Our NHS is “suffering from a deficit of accountability and compassion for patients and their families when things go wrong,” says its own ombudsman. I should say so.
The service’s damning report, Broken Trust: Making Patient Safety More Than Just a Promise, goes on to critique a “culture of defensiveness” and a reluctance to learn lessons on the part of NHS managers.
Why am I not surprised? Because I know from painful personal experience that there is an awful lot of shoddy behaviour in today’s NHS. Sometimes it is medical. Sometimes it is just a lack of decency in dealing with patients.
