NHS Hospital Cover Ups.

 

Dr Stephen Bolsin

Historically, there have been a number of doctors and nurses who have been killers, but I wouldn't tar them all with same brush. Many of them do their best for their patients. It was a Hyde GP who had strong suspicions about Dr Harold Shipman and she made her views known to the authorities.

For a number of years, I was involved in an hospital action group and I learned a lot about how hospital management tries to cover things up, or spin their way out of things. My local hospital had a high mortality rate, and the hospital tried to dismiss this as something called the "Shipman Effect." What they meant by this, is that many care homes were reluctant to have elderly residents die in their care homes, because they didn't want to come under suspicion, like Harold Shipman. Therefore, they sent them to hospital to die.  Whether this was true or not is a moot point, but it was used as an excuse to explain the high death rate at the hospital and some people fell for it. It was whitewash by the bucketful and excuses on tap. Staff at the hospital were also afraid to speak out or identify hazards because they feared they would lose their jobs. NHS hospitals are well known for blacklisting and excluding people who rock the boat.

I remember the case of the anaesthetist Dr Stephen Bolsin, who turned whistle-blower. He was responsible for exposing the scandal of the babies who had died at the  Bristol Royal Infirmary  after open heart surgery by incompetent surgeons. It was said that the babies had been “slaughtered on the altar of surgical pride.” Dr Bolson said that he couldn't bear putting children to sleep knowing that they were likely to die in the operating theatre because of incompetent surgeons. He eventually left Bristol and tried to get other work within another NHS hospital.

At one interview, a panel member actually told him that she thought that he'd never work again within the NHS. He finished up emigrating to Australia. When he was asked at one interview for an hospital job why he had left England and was seeking to work in an Australian hospital, he told them about his experiences at Bristol. After listening to him, the chair of the panel told him that she thought he was just the right kind of person that they were looking for.