Stafford extended matching quiz
A little quiz about concerns raised or not about mid-Staffs. Quotes are all from spring/summer 2009. Match the quote to its author:
A) Baroness Young of Old Scone, then The Chairman of the Care Quality Commission
B) Mr Howard Catton, RCN spokesman, to Health Select Committee
C) Dr. David Colin-Thome, Government Primary Care Czar and former Labour Party Candidate
D) Rt. Hon Alan Johnson MP, then Secretary of State for Health and a former trade union leader
E) Dr. Peter Daggett, Consultant Physician,Stafford, to Health Select Committee.
1) "I do not understand why clinicians whose primary role is the safety of their patients are somehow concerned about whistleblowing. Indeed, knowing the number of people in various occupations who are not slow to make people aware of such difficulties, it amazes me that that did not happen at Stafford.”
2)"...between 2005 and 2008 we believe there is in the region of 500 or so incident or accident forms. There was a particular period at the end of 2007 where there were about 200 within a six month period. The concern which has been reported back to us is that people felt those incident forms were going into a black hole or into a waste paper basket. There is one example which was reported to us where a nurse said she did see an incident form in a senior manager's waste paper basket.”
3)“To have no individual clinicians systematically raising concerns is also uncommon and to me hugely disappointing.”
4)"We need to create a culture where doctors are obliged to challenge each other. It is not happening everywhere at the moment. There is a silence among professionals"
5) “I and my colleagues have been raising concerns with management at all levels for some considerable time and certainly around 2006 when I think the present problems arose."
4 comments:
it's a fix. Dr. Peter Daggett said them all.
The purpose of this quiz is to just set people thinking about the issues. If you actually want to do it and measure your performance you may find this link helpful.
Dr Grumble takes no credit for the quiz which was devised by somebody else who kindly agreed to have it given a more public airing here. He or she probably wants to remain anonymous. It's not good to stick your head above the parapet when it comes to issues like this. It is only after things have gone very wrong that it is OK to point out that all the authorities were informed but that clinicians were ignored.
Dr Grumble no longer dares to post on local matters related to patient care but, since it was now so long ago and a relatively trivial matter, he will now say that there was an occasion when he repeatedly filled in incident reports on a recurring failing that could have affected patient safety. He was eventually gently asked not to bother. By then Grumble was ready to give up anyway so he stopped. As it turned out, each one of Grumble's incident reports was sent to the National Patient Safety Agency who did take action. Perhaps these things are not a waste of time. Certainly we should go on filling them in so that at least our concerns get logged. The problem is that it is very difficult when you become aware of endemic short staffing leading to patient safety issues to flag this up in an incident report as it tends to result in Nurse Anne having to take the blame for whatever went wrong rather than the fact that Nurse Anne had too much work to do to be able to do things properly.
If you do the quiz using the link above you can get the answers at the end if you are wrong. And, if you are really keen, you may find help from Grumble's shared items.
I have some scepticism also about incident forms, but they are a useful way of covering your back. I also table items at our clinical meetings about concerns. The managers do not act, but I have covered myself to a degree.
Being a whistleblower is dangerous, nobody likes a snitch, best to sort out dirty linen in private. But when that fails the dilemma begins...
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