The Anonymous Widower

A Must Read Opinion In The Sunday Times

Camilla Caendish’s opinion in the Sunday Ties today is very much worth reading. The title says a lot.

Tribal tensions on the ward are putting patients at risk

And it starts like this.

Managers bullying staff into fiddling cancer figures. Whistleblowers gagged with pay-offs. A&E doctors coping with patients who should have been seen by the GP. And that’s just last week’s headlines. With so many of the staff at loggerheads, it’s not surprising the National Health Service sometimes seems to forget about the patients.

It is full of nuggets that apply to any company or organisation. Like this one!

Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridge has borrowed a programme from Toyota called Stop the Line. This lets any member of staff halt a procedure if they think the patient may be at risk. In one recent case, a patient was about to be stitched up after surgery when two theatre nurses found a swab was missing and “stopped the line”. An x-ray showed the swab in the patient’s abdomen. It was removed, saving the patient from harm and the hospital from heaven knows what kind of negligence claim.

If you can find the article, read it!

November 17, 2013 - Posted by | Health, News, World | ,

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