I will start off my saying that the NHS is such a massive organisim that you can’t really say anything good or bad about it. It employees around 1.5 million people. People will have many different experiences based on the individuals they come across.
Some will have good experiences and others pretty terrible. I will say that there is this bizarre stigma that you can’t say anything bad about the NHS and they’re all amazing. I can tell you categorically, they are not all amazing.
In fact, being in the thick of while my father-in-law was battling for his life (he lost but that’s another story), we came across 3 different types of people within the NHS system.
Some are incredibly kind and caring. They can’t do enough for the patient. They ask how they are doing, they strike up a conversation. Ask about family visiting them. Treat them like a human.
Some just want your bed. They are trying to get you diagnosed and regardless of if it is accurate or not, they want you to leave and come back another day. Their whole remit appears to be keeping beds free for seriously sick or injured patients. Not understanding of course that the patient right in front of them is seriously ill.
The third type are literally trying to kill you. They are so bad at their job and uncaring and malicious, they want you to die. They are frustrated and fed up and take this out on their patients. The people who die under their watch just become a statistic.
So, with the stage set, I want to talk about my friend who broke his neck just over two years ago.
He has been a chiropractor for over 35 years. Like a few in the profession, he had a bad accident (motorbike) many years ago and his best way back to health and movement was via chiropractic work.
This was his calling in life as he trained and has successfully helped thousands of people over the years. He is extremely intelligent and outspoken about injustices around the world.
He was passionate about giving free treatments and his time to helping the homeless every Christmas.
He has more medical knowledge than most of the medical staff trying to treat him. He was constantly studying and learning.
He has always been strong, fit and healthy regardless of his 65 years. As a man who served in the Navy and travelled the world, he obviously liked a beer every now and again. Especially German beer.
He could do a wicked Jimmy Saville impression which didn’t always go down well as you can imagine. He spoke once of treating the niece of Jimmy Saville and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t stop himself doing the impression.
He was a great story teller. Convinced he may have a number of children in Ghana etc where he had stopped off during his Navy tour many years ago.
I have known him for over 25 years. I remember when I first went to see him for a treatment, I came out feeling like a banana. I was so used to being out of alignment that when he straightened me out, I felt really odd.
In fact, he told me to rest for two weeks and I looked at him in horror. I’d barely taken a day off from training in about 7 years, let alone 2 weeks.
Back to his freak accident which happened at home. He was lucky that he had patients that day otherwise he may have been lying there for a long time before being discovered.
They raised the alarm when they couldn’t get an answer from the door for their scheduled appointment. I believe a fire fighter friend managed to get in through a window to find him lying on the floor, unable to move.
He quickly had an operation where they put some metal work in his neck to stabilise it. At this point, he could move his arms but was paralysed from his chest down.
He had a special chair that he could sit in and go outside at the care home he was staying at. The first problem was that they left him in the chair for too long and so he got severe bed sores which plagued him for 18 months.
As in 12cm wide and at least 2 or 3cm deep. For this reason he needed a special bed that would change his position. He still needed to be manually turned every four hours. He was lucky if they did this once a day at the care home or even during his various hospital stays.
This is actually one of the main reasons everything suddenly took a major turn for the worse. He was at the hospital in Sheffield where he had gone because they supposedly had a specialist spinal unit.
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One day, while trying to turn him in the bed, the nurses where struggling and hurting him at the same time. They where trying to be gentle when another female nurse arrived on the scene and gave him an almighty shove.
She shoved him so hard that there was a loud crack. He cried out in pain as she literally broke his shoulder. A small piece of bone broke off his shoulder and it was never repaired.
This was the beginning of the end. He remained in pain for the next 10 months or so until he passed away recently. The hospital did appologise but how does a ‘sorry’ make up for that behaviour.
That murderous outburst by someone who is supposed to be looking after and caring for patients. Someone who clearly has their own psychological issues and shouldn’t be in that environment in the first place.
You go into a facility at your absolute most vulnerable. Into a facility who’s moto is supposed to be ‘Patients comes first in everything we do’. And they literally murder you.
After that, he could no longer use his arms. He became completely reliant on nurses and doctors around him. He couldn’t use his phone, a remote control or even press a buzzer for help.
He moved back to his care home where again his care was hit and miss. They stopped showering him because although they had all the right equipment and facilities, they complained it took too long to shower him. (Apparently 3 hours)
He kept getting urinary infections because they were not cleaning his catheter or changing it often enough. So he went back into hospital.
The first issue is that the nurses weren’t trained to deal with someone in his condition. They couldn’t do a bowl evacuation, only a doctor could do it and they said, they don’t do that here.
And so he would spend days without being able to go to the toilet properly.
We managed to get a Spinal Charity involved who were very helpful. They explained what care he required and gave the ward he was in a detailed care plan.
Unfortunately, whenever we visited, we could see that it wasn’t being followed. While there was a supposed path to complain, we were worried about making things worse for him.
At least he was moved to a better ward where he was by himself in a room with a TV. He did say that the night nurses literally ignored him despite him shouting that he needed something. Be that pain relief or a blanket.
Unfortunately, things progressively got worse again. He picked up phenomena and a lung infection and rapidly went downhill and passed away.
All I can say is that he did not die as a direct result of his injuries. He died from a poor level of care overall. There is a distinct lack of training of staff dealing with patients with severe spinal injuries.
There is also a lack of responsibility and accountability. In fact the person from the CQC was extremely rude and put the phone down on him during a conversation. All they cared about was money and not him as a human being.
Its sad because I felt his life wasn’t over and he still had a lot to offer. But the system won and he lost. I am grateful for knowing him and for is treatments and his stories and his care.
I am also grateful to those individuals in the NHS who did show care and empathy and did their best for him. For the rest, I pray that one day they will find their hearts.