Thousands of deaths caused by clinical negligence in the NHS

The Telegraph reports on the latest statistics about thousands of deaths caused by clinical negligence in the NHS. "The figures cover some of Britain’s worst hospital scandals including up to 1,200 people dying because Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust put Whitehall targets and cost-cutting ahead of care."

Until death because of negligence by NHS staff is appropriately punished, after trial of the negligent individuals in a criminal court, clinical negligence will continue as a prominent feature of NHS 'care'. The present scandalous unaccountability of NHS healthcare professionals naturally does nothing to discourage negligence.

Deplorable level of NHS obstetric care

Deplorable level of NHS obstetric care reported in the Daily Mail. "Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action for Victims of Medical Accidents, said: 'We never seem to make much progress with CTG failures. 'This problem has been around for years. Hundreds and hundreds of children have either been damaged or killed due to an inability to spot the warning signs of a baby in distress. I wonder if the NHS will ever learn.'"

Latest NHS data-handling cock-up: organ donor records

See this BBC News report, in which we read that "the details of many donors' preferences were accidentally deleted in 1999." But the blunder did not come to light until 2009 when NHS Blood and Transplant wrote to donors, reiterating what they had agreed to donate, and many wrote back saying the information was incorrect.

Disgraceful 'legitimisation' of NHS cover-ups of medical errors

See Telegraph report. "Peter Walsh, chief executive of AvMA, said: “It is nothing short of a national disgrace that the Government have pushed through these controversial measures."

(AvMA is the patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents. See http://www.avma.org.uk/)

The routine cover-ups/whitewashes/blatant lies of the NHS and the medical profession, with regard to medical mistakes and negligence, and the terrible futility of the NHS Complaints Procedures, are, of course, the main reasons for the shamefully high incidence of serious patient safety incidents and horrifying hospital scandals.

BBC Panorama's programme tonight about very poor quality care in some NHS hospitals and the misleading claims they had made about the quality of care

I watched BBC Panorama's programme tonight about very poor quality care in some NHS hospitals and the misleading claims they had made about the quality of that care. For many years I have myself experienced deplorable NHS care both as an in-patient and as an out-patient and indeed had my health wantonly and callously destroyed by the 'caring professions'. And I've had a lot of personal experience of their lies.

If you hold the view that the NHS is admirable and that we are fortunate to have it I very profoundly disagree with you. - You must be one of the lucky ones who has not yet been harmed by the NHS. You can view tonight's programme on the iPlayer here: Panorama: Trust Us We're an NHS Hospital.

Or you can read about it on this BBC News webpage. If you think that making a complaint remedies anything you are mistaken. Complaints are routinely ignored, and certainly not acted upon. They routinely add to the problems and suffering of the complainants. See Fighting the System.

I firmly believe the NHS does far more harm than good and that it should be scrapped.

Most NHS trusts are endangering patients' lives by not implementing patient safety alerts

BBC News reports that the charity, AvMA, Action Against Medical Accidents, made Freedom of Information requests to NHS hospital trusts and found that 300 (75%) of them had not complied with at least one patient safety alert despite the deadline passing.

Radio 4's File on 4 programme this evening was an investigation into this matter and I listened to it. As a victim of many years of NHS blunders and knowing only too well the futility of expecting any lessons to be learned or remedial action taken, the horrors related in the programme held no surprise or shock for me. But if you are unfamiliar with the routine lack of importance accorded patient safety in NHS hospitals (compounded as they are by the uselessness of the Complaints Procedures) then I suggest you listen to the programme when it is repeated on Sunday, 21 February, at 1700 GMT. Or you can listen via the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Shocking series of avoidable errors led to death of four months old baby, Abbie Jones

See Daily Mail report.

GP receptionist made out a prescription for the baby, but disregarded the warning given by the computer that the dose was too high, and then presented it to the doctor as though it was a repeat prescription, which it wasn't. The doctor signed the prescription without noticing the error. The pharmacist dispensed it without checking that his technician had spoken to the doctor about the dose. And the innocent mother therefore administered ten times the correct amount of the powerful diuretic Furosemide to her poorly baby. At every stage of this catalogue of avoidable, careless errors, there were procedures/protocols in place to prevent just such mistakes, but they were ignored/disregarded - even overridden(!) by the receptionist - and a baby died.

