Hospitals must listen to the medical experts
Mar 20 2009 Post Comment
The release of a second damning report about a Midland hospital within a week raises real concerns about the state of our National Health Service.
Birmingham Children’s Hospital has not suffered from the same level of problems that afflicted Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
The Healthcare Commission concluded that no patient had suffered harm, although there was “evidence of less than optimal care being provided to some patients”.
But the criticisms are nonetheless damning, and appear less significant only because what we learned about the Staffordshire hospital earlier in the week was so horrific.
Birmingham Children’s Hospital, we learn, suffered from a shortage of beds, poor leadership in some cases, a lack of equipment and poorly-trained staff in operating theatres.
Perhaps most worryingly, there was a culture in which concerns raised by staff took years to be addressed. And this highlights one similarity between the Birmingham and Staffordshire hospitals.
In both cases, unacceptable situations were allowed to continue unchallenged for far too long.
Indeed, the issues affecting Birmingham Children’s Hospital only came to light when staff at a different hospital trust raised concerns and put together a report setting out the problems they had experienced.
Even then, it took the actions of a newspaper, which acquired their report and published its contents, before the Healthcare Commission acted.
It’s often said that a culture of targets and inspections is damaging to public services.
When it comes to the health service, however, a second charge can also be made. The current monitoring regime is clearly ineffective when it comes to identifying problems in Britain’s hospitals.
Perhaps even more worrying, even when problems are identified, they are not acted upon. The Healthcare Commission makes it clear that staff raised a number of issues and saw many months go by with no action from managers.
Eventually, colleagues at University Hospital Birmingham took what must have been a fairly difficult decision to set out their concerns about the care provided by the Children’s Hospital.
But this led to a chaotic situation in which they were unclear whether anyone was paying attention, or whether the Children’s Hospital had even seen their report.
It is clear that no formal mechanism exists for medical professionals to report concerns – and to be told what steps are being taken as a result.
Medical professionals must be allowed and encourage to identify improvements, and they must be listened to, in order to ensure patient safety is never put at risk.
