antimulticulture

NHS staff 'cover up blunders'

David Hencke
Wednesday September 17, 2003
The Guardian

Doctors and nurses are covering up the scale of infections and mistakes that
patients suffer because of bad hospital treatment, the national audit office
says in a report published today.

Staff who report errors worry that they will be disciplined by the trust,
and a culture of covering up incidents has grown up in the NHS, says
Parliament's financial watchdog.

It cites two trusts, Barts and the London NHS trust and the Greater
Manchester ambulance trust, where the management changed procedures to
encourage staff to report errors and gave them guidance on how to stop them
being repeated. In Barts and the London trust there was a 40% increase in
clinical errors being reported. In Greater Manchester, ambulance staff also
reported being more comfortable in admitting faults.

The report is the first of three into the quality of care offered by the NHS
which spends £54bn annually on healthcare services. It says that in some
areas the NHS is giving patients more information about their treatment and
the risks they face. In other areas, such as clinical audit and risk
management of treatment, the situation is much more patchy.

The report says: "The commitment within trusts varies widely and many trusts
face other major barriers, including a lack of resources, poor training
attendance and a culture that is not conducive to reporting risks."

--

JimB
Union Against Multiculturalism
http://www.geocities.com/UAM01