I have been contacted by a medically-trained person who tells me that what happened in Epsom hospital last week was even worse than what Theodore Dalrymple referred to in the latest Sunday Telegraph.
My informant's account comes from a second medically trained person who works in the hospital:
Casualty was busy and there was a management determination not to breach the government target that people should not be kept waiting in casualty for more than four hours.
To make room for patients to be admitted, four patients were moved to the combined ante-natal and post-natal ward. This ward was told that the patients coming would be gynaecological patients. In fact, they were not.
"They were four elderly medical patients, including one with bed sores and on IVs [intra-venous drips] - an infectious risk. An agency nurse was sent to nurse them as the midwives did not have the experience to cope."
The transfer of these patients caused "idiotic risks" potentially exposing to infection new-born babies, their mothers and also women just about to give birth. My informant continues, "As to moving around sick elderly in the middle of the night - words fail me."
The next morning, the staff at the ante-natal and post-natal ward, including senior midwives and consultants, "went ballistic".
"The patients were moved out by 4 pm but the bay couldn't be used until it was disinfected on orders from the microbiology department."
Word about the danger to women about to give birth spread so that the department was taking calls from concerned pregnant women, working in the hospital trust, who had heard about it on the grapevine.
"The phone calls were naturally responded to in a downplaying way as it is natural to try and calm troubled waters. Explicit orders were not given, nor had to be as one tries not to upset the boat. Any midwife who blurts out the truth loses her job/prospects fast - it's a true culture of fear."
"All this came about because of the four hour rule."
My informant urges me to maintain strict confidentiality. The story has been told to me because of concern for patient safety. But this sort of thing is normally kept quiet. Those who know what has happened fear for their jobs if they tell the press. This is an occasion when a member of the medical profession has felt strongly enough pass on the story. As my informant concludes,
"These things need to be told."
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS
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