Surgeon issues whistleblowing warning

They can spend hundreds of thousands employing 400 new top managers in the NHS but can't afford to spend that money on the front line. No wonder this Doctor wanted to speak up and I bet there are many many others that would love to but are too afraid.

These 400 are no doubt going to be used to make even more bad decisions that are not in the patients best interests and probably will compromise safety.

Having watched my mother in law enter a NHS Hospital with just recurrent urinary infections only to get increasingly worse because they failed to diagnose a 11cm tumour in her bladder (only found on autopsy) over an 8 week period, we were forced to physically remove her by signing a form just to get her out and into a Hospice so she could die with some dignity a day later!! Some of the scenes we witnessed during those 8 weeks were appalling - 2 nursing staff to look after 28 very ill bed bound patients), 1 confused elderly patient wandered down two floors into the car park before anyone noticed she was missing, patients calling out for commodes but being continuously ignored, patients relatives being forced to come in to feed their relatives because there were no staff available to do it. I could fill a page with stuff - My MIL was dropped three times according to her notes now received from the Hospital.

Everywhere we went in the Hospital there were shut wards, stacked up unused equipment, lifts that did not work, whilst the wards were being forced to use wheelchairs with punctures and chair's in a day room that stunk of urine. Even medical equipment like catheters and basic medication were not available because it had to be ordered and took days to become available.

But if you complained, Wow did the administrators flood out of the woodwork! They outnumbered nurses tenfold!! So if you want a glimpse of what its like on a geriatric ward, where the attitude is " They haven't got long to go so dont need to put many resources in there", go along to your local Hospital and visit somebody and see what sort of treatment they are getting because if it was anything like what that Hospital was like a few months ago it was a living hell and we treat our animals better than what those poor people were receiving.

Complaint after complaint was met with the usual "this is being looked into and can take up to 8 weeks" by which time she was dead! It was only after I said I would bring a posse of press down to see the CEO that I got a response which was still pretty bog standard whilst they "continued to look into my complaint".

Eventually they did do a test after 7 weeks that should have been carried out the first week she was admitted but was not because the consultant she was put under was adamant she had a gynaecological problem, which meant attending an OUT PATIENT CLINIC in ANOTHER HOSPITAL!! When I asked why they could not visit her in the hospital I was told "she did not fit their criteria" . When I asked why she could not be transferred to their Hospital, I was told "They would not accept her because she has to be seen at the Out Patient Clinic first! This was a dying women!!

Then when she missed the out patient appointment because she was too ill to attend they told us that as the next appointment was over a month away they would discharge her to wait for it at home. Somebody who was bed-bound, could not walk, could not wash themselves, could not feed themselves and had no one to look after them. They had a catheter and was confused. This is what the NHS expects our elderly to do.....go home and die.

I make no apologies if this is graphic but I am still so very angry when I hear about 400 new managers being employed. No doubt to deal with the many complaints and legal issues that Hospitals are getting themselves into. There is no such thing as free treatment on the NHS at the point of delivery in fact if your not careful it might very well kill you.

Deafheads, not got their ears-on, scaredy cat managers, happy to brush the 'ooop's bit of collateral damage there' under the carpet so long as "their omissions" to care, tantamount to "friendly fire", stays internal, just amoungst themselves so end up feedback blind in the process maintaining deniability.

Simples'ss if they had listened in the first place they wouldn't need whistle-blowers with some integrity and enough dignity and self-advocacy or courage left to cry out against the dying of the light accepting that they will be made marters in an ethically and morally bakrupt system that has replaced right from right let alone right from wrong decissions with tic-box outcomes regardless of impact or socio-economic cost.

Budgeting gone mad as not based on service provision but a shed load of other diterminning factors from waiting lists to whatever, ringfenced with panic towards end of finacial year when need to be spent-up or loose it .........

I cannot understand why the doctors trade union would not fund his legal action for what seems to me to be a genuine case of lack of patient care perhaps we have a situation where again very highly paid managers only care about statistics and not patient care and it seems to me as a non-medical person that the doctors trade union are in agreement with these managers
I would like to see especially with an election looming this case and its details made more public by the media
We are all potential patients who may need care and these managers should be reminded we pay their salaries