Complaint
July Bailey, OBE (Mid Stafford) to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair, Health Select Committee
Please help & do something with the NHS complaints process, It causes so much misery for families.
Complaints were sent to and handled by the managers (all nurses) responsible for the IHTT, officially to Renfrewshire CHP head of mental health, Nurse Katrina Phillips. The investigation into Dr McAree was carried out by the man responsible for the IHTT, Nurse Alex Buchanan who is the line manager of IHTT team leader, Nurse Kevin Hernon. The letters appear to have been dealt with by head of admin Jean Still and the letters signed by CHP director, David Leese.
Intro
The first thing to say is that everyone involved in this is an employee obliged to carry out instructions, the harsh language is for the management regime, not the individual. However, there is a fundamental issue. The dangerous, puffed up arrogance of both staff and management. The response was inadequate, brazenly obstructive, evasive, without substance and in bad faith. When substance was requested, none was forthcoming. It is clear that Renfrewshire CHP mental health are neither willing nor able to deal with this complaint.
It is utterly outrageous for Renfrewshire CP to treat patients with contempt by employing someone to avoid answering questions like a politician. It caused me a lot of distress. No human being should be subjected to Jean Still, never mind victims of abuse. I spoke to one of her predecessors (on behalf of a friend) who was intelligent, educated, helpful, engaging, honest and sincere. Everything Jean Still wasn't. Instead I telephoned Renfrewshire CHP chairman's secretary, Anne Gallagher who was by a long way the highest quality and most intelligent person involved while Jean Still was easily the lowest.
Although Jean Still was able to evade every question, she couldn't conceal the fact that management were out of their depth dealing with technical issues. One of the most disturbing aspects was that not only did no one express concern , no one in management or my GP practice expressed the slightest interest in what had happened. They were only interested in circling the wagons.
This may seem unfair but these people have refused to answer any of my questions even under FOI request. When I asked them questions on the telephone, they ran away like children. The images came from Facebook. I discovered Nurse Hernon's page when he failed to answer my letter to him. I gave up when I was told a nurse wasn't a prescriber and couldn't have offered me Valium. I don't know what kind of lie that is. All I ever got from them is dumb insolence, cheek, lies and scrambled nonsense.
Nurse Phillips, head of mental health. Appropriately attired.
Nurse Hernon, head of the IHTT. This is a video of him doing the ice bucket challenge.
More generally I am horrified that any of those people are in positions of responsibility. The situation is very similar to other nursing management disasters like Mid Stafford and Morecambe Bay.
I rejected the chance to teach nurses at Paisley University because I was told by those that teach them that the access students were in no way capable of doing university work. This woman has a 'degree' in nursing from Paisley University. I mean no absolutely harm to her.
Complaint about Dr McAree
I sent them a complaint about Dr McAree very similar to the one on this website. It contained background information about me which would have indicated I was somewhat more capable than they thought. Up to this point, I had been treated with contempt, now Head of Patient Services (Nurse Alex Buchanan) invited me to a meeting with him and head of mental health (Nurse Katrina Phillips). I refused due to his abusive, offhand, dismissive behaviour on the phone, plus running away like a guilty child, refusing to answer my calls. Plus the previous outrageous attempt to lure me to the hospital under false pretences (see below).
I very deliberately asked for everything to be put in writing as evidence. This follows the same methodology a successful complaint made by family to the GMC about a GP in the 1970s.
The reply simply didn't address any of the complaints. It literally ignored every one including the self incriminating letter. It had arrogant, pompous bluster and inappropriate references to 'evidence based medicine' and the impertinent suggestion that I should go to my doctor because I had a mood disorder without specifying which one. This is indicative of someone out of their depth.
If we take his reply at face value, which we surely must, Nurse Buchanan appears not to understand the basic concept of a generic name. For example 'colour' is a generic name for a range of colours (red, blue green) , mood disorder is a generic name for a range of disorders. It was like a GP telling a patient he/she had a 'disease' without specifying which one. or 'Who were you speaking to outside ?' - 'A person' without specifying a name.
That is scandalous for someone alleged to be the 'head of patient services' in an NHS hospital. Having been shouted at and dismissed before, there is no way I was going to meet someone like that in a mental hospital. What would any adult human being say in response to being accused of having a mood disorder by a nurse who can't speak English well enough to know what a generic name is ? What possible reaction would he/she have to such childish nonsense ?
It was pretty well inevitable that he would say something abusive and ridiculous. That's why I got them to reply in writing.
My (understandably) heated response
'I need you to tell me exactly what mood disorder I am supposed to be suffering from and show me a copy of the (dated) reports from the psychiatrists revealing what symptoms they observed that lead them to that conclusion in the roughly 10-15 minutes I spent with each of them. I also want to see a copy of the original GP assessment'.
None of this detailed, (potentially incriminating) evidence was forthcoming. Instead of answering the questions, I got more vague, pompous, rambling evasion, some of it 'lies' from
a nurse Burling in return that could easily have been written by a child.
Part of the letter claimed ' Olanzapine, which can be appropriately prescribed for anxiety'. According to an email from a grown up at the UK licensing authority, it isn't licensed for anxiety, it's 'off label'. It can only be prescribed in extreme circumstance and the doctor must take full responsibility for his / her actions. The only exceptional circumstance is that I had no anxiety at that time.
Here is an unequivocal condemnation of off label marketing by a US prosecutor .
Eli Lilly & Co. said Thursday it pleaded guilty to a charge that it illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa (Olanzapine) for an unapproved use, and will pay $1.42 billion to settle civil suits and end the criminal investigation.
Laurie Magid, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said
they hoped cases like this put an end to a pharmaceutical practice known as
"off-label" marketing.
"The company made hundreds of millions of dollars by trying to convince
health care providers that Zyprexa was safe for unapproved uses," Magid
said, noting that they hold the drug maker "responsible for putting thousands
and thousands of patients at risk." She added that off-label marketing
circumvents "the very process put in place to protect the public."
The Burling letter was so divorced from any rational view of the situation, I stopped communicating with them because all that was happening was that a bigger and more twisted Gordian knot was being created. I cut my losses and walked away. I don't regard anything they wrote as serious engagement. If anything, they were worse than the IHTT staff. They are simply incapable of engaging with technical issues or telling the truth.
The very important medical records saga here
I'm obviously not alone ... there is a mass of such material.
BBC - The NHS still has a long way to go to improve the way it handles complaints.
The survey showed more than half felt their complaint had been ignored - more than in other parts of the public sector - and 43% were "dissatisfied" with the outcome.
July Bailey, OBE (Mid Stafford) to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair, Health Select Committee
Please help & do something with the NHS complaints process, It causes so much misery for families.
Here is a page with similar NHS patient abuse.