that. If he makes noise, I'll close the door and then he won't wake everyone up.' She added: 'I later realised that her comment was unbelievable but I was so distraught that it didn't register.' The morning of her son's death, May 28, 2009, Miss Cronin arrived at the hospital early to find him delirious with swollen lips and a swollen tongue. She recalled: 'I then heard three nurses outside his room and I said: "There's something wrong with my son. He doesn't look right." 'The nurse said to me "He had a good night. There's nothing wrong with him and he's just had breakfast and a chat with us." 'I thought: "How could he have had breakfast? There's no evidence (of breakfast)." 'The nurse carried on her handover then I interrupted again and said: “He's not right.” 'The other nurse then tutted and said: "She's already told you he had a good night." And with that the three of them walked off.' Miss Cronin said she then noticed that her son hadn't been given his medication because the packet was still on the table by his bed. She told the locum doctor about her concerns, but the doctor said it wouldn't do him any harm. A doctor doing the rounds then checked on Mr Gorny. Miss Cronin said: 'He took one look at him then he started calling to everyone “Get in there quickly”. 'It suddenly dawned on me he hasn't had his medication, hasn't had his bloods done, nobody's given him a drink, nobody's bothered to put his drip back on him. 'Nobody's done anything since yesterday afternoon when he became aggressive.' She said there was a 'flurry of activity' and everyone 'had a very sad look on their face' as they battled to save her son's life. Miss Cronin said: 'The main doctor came out and you could tell he was really angry. He said: “You need to go and see your son. He's dying.” The couple then found their son lying in blood and fluid-soaked sheets and a nurse came in and asked them to help her to change them. The same nurse later came into the matron's office and asked whether they were 'finished', adding: 'Can I bag him up?' The death certificate said Mr Gorny died of a 'water deficit' and 'hypernatraemia' – a medical term for dehydration.'

In case you think that NHS staff that neglect patients to that sort of degree would get adequately punished, you should read this Mail article which reported that:

'Rogue nurses who have been found guilty of threatening or abusing patients, stealing from them or being drunk on duty are being allowed to continue working, a Daily Mail investigation has revealed. The nursing profession's official regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is repeatedly letting nurses go back to work despite being found guilty of a catalogue of offences, including just being dangerously incompetent. Today, the regulator’s overseer, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, has released a hard-hitting report demanding fundamental changes in the way the NMC is run after concluding that patients are being let down because of 'failings at every level'. As a Daily Mail investigation reveals, this is not before time. For not only has the body failed in important cases to protect vulnerable patients from rogue staff, it has run its administration system so badly that, even when such nurses have been disciplined, the sanctions against them did not go on their professional records for employers to see. This occurred in at least 500 cases, of which around 100 were ‘of major concern’. ... Meanwhile, the nurses’ regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, has seemed concerned less with protecting patients from harm than with saving the careers of nurses who have seriously transgressed the laws of their profession and the basic tenets of human decency. The body is responsible for the regulation of the 670,000 nurses and midwives currently registered in the UK. Last month, for example, a nurse who was sacked for hitting a patient and charged with common assault by the police was allowed by the NMC to remain working. The council’s disciplinary panel heard how Maureen Yoliswa Booi, a Registered Mental Nurse, struck a resident in her care at an NHS-run unit. The incident was witnessed by a colleague, the hearing was told. Ms Booi was dismissed by her employer and has since been charged with common assault. But instead of being struck off, she was placed under a ‘conditions of practice order’ for 18 months, which stipulates that Ms Booi must not, at any time, be the sole registered nurse on duty, and that she must tell the Nursing and Midwifery Council of the outcome of her pending prosecution for assault. This means she is free to apply for a job with any employer, though the NMC requires that she tell them that there is an ‘order’ on her record. This is perturbing enough as an isolated judgment, but it has remarkable similarities to another case heard last month, of Loveness Makombe, a registered nurse working at the Bupa-run St Christopher’s Care Home in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The NMC panel found her guilty of ‘shouting aggressively’ at a confused elderly patient, as well as verbally threatening the woman, who had dementia, and dragging her out of a room ‘in a manner that caused her to become distressed’. Rather than cracking down on this abuse, which bears disturbing similarities with the sort of intimidation exposed at Winterbourne View, the disciplinary panel said it ‘does not believe there is an under-lying attitudinal or behavioural problem with the nurse’. The sanction it handed down amounted to a regulatory slap on the risk — it placed only a ‘caution’ on her record for a three-year period.'

Ah the NHS, 'envy of the world' you know!