NHS horror stories
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| Author: Patrick Crozier |
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NHS Sucks is running a forum which allows anyone who wants to to contribute (they also allow you to post good-news stories for balance)so it might be worth monitoring.
This is a list of NHS horror stories that I have come across, listed in the order they were logged:
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2005
- The dead baby left in a cupboard (scroll down it's near the bottom). Also check the comments for what a cancer patient has to put up with.
- The appalling state of pain relief as noted by a Dispatches documentary. Here's some of the blurb (in case it goes missing):
Doctors fear giving morphine or lack training in its use and there is a shortage of specialist care for the dying both in hospitals and for those who die at home. For the film Dispatches carried out a major survey of people who recently lost a relative - the results show a catalogue of misery. In the past, the majority of people died at home - sometimes quickly of infection. Now many people die slowly from chronic illnesses and end up spending their last days in hospital. In the film relatives describe how their loved ones scream in agony begging for help - without the most basic relief. Some hospitals don't have a palliative care team, let alone a consultant. Some relatives are driven to going out into the streets to buy morphine on the black market.
- 190,000 patients harmed by hospital safety lapses including by wrong prescriptions and missing or faulty equipment.
- Cuts keep patients waiting for drugs. Cuts might be too strong a word but there are treatments that the NHS won't allow because it regards them as too expensive.
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2006
- 52 per cent have temporarily closed wards
- Waiting reclassified as "queuing" to make the numbers look better
- £2bn IT project ends up costing £50bn
- NHS spending nearly doubles in 6 years - OK, not a horror story exactly but worth bearing in mind
- NHS slow to introduce new cancer drugs
- The NHS Fast Track Scheme
- Busy nurses leave elderly to starve
- Superbug kills 49 in Leicester
- NHS kills diabetics
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Comments
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