PrintBritish hospital apologizes to familes for appallingly negligent care
An apology seems insufficient considering the circumstances.
Alexandra Hospital in Redditch is writing to 38 families after a massive legal action that exposed years of bad practice, ranging from nurses taunting patients to leaving an elderly woman unwashed for 11 weeks.
In one of the worst cases, a man had starvation recorded as the cause of his death after being treated at the hospital for two months.
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said last night that he was "disgusted and appalled" by what the families had been through, and that the Government was acting to ensure that failings in care were detected more quickly.
Bereaved relatives had told how vulnerable patients were left to starve when trays were placed out of their reach, while others were left in soaking bedsheets.
Many of the families are to receive compensation for cases that their lawyer described as "appalling".
The hospital is to admit its failings in each case in the letters.
The move will serve to intensify debate on why some nurses and doctors are treating patients without compassion, and will add weight to the warning by Mr Hunt that patients can experience "coldness, resentment, indifference" and "even contempt" in NHS hospitals.
He warned that in the worst institutions, a "normalisation of cruelty" had been fostered.
Actually, the lack of "compassion" doesn't bother me much. You can be a kindly doctor or nurse and a total incompetent. Give me a bastard who's a brilliant doctor or surgeon any day and forget "compassion."
It apparently got so bad at this hospital that doctors began to prescribe water because the staff was forgetting to give patients enough to keep them hydrated.
It's not lack of compassion but rather simple incompetence that is the problem at this hospital. It runs from top to bottom; an obvious lack of supervision all the way to ignorant, lazy nurses.
Is this what we have to look forward to with Obamacare? Eventually, I'm afraid that there are going to be similar cases in this country after government health care really gets rolling.
