This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/24/after-gosport-who-would-want-to-be-elderly-and-in-hospital-now
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| After Gosport, who would want to be elderly and in hospital now? | After Gosport, who would want to be elderly and in hospital now? |
| (25 days later) | |
| ‘Please make comfortable.” This, we learn from the report into hundreds of hastened deaths at Gosport’s War Memorial hospital, was the term favoured by Dr Jane Barton, followed by: “I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.” | ‘Please make comfortable.” This, we learn from the report into hundreds of hastened deaths at Gosport’s War Memorial hospital, was the term favoured by Dr Jane Barton, followed by: “I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.” |
| Anyone with older friends or relatives, or even unable completely to rule out future ageing for themselves, may want to make a note of “please make comfortable”. This was a Gosport euphemism for early admission to the terminal care pathway, along with, “this patient is for palliation” and “going on a syringe driver”. As in a discussion between other members of staff about an annoying patient – “we agreed that if he wasn’t careful he would ‘talk himself on to a syringe driver’” (the patient did). | Anyone with older friends or relatives, or even unable completely to rule out future ageing for themselves, may want to make a note of “please make comfortable”. This was a Gosport euphemism for early admission to the terminal care pathway, along with, “this patient is for palliation” and “going on a syringe driver”. As in a discussion between other members of staff about an annoying patient – “we agreed that if he wasn’t careful he would ‘talk himself on to a syringe driver’” (the patient did). |
| Professor Sir Brian Jarman, director of the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, has already suggested that the Gosport method could be occurring elsewhere, not least because whistleblowers are still, he says, “fired, gagged and blacklisted… nobody dare whistleblow in the NHS”. | Professor Sir Brian Jarman, director of the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, has already suggested that the Gosport method could be occurring elsewhere, not least because whistleblowers are still, he says, “fired, gagged and blacklisted… nobody dare whistleblow in the NHS”. |
| Gosport hospital: more than 450 patients died due to opioid drugs policy | Gosport hospital: more than 450 patients died due to opioid drugs policy |
| Naturally, many clinicians are equally anxious that the ghastly contents of the report of the Gosport Independent Panel, led by the Right Reverend James Jones, should not put people off hospital or palliative care. Whistleblowers, now positively applauded by the health secretary, will – hopefully – spot the “disregard for human life” identified in Gosport. Dr Eileen Burns, president of the British Geriatrics Society, said: “There are lots of reasons why we can be reasonably optimistic that it is not likely to be happening currently. Culturally, things have moved on quite a long way.” | Naturally, many clinicians are equally anxious that the ghastly contents of the report of the Gosport Independent Panel, led by the Right Reverend James Jones, should not put people off hospital or palliative care. Whistleblowers, now positively applauded by the health secretary, will – hopefully – spot the “disregard for human life” identified in Gosport. Dr Eileen Burns, president of the British Geriatrics Society, said: “There are lots of reasons why we can be reasonably optimistic that it is not likely to be happening currently. Culturally, things have moved on quite a long way.” |
| If these assurances are somewhat less than resounding, health officials face a double task, with Gosport, in accounting for the delay – almost 30 years – in reporting, as well as for 456 deaths. Following Harold Shipman’s conviction for 15 murders, Dame Janet Smith’s inquiry produced six reports within five years. In fact, many of his killings must have coincided with Gosport’s life-shortening, Shipman (“very caring” to a colleague who failed to notice he was lethal) having murdered “probably” 236 patients between 1974 and his arrest in 1998, which was seven years after nurses first raised the alarm about Barton. | If these assurances are somewhat less than resounding, health officials face a double task, with Gosport, in accounting for the delay – almost 30 years – in reporting, as well as for 456 deaths. Following Harold Shipman’s conviction for 15 murders, Dame Janet Smith’s inquiry produced six reports within five years. In fact, many of his killings must have coincided with Gosport’s life-shortening, Shipman (“very caring” to a colleague who failed to notice he was lethal) having murdered “probably” 236 patients between 1974 and his arrest in 1998, which was seven years after nurses first raised the alarm about Barton. |
| Barton (“very caring” to a colleague untroubled by the death toll on her watch) was able, with the assistance of less vigilant staff, to carry on making patients “comfortable” until her resignation, in 2000. As with Shipman, the GMC was in no hurry and didn’t get around to not striking her off until 2010. It opted for “serious professional misconduct”. In the 2007, post-Shipman report, Learning From Tragedy: Keeping Patients Safe, health ministers insisted: “The NHS today is in many ways very different from the NHS in which Shipman practised.” It promised a “different era”. A superior culture would ensure that complaints and “expressions of concern” would be properly scrutinised, poor clinical performance identified, police investigations improved. | Barton (“very caring” to a colleague untroubled by the death toll on her watch) was able, with the assistance of less vigilant staff, to carry on making patients “comfortable” until her resignation, in 2000. As with Shipman, the GMC was in no hurry and didn’t get around to not striking her off until 2010. It opted for “serious professional misconduct”. In the 2007, post-Shipman report, Learning From Tragedy: Keeping Patients Safe, health ministers insisted: “The NHS today is in many ways very different from the NHS in which Shipman practised.” It promised a “different era”. A superior culture would ensure that complaints and “expressions of concern” would be properly scrutinised, poor clinical performance identified, police investigations improved. |
