Mad, Bad and Dangerous!

The NHS Trust that I work for has recently been in the news, and unfortunately not for good reasons.  It became the first NHS Trust to be charged with Corporate Manslaughter following the unfortunate death of a lady shortly after she had given birth in 2012.  In addition, the two anaesthetists involved were also to be charged, but as one of them fled back to Pakistan, only one was actually charged with Gross Negligence Manslaughter.  However, the trial collapsed when the judge stated that there was “…little or no evidence [the anaesthetist on trial] had done anything wrong that had contributed to [the lady’s] death and, likewise, there was no evidence of systemic failure at the trust.”

It also came out that during the trial that the judge had had to reprimand a man for making an inappropriate tweet and ordered him to remove it after he posted a link to a news report of the trial and stated that it was a "tragic case from which huge lessons must be learned".  In fact, the judge described this actually as potentially being in contempt.

What is concerning about this last part is that the man who actually posted the tweet and had to be ordered to take it down was Jeremy Hunt, the current Secretary of State for Health, and therefore someone whom you would expect to have more insight into the potential fall-out of such an ill thought out action.  However, this is not his first gaffe, nor has it been his last.

Since he has been the Secretary of State for Health, we have seen, for the first time in forty years, doctors going on strike. And why?  Well, Mr Hunt has decided that he is going to reform the NHS in an effort to have doctors working more hours for less pay.  And to do this he has misquoted a piece of research and cited it is his claim that patients are more likely to die if they are admitted to hospital at weekends rather than during the week.

However, the way in which he has gone about this is somewhat dictatorial, including threatening to impose the contract on the doctors if they refused to accept it.  Rather than comply, there has so far been one strike by the junior doctors, with another planned for next week.

And as for reducing the death rate due to weekend admissions, there is some evidence that Mr Hunt’s mad ramblings have resulted in people being too scared to go to hospital on a Saturday or Sunday, waiting instead until a weekday, but which time, in some cases, they have deteriorated to a point that they are far sicker than they were at the weekend.

We then had the incident with the tweet, proving that this idiot is so bad at his job he obviously had no idea that what he was doing was wrong.

And now, the latest in the catalogue of cock-ups, is the advice that he has issued to parents following the death of a child called William Mead, whose parents called the non-emergency 111 service and were reassured that he would be fine.  He died soon after from an undiagnosed sepsis.

Whilst Mr Hunt accepts that there needs to be more doctors and nurses available for the 111 service, he has advised parents that if they are concerned about a rash that their child may have, they should go online and compare their child’s rash to the pictures that they see!

To quote a former colleague of mine, in his open letter to Mr Hunt

 “…as a consultant in Emergency Medicine, with 6 years at medical school, 10 years training as a junior doctor and 4 1/2 years a consultant - I still find rashes difficult. I still need help from others. I am still not 100% sure when a child has got meningitis and when they haven't. I need much more than just a picture. I need a full examination, a history, various tests and to use my experience to come to a judgment. So if I am not sure, I think to advise parents to go to Google (because you privatised and dismantled a perfectly well functioning NHS Direct service) is perhaps giving false reassurance and bad advice”.

This suggests that, with this dangerous advice, this man would rather put lives at risk than spend the money needed to provide a good service, this man would rather have the parents of sick children “guess” whether their child’s rash is serious enough for them to require hospital treatment.

Perhaps there should be a gross negligence manslaughter charge against the Secretary of State for every death caused by his ignorant advice.