I believe these mistakes happen because any punishments that ensue to the professionals who make the mistakes are too light. If they knew that making a serious mistake would bring them a serious punishment they would take far more care to avoid making the mistakes and far more care to follow recommended procedures.

Dr Andrew Holton's child victims, reduced to 'zombies' following his misdiagnoses and wrong treatment, have been awarded £4 million in compensation

The Telegraph reports that Dr Andrew Holton's hundreds of child victims, reduced to 'zombies' following his misdiagnoses and catastrophically inappropriate medication, have been awarded £4 million in compensation. This appallingly poor doctor, who had worked for years as a paediatric neurologist despite having no formal qualifications in paediatric neurology, has destroyed the lives of these children and of their families. Clearly he knew he had no relevant qualifications to be so readily 'diagnosing' epilepsy, nor so recklessly prescribing dangerous anti-convulsant drugs like Epilim.

See also the long years of struggle by Ryan Pitcher's parents to find out the why their 3 year old died.

"Dr Holton now works as a consultant neurophysiologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust."
I believe he should be serving a long custodial sentence in prison for the horrific suffering he has inflicted on innocent children and their families.

Leicester Royal Infirmary's inexcusable delay over Dr Andrew Holton's wrong treatment that led to suffering and death for 3 year old Ryan Pitcher

BBC News reports that Leicester Royal Infirmary took years to apologise and admit responsibility for the death of 3 year old Ryan Pitcher. Dr Andrew Holton, a consultant paediatrician, misdiagnosed hundreds of children over 10 years at the hospital and was responsible for the "incorrect treatment" for epilepsy that Ryan received. His parents described Ryan as "like a zombie" on the medication he was prescribed.

Ryan died in 1997. Since then, we read in thisisleicestershire.co.uk, his "devastated family has told of a 12-year battle to find out why their young son died," and that, "Since then, an investigation has found Dr Holton had misdiagnosed 618 cases and put 500 children on the wrong doses of drugs."

"Compensation of around £3m has been paid by the trust to children wrongly diagnosed with epilepsy by Dr Holton."

I hope you will click on the links and read the articles. Severe and avoidable suffering was inflicted on hundreds of children because of the customary failure of the NHS to take complaints seriously and to act appropriately to save other patients from harm when grave medical mistakes are made. This shocking case reaffirms the low priority the NHS accords to patient safety. It routinely protects negligent/incompetent/ill-informed and frankly dangerous doctors, rather than protecting their innocent, suffering patients/victims.

This matter is a national scandal of which the NHS should be deeply ashamed.

(The drug that caused most damage to Ryan was sodium valproate, aka Epilim. Beware of this drug! Doctors do not seem to be very well-informed about its harmful side-effects.)

Serious Surgical Blunder Compounded By Dismissive Attitude of Health Professionals Afterwards

The Telegraph reports that Lynn Main, 55, had a hysterectomy at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in May. Two days later she was in very great pain but doctors and nurses did not take her seriously until her bowel burst, causing the life-threatening infection called peritonitis.

It was found that during the hysterectomy her bowel had been stitched closed.

The internal damage has now been repaired and a stoma fitted.

Miss Main and her partner have begun legal proceedings about the matter.

It is deplorable how often health professionals fail to take seriously a patient's reports of excruciating pain.

NHS is told to improve the care it provides for children

BBC News reports a high incidence of errors in its care of children, in particular mistakes made with medication, mainly attributable to the lack of availability of medicines in child doses.

My own feeling is that if child doses are not available, it may well be that data for that medication on children has not been approved and that it would be better not to provide that medication.

Ombudsman Orders Personal Apology From Welsh NHS Hospital Trust to Dead Patient's Relatives

BBC News Wales reports that the public services ombudsman "criticises the former North Glamorgan Trust saying staff actions resulted in the death of Myron Hall, 47.

The trust was asked to apologise personally but refused saying it would write to Mr Hall's parents instead."

Read this and weep!

Mary Riddell's article in the Telegraph about the horrors of Stafford Hospital and the NHS

As well as Mary Riddell's frank article, be sure to read the comments below it. No-one should comfort themselves that the Stafford Hospital scandal is a one-off. - It very clearly is not.

In the wake of the Staffordshire Hospital scandal...

