MRSA Action UK: Call for action for an Inquiry into the events at Mid Staffordshire Hospital

MRSA Action UK: Call for action for an Inquiry into the events at Mid Staffordshire Hospital

MRSA Action UK: Call for action for an Inquiry into the events at Mid Staffordshire Hospital

With the debacle surrounding MP’s in Westminster over the last few weeks there will be the opportunity today for those Honorable Members of the House of Commons to begin to make amends. At 7pm tonight the House of Commons will hold a debate on whether or not there should be an Inquiry surrounding the events at the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital.

MRSA Action UK supports the Patients Associations campaign for an independent Inquiry into the appalling care in that hospital. The Healthcare Commission report on the events at the Mid-Staffordshire hospital has shown very serious failings not only in the care that patients received in Accident and Emergency, but also of very serious Management failings in the operational and organisational issues of this hospital.

In the opinion of MRSA Action UK the incident at the Mid Staffordshire hospital is not a one off incident. We believe that the events at this hospital have shown that the very serious understaffing of our hospitals can have grave consequences for the treatment that patients receive. Clinical judgments about a patient’s condition can not be left to receptionists, but must be the sole domain of Doctors and Nurses who are specifically trained to asses a patient’s condition and then to apply the appropriate treatment. Training of staff to use specialist equipment was seriously lacking to the extent that most staff could not operate or understand how equipment worked.

The Health Secretary Alan Johnson as the head of the NHS has issued an apology to the patients and families of those affected and the Health Secretary should support the call for an independent inquiry so that justice can be seen to be done for those affected. His support for this Independent Inquiry would galvanise those MP’s to voting for this debate.

The National Health Service is a great institution but it has its faults that all too often fail the very people it was intended to help. We cannot carry on with these events of tragedies in our hospitals and not learning from them so as to prevent another Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells or Mid Staffordshire.

It is imperative that those MP’s who are elected to the House of Commons attend this debate not only for their own esteem but for those constituents who elect them to represent them in this great house. The events that happened in the Mid Staffordshire hospital could have happened in anyone of the 170 NHS Trusts around the country and those MP’s in the House of Commons now have the opportunity to ensure this sort of thing never happens again especially as it could happen in any of the hospitals in their constituency.

It is time for those MP’s to consider that patients have to be the first priority of any hospital trust be that for reducing the adverse events that occur, or the high levels of Healthcare Infections such as MRSA and C-diff that still prevail in many of our hospitals.

Tonight at 7pm, MP’s in the House of Commons will have the opportunity to begin to build the trust back into our democracy by voting overwhelming on the need for an Independent Inquiry into the events at the Mid Staffordshire hospital, but more importantly they should vote for this Inquiry for the patients and families who have suffered because those charged with the care of their loved ones failed.

Derek Butler