You Don’t Have to Travel You Know

Our Glorious NHS (The Wonder of the World it is!), providing opportunities for all. You no longer have to travel to Baghdad or Gitmo to be mistreated.

It included "kicking, shoving and dragging, belittling, goading and
mocking … withholding food, giving cold showers, overzealous or
premature use of restraint, poor attitude towards people who used
services, poor atmosphere, roughness, care not provided, lack of
dignity and respect and no privacy".

One patient was tied to a wheelchair for 16 hours, some were drugged.
Light switches or taps were removed from their rooms. Patients’ money
was misused.

Where did this happen? Some interrogation centre? In the back of some dark and dank police station? No:

The investigation, which included unannounced visits,
focused on Budock Hospital, near Falmouth, home to 18 adults, two other
homes in Bodmin and Falmouth, four children’s units and 46 houses
occupied by groups of up to four people with learning disabilities.

Five
members of support staff have been sacked by the trust and one nurse
has resigned. During the year-long investigation, the chief executive
of the trust, Tony Gardner, resigned.

The report
said that treatment units had "effectively become long-term homes"
providing unregulated and unmonitored social care. "In one instance, a
person who was admitted for a short stay following a cataract operation
died there several years later."

Aren’t we lucky to have the NHS, which takes care of us all so well?

7 responses

  1. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    quick, somebody uncover a case of mistreatment in the privately run care home, or whatever, so Tim can write about how lucky we are to have the market looking after us.
    Come on Tim, anecdote is not data. Must do better.
    Tim adds: Ahem, anecdote is data: might not be information, but it is data.

  2. Miserabilia Avatar
    Miserabilia

    Of course you don’t have to travel all that far for a bit of abuse, but in Baghdad, the terrorist mafia use modern technology, such a drills to torture, and they do it just that little bit more professionally than the cornish beginners.
    I wonder how many of the sadistic nurses are immigrants ?

  3. Which is why those of us who go into nursing homes on a regular basis are encouraged to look for, and report on, acts of abuse.
    As a huge employer the NHS does pick up a fair number of shitty people, unfortunately they are then put into a position of power over people rather than put on an assembly line making shoes.

  4. Oh – and private healthcare companies are often worse than the NHS run places in my experience…

  5. Luis Enrique Avatar
    Luis Enrique

    pendant.

  6. Umbongo Avatar
    Umbongo

    We expect this kind of abuse in the private sector don’t we (after all it’s only profit that matters there), but not from those saints (some of whom have come from abroad to help us out) who work in the NHS. Unfortunately this abuse is not just anecdotal it’s fact and, on the “Today” programme this morning, the new head of the Cornwall Health Trust (or whatever it calls itself) which runs the home concerned apologised and confirmed that all these facilities run by her trust are to be inspected. BTW aren’t they supposed to be inspected regularly anyway?

  7. Umbongo – yes they are *supposed* to be inspected, but once more it’s a small department drowning in paperwork.
    Which is why I take great pleasure on setting them on some of the awful nursing homes I see.
    It’s fairly easy to pass an inspection if you have prior warning…

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