Who will be sacked in the wake of the Staffordshire Hospital scandal?
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The scale of the failure at Staffordshire General Hospital almost defies belief. Dehydrated patients forced to drink water from flower vases, accident victims left untended for hours, clinical judgements being made by receptionists. To call this Third World treatment is an insult to the Third World.

This appalling, incompetent management has exacted a terrible price. Anything from 400 to 1200 patients may have died unnecessarily as a result of the neglect. Not since Harold Shipman was still in general practice have NHS patients been so dreadfully betrayed.

The independent Healthcare Commission was alerted to the scandal by the high mortality rates in what it calls an "early warning system". That was in March last year, three years after the hospital had descended into chaos and a month after it won foundation status. Some early warning system."

When NHS care goes badly wrong as in this dreadful case, there is always a cover-up; there are always lies told by those in charge and/or by health professionals protecting colleagues in the profession. When, years ago, I tried desperately, but unsuccessfully, to obtain urgent treatment that was being denied me purely to avoid having to admit the severity and the length of time of the negligence and agonising pain I had suffered and was suffering, I found to my cost that no-one in management gives a toss for the suffering of patients, and that for the overwhelming majority of health professionals their priorities are money, power, status and reputation, and that management and health professionals combine in closing ranks against the common enemy, viz. the patients they have harmed and the families of those patients. It was nonetheless a bit of a shock when I discovered that the NHS itself and the Department of Health and so many other agencies and ministers and MPs and other individuals all join in with the lies and evasions and there is literally no-one in the entire edifice of the Health Service to whom one can turn and be assured of getting help.

This sorry debacle was not discovered or winkled out by the Healthcare Commission. It is because of the monumental efforts and persistence of relatives of patients who suffered/died in this Hell of a hospital that the general public has come to know about it. There is, in practice, no protection from this sort of ghastly treatment. The routine of lies, obfuscation and whitewash ensures this, and even if some sort of action is eventually taken it is only after inordinate delay.

Those most responsible for the horrors endured by patients at this hospital should, in my opinion, be tried in the criminal court and sent to prison. This would encourage others in positions of power to have some care for the patients' welfare and treatment. - But as it is - and as it sadly will remain - instead of prison, the 'guilty' will most likely move on to other similar posts and yet again there will have been no appropriate sanctions against these crimes against humanity.

Hospitals that botch a list of eight treatments causing patient harm or deaths, will not be paid under new guidelines.

List of eight blunders the NHS must never commit released by watchdog
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The list includes operating on the wrong side of the body, such as removing the wrong kidney, administering cancer treatment incorrectly which can be fatal and leaving surgical instruments inside a patient after surgery has been drawn up as 'never events' by the National Patient Safety Agency.

The events are potentially harmful or even fatal to patients and are largely preventable.

Health minister Lord Darzi proposed last year that primary care trusts, which pay hospitals for the treatments carried out on patients from their areas, should monitor how often these event occur and from next year block payments for botched care.

A similar system is used in America and has led to a reduction in healthcare blunders.

The Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has reported that 350 errors in surgery are reported every day, including implanting hearing aids in the wrong ear, replacing the wrong knee joint and drilling holes in the wrong side the head.

The never events also include inpatient suicide using bed rails that do not collapse, escape from a medium or high secure mental health service by patients and the deaths of a woman due to haemorrhage after a planned caesarean birth.

How often never events occur will be monitored and reported publicly each year."

No doubt many of us wish the list could be extended! - Let us hope it does some good and that some needless suffering is avoided. The oxygen of publicity should help.

More than 1,000 NHS operations are cancelled every week because of mistakes or avoidable shortages of equipment, according to figures.

Thousands of NHS operations cancelled because of blunders as complaints about standard of treatment rise
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"At least 57,000 surgeries were postponed for non-clinical reasons in 2007/08, many of them because of blunders – including a lack of beds.

Among the excuses for cancellation were a hospital running out of shavers to prepare patients for surgery, a surgeon disappearing following a fire alarm and a patient's interpreter failing to show up. In one case medics forgot about a patient who had been left in a side room awaiting surgery.

The number of cancellations – a 10 per cent increase on last year – comes as a damning report claims the NHS is failing in basic aspects of care and is not responding to complaints effectively."

