NHS – Beasley's Place

It caught my eye this week… 2

March 4, 2021 MikeLeave a comment

Again, time always seems to be my enemy, I’m never really sat down much, but it seems I need to apply myself a bit more to posting onto this blog. Anyway…

The Atlantic Conveyor – I remember reading an article about this back in 2016 when scientists voiced concerns about the Ocean current known as the Atlantic Conveyor Belt was apparently slowing down. In an interesting article, it was reported that the strength of the current had been dropping since 2009 and was then starting to cause issues with ocean currents around the world and influencing climate change.

Guess what! It seems that this is an ongoing and serious problem; reported last week in the UK Guardian, scientists say that Atlantic currents area at their lowest for a millennium!! What are we to make of this?

Clearly, the way we have treated the planet has had a lot to do with this; the ongoing effects of burnt fossil fuels increasingly warming the atmosphere is clearly now having a measurable effect. One wonders how much of this can be reversed and is anyone’s guess when; one hopes that we have not reached the point of no return or are we really heading for our ‘Day After Tomorrow‘?

Some other resources about this ….

NHS Privatisation – Well love to ‘own’ the NHS; they have (and still are) delivered a truly amazing service during the pandemic, so I feel quite annoyed when I read that very quietly and without any big announcement a major GP surgery been swallowed up by an American Health Insurance company. Privatisation by stealth is the watchword that we should all be afraid of.

Of course, the powers that be will raise their hands and still say that nothing will change and the NHS is ‘Safe in Our Hands‘. However, if recent examples of USA health care are anything to go by, then we should be very worried that this has happened and I can only believe that this is just the start of things to come under the current UK government. Will we end up paying twice for our healthcare in the UK?

Biobank Study Reports – I’ve taken part in a number of studies with this organisation over the years, one of the latest was a SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus study that required blood samples to be take every month for six months and sent in for analysis by them. Quite a painless exercise, though I would like to know why a ‘paper’ cut never stops bleeding; but when you ‘want’ to get 10ml of blood out of your finger, it takes for ages!

The reports of the Serology Study can be download here – Month 1 and here Month 6.

The NHS

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 MikeLeave a comment

Back in 2006 a friend and I started a small website and blog about the changes the NHS was going through at that time. Such as Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges.

It’s amazing after all the years in which we have had five different Prime Ministers and four different governments and massive amounts of money having been spent on the NHS; the very same problems of staff shortages, bed shortages and car parking charges continue to weigh down the NHS.

One of the reasons we started the website was that there did not appear at the time one central source where one could look at to get a snapshot of the then ‘current’ situation.

It took a bit of collating, but it was surprising how much information could be gathered over the Internet at the time. However, there were a lot of phone calls made and surprisingly we did gather a lot of data by simply ringing the hospitals directly and asking; and simply being given the info we asked for! I am sure today; there’d be lots of Freedom of Information (FOI) forms to fill out and lots of refusals given back to us.

We also set up a contact page on the website and received quite a bit of information that way, slowly building up the data across the three main areas of Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges (changes)

Sadly over time and due to both our jobs – we were independent IT consultants (not in the NHS) – suddenly getting very busy with new contracts (not with the NHS) so the website and the Blog started to fall by the side. We did look at raising money via donations, but sadly that did not happen. Not really focused enough due to our jobs I suppose. Today, ‘Crowdfunding’ might be the answer!!

However; I have kept the Domain name which I may revive (when I have time) at some stage when we see the current governments’ direction. I do still publish a daily (Mon-Fri) newsletter of NHS related stuff that grabs my eye at https://www.scoop.it/topic/nhswatch.

It is sad to see the struggles the NHS has gone through over the years; yes it has improved in many areas as I can confirm when I have needed to use it on two occasions. However; it seems of late, that no one person really has an single answer to the staffing and bed problems that have continued over the 14 years that I have been looking at it.

As a guide to any links you might see associated with this post. I ‘ported’ over all the past Blog entries from the ‘NHS Watch’ original Blog platform quite a while ago. Needless to say any related comments you see will be very old and of course very out of date.

Who will be held accountable for the Mid-Staffs debacle?

February 7, 2013 MikeLeave a comment

The revelations delivered yesterday in the report into the Mid-Staffs NHS debacle left me stunned. I knew from reading many articles about this in the past that it would be bad, but this was just unbelievable.

What to do next? I am absolutely sure that the general public want someone to be held to account for this mess and despite the description of this disaster being revealed as a ‘Total Systems Failure’; these ‘Systems’ were put in place by Humans ranging from the then Government setting policy to the various levels of management in the NHS implementing these ‘Systems’.

For me, I would say that there has been a total ‘corruption of position’ within senior management associated with the Mid-Staffs crisis.

As these ‘Systems’ were run and managed by Humans, does it not show that either the wrong people were employed – though I guess that ‘must have an uncaring attitude to patients’ would not have appeared on any job description, or that the people that were employed got so involved in their part of running the ‘System’ that they became corrupted by their own position within the ‘System’ unable or unwilling to do anything against the ‘System’.

What is staggering to me is that some of the people involved in the Mid-Staff crisis seem to have been championed by others within the ‘System’ and moved on to higher level management jobs within the NHS. Did they then let out a sigh of relief or simply carry that corrupted position with them to their new ‘slot’ within the ‘System’? We may never really know, of course that is until the next enquiry exposes yet more ‘Systems’ failures.

It is sad that today no one seems to have the backbone to admit that they have done wrong, we still seem to ‘pay-off’ the failures who are then free to take up other positions within the same organisation to possibly continue their ‘corruption of yet another position’

When will we learn our lessons?