Are cover ups par for the course within the NHS?

 

Anybody who has dealt with NHS hospital bureaucrats and knows anything about the various scandals that have taken place in British hospitals, would easily recognise similarities with how the case of the baby killer nurse, Lucy Letby, was dealt with at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Excuses on tap, whitewash by the bucketful, and plenty of spin. Hush things up and throw it into the long grass. This is the modus operandi for many NHS hospital managers. 

At one local hospital that I was involved with through a health campaign, in Greater Manchester, the medical staff, were terrified of the diminutive female Chief Executive, who had them quaking in their boots. They knew that if they did raise concerns about patient safety, and opened their mouths, they were likely to become a target and could lose their job. Yet, many medical staff and nurses at that hospital, were quite happy to take the side of the CEO and objected to any criticism of the hospital. A surgeon at the hospital who did go public with his concerns about patient safety, was treated like a social pariah, by many of his medical colleagues. 

It says a lot about the way the NHS is run, when they had to introduce a "duty of candour", (a quality of openness, frankness, and honesty), in the NHS, following the Francis report and the inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in February 2013. It was claimed that between 400 and 1,200 patients died as a result of poor care over the 50 months between January 2005 and March 2009, at Stafford district general hospital. It led to 290 recommendations on care standards.

Yet, in spite of that public inquiry, and other public inquiries into how British hospitals are managed, senior medical staff at the Countess of Chester, complained of being ignored and of feeling threatened and bullied and were told to apologise to Letby. The parents of the babies that were killed or injured by Letby, complained of being fobbed off by hospital management. If those seven pediatrician's at the hospital, had not persisted in raising concerns about Letby, it's likely there would never have been a police investigation which led to the arrest of Lucy Letby and her conviction for multiple murders.