a view of the NHS by a brit

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/10/13/do1302.xml

it's a long article about the deaths in maidstone and turnbridge wells and the NHS in general in the comments section of the saturday telegraph, here's a few points

Now it is 2007, and we learn that nurses in the hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust told patients suffering from diarrhoea to "go in their beds". Between 2004 and 2006, 90 patients treated in those hospitals died from Clostridium difficile, and the disease was a factor in the death of a further 241.
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Nevertheless, the basic proposition is not true. The National Health Service is not, morally, or in any other way, the best system of healthcare in the world. Indeed, it is morally defective at its very root, because it does not — cannot — put the sick first. Until this is recognised, it cannot be reformed.
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Suppose Sainsbury's cold meat counter was found to have helped kill more than 300 people, would the company survive? Yet the NHS sails on, dealing death. According to a report four years ago by Professor Karol Sikora, we could save 10,000 deaths a year from cancer, just by hitting the European average; but we don't, and nobody takes the blame.
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This is all, morally, wrong. It turns the patient from being the entity for which the service exists into a nuisance. Each new patient is just an added cost and each dead patient is an administrative convenience.

Under systems of social insurance, such as exist in Germany, Belgium or France, many problems remain, but this most basic one disappears. Money goes with each patient, who can choose who treats him. Therefore every doctor, hospital and nurse wants patients.
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i hope/know this is bound to bring about strong views on all sides...i would just encourage anyone who comments to read the article fully

Hiya,
This is just my opinion mind.. I think the conditions that the patients suffered at the hands of the medical/nursing staff in this particular trust were absolutely HORRIFIC.
Every NHS trust is short staffed.. overworked.. etc.. this is NO excuse for the lack of basic care these patients suffered.
Saying that.. I can only speak for what i have encountered in NHS Scotland...  Many hospitals are  understaffed by overworked,overstressed nurses who are doing the best they can do with what they have.. I've never EVER seen the kind of conditions that were seen in Maidenstone/Kent Trust in ANY hospital in Scotland. I've always seen the basic care given.. No one has every sat in dirty sheets for hours on end or been told to just go in their beds..there is NO excuse for that..
What the NHS needs to do is remember who they are there for.. THE PATIENT.. not the administrators pockets etc.. Hospitals need more staff,more basic equipment .. even obs (bp,pulse machines) are always older and never enough of them.. More staff  and moer up to date equipment would prevent overstressed,overworked nurses from burning out soo quickly and they wouldn't find the need to call in sick and therefore making the rest of the ward nurses even more stressed out and overworked..
The NHS is a great idea.. but in its current state it just DOESN'T work.. The money being put into the NHS needs to be filtered down to where it matters ..to nursing staff and patient care.. the front line so to speak..
Without happy nurses you don't have happy patients/families. Better pay to nursing staff sure would help.. but to be honest.. for me the bottom line would be i'd rather have more hands (more nursing staff) than a nice huge payrise.. more hands makes light work.. The staff to patient ration here is deplorable at times..
Whoa.. now that i've ranted on.. I think i'll close this..

thank goodness they are blocking the final payout of the chief exec.  If she were being paid 150,000 / yr plus benefits, she should take the responsibility for what actually happened.

 thanks kaylesh...i guess those of us that work for the NHS have a different perspective on what goes on.
someone was telling me care is better in scotland...
i just wish the NHS would learn the value of isolation rooms.
 my trust is building a major new hospital and the ITU nurses are all twitched because there will be "side rooms" (yippee!!) the nurses can't understand how they will be able to "watch" the patients!!!
i want to say watch them what???? grow MRSA, C Diff, acintobacter?????

thank goodness they are blocking the final payout of the chief exec.  If she were being paid 150,000 / yr plus benefits, she should take the responsibility for what actually happened.

Without a doubt. What a terrible manager of the system. I think she is being let off easy by not getting her payout. How does that woman sleep at night? I think she should be brought up on a formal charge of gross negligence.

I know that the NHS is a sore spot for a lot of folks to even want to discuss.(DH and I are on opposite sides of the debate). For me, during my time here I have been scared OTT by the stories I have read and seen on TV (horrific stories, post code lotteries, short/overworked staffing, constant trust closures, etc). Knock on wood we haven't had to deal with the NHS (hospital that is) but if we did I would completely freak out. Don't get me wrong, I think the NHS was a wonderful thing when it started but it just can't keep up with proper care and standards today. The gov needs to stop cutting the purse strings.

That said, I have private insurance through my employer that is ending soon (job is going) so I have already lined up private (out of pocket) insurance until we move abroad. Interestingly when I got the quote for it, I asked my husband if he wanted to be covered as well and surprisingly he said...yes.  Ha, I had a laugh with him because he has always been a big supporter of the NHS and thought private insurance was a waste of money. He says he will go for it "to make me happy". I wonder, if like me he now prefers the security of private insurance "just in case". 

When Nurses are the only nurse on a 35 bed ward with multiple acute patients then it becomes impossible to do any kind of basic care. Yet 80% of our new grads cannot find jobs?

What happened at Maidstone is down to bed occupancy short staffing and a higher power.  I work for a cash strapped trust and know first hand how badly these wards are staffed. Its horrific and people die. Are people advocating that if a nurse has 2 patients that are crashing that she abandon them to do a bedpan round?  Do they really think that there would be another nurse around to help out in that situation in a cash strapped NHS hospital?  Wrong! Sounds like every minute of my normal shift anymore.  The patients we have on the wards now would have been in ITU 10 years ago with one nurse to patient.  Now I have them plus 30 other patients as the only nurse.
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According to the health commision report the c-diff bug that hit in Kent was an unusual form that was airborne.  Hygiene is extremely important but nothing would have helped really except total isolation and one nurse to patient.

These big old wards were not designed to have this 100% occupancy all the time with no time to clean in between patients.  This has resulted from the targets and the mad dash in A&E to avoid people breaching the 4 hour rule.  Patients on a general ward these days are sicker, more complex, and there are way less nurses.  It is a no win situation.

Short staffing, insanely increased bed occupancy on old fashioned wards, and ridiculous nurse patient ratios, as well as superbugs that are a result of the overuse and abuse of antibiotics are a lethal combination. 

Here is a good piece about it all:

http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2007/10/clostridium-difficile-more-diarrhoea.html

A few words on Clostridium Difficile.

It has been around for years. It is rare. Contrary to what the media would have you believe, it is not caused by poor hygiene. Just as MRSA lives happily up your nose without causing problems, so C.Difficle lives happily in your colon until the bacteriological environment of the colon is changed

and

http://www.drrant.net/2007/10/c-diff-whos-fault.html

Just wanted to had the maidstone is only the tip of the iceberg as far as what is going on as a result of TARGETS combined with intentional short staffing by trust managers.  Tip. of. the. iceberg.   

thanks for your input anoah!! so many people want to just ignore this issue. i have more and more patients/families asking me if they have MRSA.
i think, and this may be my US training but i think there is a big problem with big wards. today i took care of a patient with both MRSA and VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococci) not more than 10 feet from a patient 24 hours post liver transplant (immunocomprised)

in my book, ridiculous!!!!dangerous!!! asking for spread of infection...welcome to the NHS!

there are always people who say..."these things happen in the states"....but we are not in the states, are we??? it's important for all of us to educate ourselves to the system where we live and which will treat us should we (or our family) if we become ill.

today i took care of a patient with both MRSA and VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococci) not more than 10 feet from a patient 24 hours post liver transplant (immunocomprised)