| At the time of Learning From Tragedy, Barton remained free to practise, despite disturbing accounts from multiple relatives, who were still struggling to get the NHS, GMC, police, CPS, coroners and the local MP properly to investigate the many complaints and “expressions of concern” whose justice Jones now confirms. Though we only have his report, because Norman Lamb, who is sadly not the leader of the Lib Dems, overruled health officials’ advice in 2013. Perhaps, in comparison with villainous Shipman, these officials found Gosport’s approach – “please make comfortable” – less than impressive? If so, they weren’t alone. Along with a staggering reluctance to acknowledge the implications for public safety, few of the authorities that might have been expected to investigate demonstrated, by their actions, that the effective euthanising of scores, maybe hundreds, of older people – when it’s not the work of spree killer – is not really all that wrong. Rather, the police identified grieving relations as troublemakers. Instead of representing the bereaved families, their MP, Peter Viggers, wanted to stop investigating the deaths, and ticked off the living: “Some very extravagant language has been used by a small number of people, but this does not alter the fact that a high standard of care is provided by a devoted staff.” | At the time of Learning From Tragedy, Barton remained free to practise, despite disturbing accounts from multiple relatives, who were still struggling to get the NHS, GMC, police, CPS, coroners and the local MP properly to investigate the many complaints and “expressions of concern” whose justice Jones now confirms. Though we only have his report, because Norman Lamb, who is sadly not the leader of the Lib Dems, overruled health officials’ advice in 2013. Perhaps, in comparison with villainous Shipman, these officials found Gosport’s approach – “please make comfortable” – less than impressive? If so, they weren’t alone. Along with a staggering reluctance to acknowledge the implications for public safety, few of the authorities that might have been expected to investigate demonstrated, by their actions, that the effective euthanising of scores, maybe hundreds, of older people – when it’s not the work of spree killer – is not really all that wrong. Rather, the police identified grieving relations as troublemakers. Instead of representing the bereaved families, their MP, Peter Viggers, wanted to stop investigating the deaths, and ticked off the living: “Some very extravagant language has been used by a small number of people, but this does not alter the fact that a high standard of care is provided by a devoted staff.” |
| This open devaluing of human life, and indifference to feelings, in relation to the old and sick seems barely an improvement on – if it doesn’t help to explain – the ward culture in which Barton would apparently remark, in a relative’s presence: “We’ve got another weeper here.” And maybe her bedside brutality is not that extraordinary, when you find, in Jones’s report, the GMC giving Barton (then implicated in 12 deaths) the benefit of the social doubt: “To some you might at times appear distant or even unfeeling, albeit that this was far from your intention.” | This open devaluing of human life, and indifference to feelings, in relation to the old and sick seems barely an improvement on – if it doesn’t help to explain – the ward culture in which Barton would apparently remark, in a relative’s presence: “We’ve got another weeper here.” And maybe her bedside brutality is not that extraordinary, when you find, in Jones’s report, the GMC giving Barton (then implicated in 12 deaths) the benefit of the social doubt: “To some you might at times appear distant or even unfeeling, albeit that this was far from your intention.” |
| If the propensity to sanctify the NHS, to the point of worshipping it at the Olympics ceremony, helps explain occasional unwillingness to recognise its fallibility, and correspondingly exaggerated self-belief on the part of some practitioners, the Jones report doubles as a 370-page case for deconsecration. Although just a quick reading of Learning From Tragedy, p25, “a new approach to complaints and concerns”, would be a start. | If the propensity to sanctify the NHS, to the point of worshipping it at the Olympics ceremony, helps explain occasional unwillingness to recognise its fallibility, and correspondingly exaggerated self-belief on the part of some practitioners, the Jones report doubles as a 370-page case for deconsecration. Although just a quick reading of Learning From Tragedy, p25, “a new approach to complaints and concerns”, would be a start. |
| The Jones report finds the Shipman case “cast a shadow”, in focusing too much police attention on Barton. The reality was perhaps more chilling: giving older patients large doses of diamorphine, covert with Shipman, was in Gosport normalised and open, before being trivialised, then concealed by the very bodies that were ordered, post-Shipman, to reform. | The Jones report finds the Shipman case “cast a shadow”, in focusing too much police attention on Barton. The reality was perhaps more chilling: giving older patients large doses of diamorphine, covert with Shipman, was in Gosport normalised and open, before being trivialised, then concealed by the very bodies that were ordered, post-Shipman, to reform. |
| The Gosport shadow could be longer. The introduction of assisted dying depends, for instance, on trust that this is the patient’s choice, not that of a rogue clinician – or culture. | The Gosport shadow could be longer. The introduction of assisted dying depends, for instance, on trust that this is the patient’s choice, not that of a rogue clinician – or culture. |
| Though from this report, you don’t have to be elderly and frail to fear it’s already being trialled. Where else are they making people comfortable? | Though from this report, you don’t have to be elderly and frail to fear it’s already being trialled. Where else are they making people comfortable? |
| • Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist | • Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist |
| Hospitals | Hospitals |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| NHS | NHS |
| Health | Health |
| Harold Shipman | Harold Shipman |
| comment | comment |
| Share on Facebook | Share on Facebook |
| Share on Twitter | Share on Twitter |
| Share via Email | Share via Email |
| Share on LinkedIn | Share on LinkedIn |
| Share on Pinterest | Share on Pinterest |
| Share on WhatsApp | Share on WhatsApp |
| Share on Messenger | Share on Messenger |
| Reuse this content | Reuse this content |