The number of hospital patients killed by mistakes has risen by 60 per cent in two years, official figures show.

Deaths caused by hospital mistakes 'up 60 per cent in two years'
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"NHS records show that 3,645 people died as a result of "patient safety incidents" - including botched operations and the outbreak of infections - between April 2007 and March 2008. The figure was 1,370 higher than two years earlier.

Patient groups have warned that the true toll is likely to be higher because some hospitals do not record all incidents."

Let's have a guess what, if anything, was done about these avoidable deaths...

Anyone sacked? - Anyone sent to prison for manslaughter? - Anyone at all?

Three patients have died after being given large doses of a commonly used sedative, a health watchdog has warned.

Three patients died 'after being given too high a dose of sedative'
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) said that almost 500 patients in total have received the wrong dose of the drug, called midazolam, over the past four years.

Midazolam is used to sedate patients before minor procedures, including setting broken wrists and dentistry.

The medication hit the headlines in 2000 when a male nurse was convicted of killing a colleague after drugging her with midazolam.

As well as the three deaths another 48 patients had been "moderately" harmed by receiving large doses of the drug in the past four years, the NPSA said.

The watchdog, part of the NHS, also warned that health professionals were frequently relying on a reversing agent to bring people around after they had been over-sedated.

The drug works by slowing down both the heart and lung rate, and can cause a heart attack or lung problems if given in very high doses.

The NPSA said that it had received 498 reports of patients being given the wrong dose of midazolam between November 2004 and November 2008.

It warned that patients were being given whole containers, or ampoules, of the drug instead of just a small amount.

"The presentation of high strength midazolam as a 5mg/ml (2ml and 10ml ampoules) or 2mg/ml (5ml ampoule) exceeds the dose required for most patients," the watchdog warned in a statement.

"There is a risk that the entire contents of high strength ampoules are administered to the patient when only a fraction of this dose is required.

"There is frequent reliance on injectable flumazenil (antagonist/reversing agent) for reversal of sedation in patients that have been over-sedated."

The NPSA called for high-strength midazolam to be removed from many parts of hospitals."

40,000 die every year after hospital blunders, MPs are told. - I doubt they'll do anything at all effective about it.

40,000 die every year after hospital blunders, MPs are told
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"One in 10 people admitted to hospital suffers some kind of "harm" because of the treatment they receive, members of the House of Commons Health Committee heard.

The figures were given to members of the House of Commons Health Committee as part of its inquiry into the safety of patients.

NHS managers have already drawn up a list of serious mistakes which doctors and nurses are required to report in order to build a more accurate picture of the numbers who die as a result of mistakes by hospitals.

The blunders include carrying out the wrong operation on patients, administering the wrong drugs, leaving instruments inside patients after operations and failing to put up bars to stop patients falling out of bed.

Professor Richard Thomson, from Newcastle University's institute of health and society, said the most reliable evidence showed around 10 per cent of patients admitted to hospital suffered "harm" because of treatment.

He told the committee that the number of overall deaths caused by medical care going wrong was far from clear but that some estimates put it at up to 40,000 a year."

I am confident that very great and completely avoidable, permanent and agonising harm that was done to me as an inpatient last year, following a very complicated fracture, will not have been reported. The NHS is a national scandal - expensive, uncaring and incompetent, in my informed opinion. It should be scrapped.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods

vulnerable groups

See amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Holes drilled in the wrong side of heads during surgery. - It's not Brain Surgery, is it?

Holes drilled in the wrong side of heads during surgery NHS watchdog warns
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"So-called wrong site surgery has been a consistent problem in the NHS and in some cases patients have died as result of having the wrong organ removed.

In 2005 the National Patient Safety Agency issued an alert to all neurosurgical units after an audit found there was no standard method of identifying which side the patient was to have surgery with some units marking with pen the side to be operated on and others marking the side not to.

Since the alert the NPSA have had another 15 reports of incidents in nine of the 36 neuro centres where surgeons have begun brain surgery on the wrong side of the head.

Another alert has now been issued saying it is still a problem.

The brain surgery incidents are among 56 wrong site surgical mistakes reported to the NPSA during 2007 and another 654 reports related to operating list errors where the wrong patient or the wrong operation had been planned."

Getting the right side? - It's a no-brainer!