'Shocking standard of care' in UK hospitals
'Shocking standard of care' in UK hospitals says PA
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Thursday, 27, Aug 2009 02:17
By Sarah Garrod.
Many patients are receiving a "shocking standard of care" in UK hospitals, a patients' group has said.
The Patients Association is calling on the government and Quality Care Commission to urgently review the basic standards of care for patients in hospitals.
In a report entitled Patients Not Numbers, People Not Statistics, the group said there has been a "consistent pattern of shocking standards of care".
The Patients Association highlighted 16 cases in England where people, often the elderly, were left lying in faeces and urine and were not helped to eat.
Earlier this year, a report from the Healthcare Commission detailed poor lapses in standards of care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS trust.
The association's director, Katherine Murphy, said: "Whilst Mid Staffordshire may have been an anomaly in terms of scale [the Patients Association] knew the kinds of appalling treatment given there could be found across the NHS. This report removes any doubt and makes this clear to all. Two of the accounts come from Stafford, and they sadly fail to stand out from the others.
"These accounts tell the story of the two per cent of patients that consistently rate their care as poor. If this was extrapolated to the whole of the NHS from 2002 to 2008 it would equate to over one million patients. Very often these are the most vulnerable elderly and terminally ill patients-it's a sad indictment of the care they receive."
In the report the Patients Association published comments made from the accounts of people who had witnessed poor levels of care. They included that of Jayne Knowles Smith, who said: "I used to pride myself on being a nurse and hopefully I was caring and thoughtful. I have had the misfortune of seeing nursing from another angle as a patient. It's a scary world out in the wards. I'm not sure if it's the training that's lacking, the basic skills or just understaffing."
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has said that such examples are "completely unacceptable", but they must not overshadow the "vast majority of good quality healthcare" received by patients treated daily.
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the RCN, said: "The level of care described by these families is completely unacceptable, and we will not condone nurses who behave in ways that are contrary to the principles and ethics of the profession.
"However we believe that the vast majority of nurses are decent, highly skilled individuals. This is reflected in the fact that last survey of patients by the Care Quality Commission found that over 90 per cent rated the care they received as good, very good or excellent.
"This report is based on the two per cent of patients who feel that their care was unacceptable. Two per cent is too many but we are concerned that this might undermine the public's confidence in the world-class care they can expect to receive from the NHS. Furthermore it could also dampen the morale of the millions of staff who work tirelessly to help their patients."