BY PAUL T HORGAN
I have to tell you of the experience of a close relative of mine some years ago. She was in hospital awaiting surgery for gallstones which were causing her excruciating pain. She had experienced the pain for months, but no-one had diagnosed the cause until quite late. One night, she was in her hospital bed in a side room, when she called for a nurse. The pain was so intense, she requested painkillers. The nurse was abusive and derided her suffering and walked away. Later on, my relative was feeling cold. It was a chilly April evening, and she requested more blankets. The nurse came in and opened the window and left, again mocking my relative’s distress. I had visited my relative earlier in the day and had seen the nurse being quite abusive for myself. This was contrary to experiences of visiting people in hospital, and I really did not know what to do about it. It was was not as if a patient could change wards or hospitals. The standard British response of withdrawing custom was unavailable.
The abuse and neglect of my relative led to her being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, as by the morning she was experiencing multiple organ failure. A hospital administrator, after my relative had relayed her experience, stated that the nurse in question had been “spoken to”. There was no attempt by the NHS to do anything further. If we had wanted to do anything, we would have probably had to use the NHS’s complaints process.
This indicates that NHS processes as a matter of routine are unable to capture and manage instances of abuse and neglect caused by nurses.
The Mid-Staffs scandal, where the statistics of excess deaths at a hospital in the mid-2000s exposed a culture of deliberate patient harm by nursing staff, showed that the NHS cares more about reputational damage limitation than it does about care. The official cover-up extended to the Blair-era Whitehall. Patricia Hewitt during her time as Health Minister praised the NHS as having its “best year ever” while patients were dying unnecessarily at Mid-Staffs.
It may not be too much of a surprise that there was a change of health minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown every two years or so, so no elected representative could actually fully understand the job before they were moved on, and this seemed deliberate policy by Tony Blair’s New Labour propaganda machine. John Reid actually cursed being reshuffled to Health with a strong oath, so Labour MPs clearly viewed the position as a graveyard for ambition. Conservative ministers have stayed in the position for considerably longer. For doing so, Jeremy Hunt was obscenely abused by a BBC news presenter on a live radio broadcast, and was regularly abused in the media in a fashion not experienced by any of his socialist predecessors, most of whom had probably been asleep at the wheel while there were more avoidable deaths. The abusive presenter kept his job. 40 years ago, it would have ended his career.
There were 1200 premature deaths at Mid-Staffs. No-one was ever prosecuted. Only one nurse was struck off, and she had voluntarily retired but was officially reinstated so she could be publicly reprimanded. No NHS manager experienced any sanction, and they all continued with their careers and accumulating their gold-plated pensions. Rather like the British aristocracy up to the early 20th Century. NHS bureaucrats are now the new untouchables.
I do not watch reality television or hospital dramas, so I am unaware how nurses are depicted on peak-time television, but I have reasonable grounds to believe that they are shown as people whose only worry is that circumstance prevents them from being able to deliver as much patient care as they want to. This is obviously so much statist propaganda.
At present, the news media is awash with the controversy that the baby-murdering nurse (who I will not dignify by naming here) is refusing to appear in the dock for her sentencing. The Guardian, the broadsheet of the new religion of statism, is conducting the same kind of hand-wringing exercise as if the instance of a mass murderer in a hospital is as unpredictable as being struck by lightning, and there can be no protection. The same kind of apologism took place when numerous local authorities (all Labour-run) looked the other way while hundreds of young girls were raped thousands of times by organised gangs, simply because the gangs were mainly from a single ethnic minority so taking action could be regarded by the high priests of statism as racist. Feminist pressure-groups were also silent. No professionals were held to account, there were no dismissals, and again, gold-plated pensions were protected for those who failed to do their jobs in a catastrophic fashion, betraying the trust of local communities.
This controversy over dock appearances is a blatant deflection tactic. The central fact being avoided by the media is that killer nurses exist, and that the NHS, an organisation awash with targets and processes, as well as being top-heavy with over-remunerated bureaucrats to oversee it all, remains unable to detect the murderers or take action until the murderer becomes an experienced serial killer. This baby-murderer is not the first paediatric nurse to abuse her duty of care to kill the young and helpless. There was a similar case almost 30 years ago, and the fact that no nurse has been convicted in the intervening period does not mean there have not been more instances, but that other murderers in the NHS have been better at concealing their crimes with the collusion of management as was almost done in this year’s case. The dysfunctional organisation of the NHS clearly suffers from institutional dementia, and nothing, not even an inquiry, for which the obviously guilty officials are now polishing up excuses they have been able to prepare for years, will stop further murders of those too young or too vulnerable to raise the alarm.
Had my relative died at the hands of her would-be-killer nurse, then the attempt would not have been recorded in any fashion, even the lackadaisical manner it was done by hospital officials. As instance of attempted murder was brushed off for the sake of organisational expediency by a state body proficient in media-assisted virtue-signalling and blame avoidance.
A few weeks ago, the BBC had a news programme featuring a children’s choir wearing uniform attire sporting the NHS logo to mark its 75th anniversary. During some of those 75 years, vulnerable children were being murdered in hospitals, while senior staff deliberately looked the other way. The murdered innocents form their own choir of silence, asking for justice and change, but this choice will never appear on the BBC. State officials closest to the murders probably do not care. Damn them, damn them all.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.