Thursday 2 May 2013

The NHS Black Hole; the Disappeared

Another person disappears down the NHS black hole - the disappeared

A great sadness to me is the number of people who have been lost to the NHS because of corrupt NHS managers and cruel or fearful colleagues.  The people destroyed are usually conscientious staff, and not very popular with any colleagues whose work is shoddy, who bully or who don’t much care for patients and caring.

Why are they working there then you wonder?  Good question.  And I don’t have to justify these statements because the press has been flagging up horrendous stories of cruelty and neglect.  See www.dignifiedrevolution.com for some of these.

Back to the conscientious workers.  They are popular with patients because they care and are passionate about nursing and sadly that makes them even more unpopular with these malfunctioning people.  The carers answer calls for help.  They are usually very careful with their record keeping, staying behind to finish the work.

Apart from these carers committing suicide, which tragically I believe has happened though I don’t have details, the worst thing of all happened to Amanda Jenkinson.

Her life was destroyed by her colleagues and trust/employer. (What a misnamed word ‘trust’ can be, I always think.)  Very serious allegations were made against her and she ended up serving a 4 year prison sentence.  Imagine that.  I can’t.

A colleague bravely wrote of her ‘She was always innocent but was betrayed by her colleagues who allowed events to escalate into something they could not control. The management at the time was weak and positively encouraged rivalry and animosity between colleagues. Nurses felt threatened by Amanda Jenkinson's knowledge, skills and expertise which should have been seen as an asset to the profession rather than creating insecurity from lesser qualified nurses in a more senior position. Amanda Jenkinson became a victim simply because of her intelligence, no nonsense professional demeanour and witty sense of humour.’  From the internet.

That aptly describes what has been replicated times without number for many others, though thankfully, without the dreadful experience of a prison sentence but nearly as bad.
Betrayal by colleagues, very destructive management behaviours and professional jealousy to the point of active animosity follow.

Hard to believe?  In a supposedly caring profession?  Yes. And so unquantified and unresearched and concealed, making this dark side of the NHS even more sinister. 

It took a further five years for Ms Jenkinson to have the sentence quashed as unsafe, because of the mathematics of a so called expert witness.  What a waste of that poor woman’s life and skills, what a loss to those patients she might have cared for, if this had never happened.

And what sort of healing help was there for Ms Jenkinson afterwards or for any of these victims of travesties of justice?  To my knowledge, nothing at all. Did she return to nursing?  I understand she never wanted anything to do with it ever again.

How many hours of dedicated nursing and midwifery and health visiting care have been lost to the public?  Other disciplines too. 

If this blog achieves anything, I hope it can help towards bringing these sorts of terrible injustices to an end.
Julie