Dying for a drink

For the second time in as many weeks, I’ve heard a story involving a very sick patient having to use a mobile phone to call for help from their hospital bed.

Derek Sauter, 60, had been taken into hospital with a chest infection and then died for lack of care. Mr Sauter’s condition wasn’t life threatening when he was admitted to St Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, in Kent. He was given intravenous antibiotics and oxygen. He telephoned his wife later in the evening in distress claiming that nurses were refusing to give him any water because he’d accidentally knocked over his first glass.

A note scrawled by Mr Sauter and discovered by his family after his death said: 'Asked for a jug of water at 6pm and again at 8.30, told to wait for handover. Said I knocked cup of water on floor.'

Some time between 9.30pm and 11.30pm Mr Sauter was moved to a side room where there was no monitoring equipment and, although he was supposed to be checked every four hours, no observations on his condition were made. At 11.35pm Mr Sauter, who had still not had any fluids, made his desperate call to the switchboard. The following morning, at 6.51am, a distressed Mr Sauter telephoned his wife to ask her to come back to the hospital. But he died of pneumonia brought on by the chest infection less than half an hour later - before his wife arrived.

Mrs Sauter had not been able to see her husband before because the events had happened outside of visiting hours. An investigation by the hospital revealed Mr Sauter's oxygen levels, which should have been routinely monitored, were not checked for 11 hours and had dropped 35 per cent below the recommended level.

The self-appointed disciplinarian masquerading as a nurse in this case was one Caroline Lowe. Ms Lowe was found to be responsible for Mr Sauter’s care and the investigation concluded that Mr Sauter would have survived if Ms Lowe had been doing her job properly. She was sacked from St Mary’s but not struck off as a nurse. So, she’s now free to punish some other poor sod in the care of the NHS.

You’d think this sort of cruelty couldn’t happen in today’s NHS, wouldn’t you? Wrong. I experienced the punishment routine from a very gobby sister when I was in my local hospital. I was taking a fair amount of morphine and unbeknown to me, my femur had developed an abscess. I asked for a bottle in order to avoid walking to the toilet and was told I couldn’t have one and that I was ‘lazy’ and ‘difficult’ for not walking to the lavatory. I too called my family to complain about the harsh treatment and total lack of care. A few hours later I collapsed and was taken to the operating theatre close to death.

Doctors and nurses are universally portrayed as caring angels ministering to the sick and the vulnerable, but that isn’t always the case. I’m sure the vast majority do work hard and do care about their patients, but too many poorly trained and frankly vicious individuals manage to besmirch the profession by remaining in the employ of the NHS. I’m sure that good nurses are sick of these lazy and incompetent colleagues. Perhaps it’s time that a ‘Shop a Bad Nurse” hotline was opened before any more patients have to use their mobile phone to summon help. However, I won’t hold my breath. I think a ban on mobile phones in hospitals is more likely.

Tip of the iceberg

Three pence in every pound spent by the NHS is wasted… and that’s according to official government figures. If that’s what the men from the ministry are owning up to then I think we can assume that the real figure is closer to 30 pence in every pound.

Even if we accept the 3p figure as being true, that still represents a staggering £3billion pounds down the sluice every year. However, from my experience visiting my local hospital yesterday I can imagine that the amount of money wasted is far higher.

The hospital’s showy atrium was positively groaning with smarmy management types, sat at the café tables tapping into their laptops, no doubt wasting a bit more time producing even more pie charts to show how the local Trust is winning the battle against hospital acquired infections. Incidentally, my local hospital only has ten wards closed to visitors due to various viral outbreaks this week.

Not only were there armies of administrators sipping on their cappuccini in the atrium, I also noticed during my clinic visit that the number of receptionists has ballooned alarmingly. I waited for almost five minutes for one of the two receptionists to greet me and book me in for my appointment. One of the two ladies was chatting away on the telephone while the other one was attending to the far more important task of making the tea and sorting out the biscuit situation. Occasionally other members of staff would bustle past with pieces of paper in their hands, carrying chits back and forth to the consulting rooms in what looked like some sort of Dickensian paper trail. Overmanning in parts of the NHS seems absolutely criminal in terms of waste and ineffectiveness. Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to a nice cushy job sitting behind a desk and gossiping while drinking is much NHS tea as I want.

The good news is that when I did get to the consultant after an hour of waiting, I was treated with great respect, courtesy and professional competence. It goes to show that parts of the NHS do function well and if we had fewer managers and paper pushers it could be even better.

This morning I’m off for my hydrotherapy session in a department where there are no receptionists, no one carries around paper and people simply get on with their job. Unfortunately, the hospital is considering closing the hydrotherapy pool on cost grounds.

Classic Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson does have a certain way with words. His current take on the British Airways strike is a classic:

"I like Virgin. And I flew Singapore Airlines recently, which was out of this world. But there is nothing quite so joyous as leaving the hustle and bustle of a superheated Third World hellhole and being greeted on the big BA jumbo by a homosexual with a cold flannel and a refreshing glass of champagne. Take that away from us and we may as well all be Belgian."

You can read the whole column here

Holy smoke!

A group of ‘leading doctors’ is pushing the UK government to ban smoking in cars. The mad medics are asking for this highly illiberal measure to be introduced ‘for the sake of the children’. However, the ban would apply to anyone in a car even if it were empty of children.

Now let me make it perfectly clear… I’m not a smoker and I detest cigarette smoke. However, as long as people don’t blow their smoke over me I’m quite happy for them to smoke as many cigarettes as they like. Obviously, if they're stupid enough to asphyxiate their own kids then they probably shouldn't have any children. What’s wrong with educating people and getting kids to ask their parents not to smoke in front of them? Why compel lone drivers to fall in line with everyone else? Is there no personal liberty any more?

As a libertarian, this alarming and increasing propensity to ban anything that the doom-mongers don’t like really scares the bejesus out of me. I’m certain that the bansturbators of this world won’t stop once they get a taste for banning things. It’s like a wild animal that’s tasted blood for the first time.

Next the good doctors will call on a smoking ban in people’s homes. After that they’ll turn their swivel eyes towards alcohol, sugar, fat, meat and anything else the pious gits consider to be bad for us. These people are not protecting the public; they’re merely exercising their taste for bossiness and fascism.

In a similar vein, I noticed in yesterday’s papers that the taste for banning things has now reached the masses with a call yesterday for the looped cords used on window blinds to be banned. A small child managed to hang himself while his mother was out of the room. The family claim the blind manufacturer didn’t warn them that such a thing could be dangerous. It was, of course, a tragic accident but hardly the basis for a total ban on blind cords. The family is now calling for the introduction of ‘Harrison’s Law’ (their child was called Harrison) and they are selling yellow wristbands for people to show their support for this proposed law. Apparently, Harrison’s favourite colour was yellow.

As I said, it's a sad tale but evidence, if evidence were needed, that the country is absolutely barking and that the grief industry has gone into overdrive along with the bansturbators.

I’m off for a lie down.

Sick Note

Sorry... not feeling very well today. Back soon.