Francis Report fails to deliver

The Francis Report of the public enquiry into the years-long atrocities that caused horrendous unnecessary suffering to vulnerable patients, and up to 1200 avoidable deaths, and the worst scandal in the history of the NHS, is available to download in PDF format here: http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/report - After a 31 month public enquiry costing millions of ££, the report has failed to recommend criminal prosecutions for those many, many staff who delivered death instead of care. None of the ghastly staff so gravely at fault has been 'named and shamed'. They have not even lost their jobs. Surely they should be subject to criminal charges? If there is no accountability for even 'the worst scandal in the history of the NHS' then there is no hope at all of ending the cruelty and inhumanity so widely evident in so many NHS hospitals.

We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

We have read in the last two days the most recent reports of extreme cruelty to which elderly patients have been subjected in an NHS hospital, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch. See these reports in the Telegraph: Here, Here and Here. Yet we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. We may wonder why no UK government in all the years since the NHS was founded in 1948 has done anything useful to stop the cruelty and negligence, the damaged health, the pain and suffering, the shattered lives of innocent patients. - Why? When we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. 

 

Why the official pretence that there are only a few bad (guilty) apples among a shiningly dedicated workforce? We all know that bad apples spread their rottenness to the other apples unless they are promptly removed. We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

Why are the most guilty (and usually the best paid) personnel moved sideways to jobs in other localities? - jobs exactly similar to those at which they have signally failed? And why are they paid golden severance settlements? We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

A vulnerable patient died of starvation in an NHS hospital after 26 days without food, according to Mencap, the disability charity.

Patient 'died of starvation in NHS hospital'
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Martin Ryan, 43, was left unable to swallow after suffering a stroke but a "total breakdown in communication" meant he was never fitted with a feeding tube.

Doctors thought that nurses were feeding him through a tube in his nose, an internal inquiry by the hospital found.

But by the time they discovered this was not happening, he was too weak for an operation to insert a tube into his stomach. Mr Ryan, who had Down's syndrome, died in agony five days later.

Disability charity Mencap said the case was one of several where the NHS "completely and unacceptably failed" patients with learning difficulties through a "catalogue of disasters".

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is expected to issue a similarly damning verdict on the NHS later this month.

Other cases highlighted by Mencap include Emma Kemp, 26, who was denied cancer treatment that could have saved her life.

Another patient Mark Cannon, 30, died two months after being admitted to hospital with a broken leg.

Three other cases followed similar patterns, with warnings ignored or problems missed until it was too late, often because the patients had difficulty communicating.

The father of one man who died, who was just 20, said: 'People like my son are treated as less than human'.

The six cases were raised by Mencap in a report entitled Death By Indifference."

Horrific avoidable suffering and death like this would not happen if health professionals were accountable for failures in their duty of care. If the police were to do the inquiries, rather than the hospital, and if the negligent doctors and nurses in this or a similar case were named and shamed and sent for trial for an offence called something like 'professional negligence leading to manslaughter', and received an appropriate sentence - surely a prison sentence - this dreadful cruel neglect would stop immediately. - Although they clearly do not care about the welfare of these patients, they assuredly care about their own...