Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1978-79 : investigations completed August to November 1978.

  • Great Britain. Health Service Commissioner
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1978-79 : investigations completed August to November 1978. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    told my officer that if no one had been able to collect the complainant an ambulance would have been arranged; this might have meant he would have had to remain in hospital until the following day. 10. The hospital secretary explained to the complainant in his reply of 3 August that transport arrangements were made by the ward sister. He said that the hospital secretary at hospital B would be discussing with staff there the possibility that there might have been a delay in informing ward staff of the decision to discharge him. In a further letter dated 31 August he said that the nurses were normally informed on ward rounds at the time the medical staff made the decision to discharge a patient. He regretted that he had been unable to find out exactly what had happened on this occasion and he invited the complainant to write to the hospital secretary at hospital B if he wished to take the matter further. The complainant replied on 14 September, challenging aspects of this reply, questioning why he had been asked to write to hospital B, and calling the secretary’s competence into question. The hospital secretary, acknowledging the complainant’s letter on 26 September, said he was sorry the complainant was still unhappy about the matters he had raised about his treatment; he said he had referred the letter to his superior, an assistant district administrator (ADA), who would write to the complainant in due course. The ADA did so on 20 October; with regard to transport arrangements, he said it appeared from the complainant’s account of what had occurred that there had been a lack of communication, for which he expressed the Authority’s apologies. 11. The hospital secretary at hospital A told my officer that he had asked the complainant to contact hospital B direct as he felt that the complaint at that stage was solely a matter for that hospital. The ADA had subsequently written to him to point out that when complaints were received which included points relating to another hospital and it was not possible to get a quick answer from that hospital’s secretary, then that aspect of the complaint should be passed to the secretary concerned, who should be asked to reply direct to the complainant. I have seen a copy of this memorandum from the ADA. 12. The hospital secretary at hospital B told my officer that as soon as she had received a copy of the complaint from the hospital secretary at hospital A, she had asked the senior nursing officer at hospital B (SNO) to obtain statements from appropriate staff. When interviewed by my officer, the SNO said her interpretation of the complainant’s first letter had been that it was solely concerned with medical staff. She said that she could now see that one aspect of it concerned the nursing staff's involvement with transport when the complainant was to be discharged. She said she had probably told her nursing officers about the complaint and stated that the staff nurse mentioned by the complainant was in fact the enrolled nurse, who, as the most senior nurse under the sister on that ward was frequently called ‘staff nurse’ by patients. 13. A nursing officer at hospital B remembered that when she was deputising for the SNO one day, the hospital secretary had told her about the complaints and that she had subsequently told the enrolled nurse, on the