200 jobs set to go at Warrington Hospital in latest cuts to save £11m (From Warrington Guardian)

On a day when we are apparently going hear officially that failings in the NHS cost 30,000 lives annually, this is an unwelcome piece of news. Later this month we will be told that NHS services are to be further affected when triage nursing services will be "centralized" - management speak for much pruned. So that when you phone up asking for advice it will most likely come from an office in Lancaster and not locally.

chop it up, remove staff, make it fail.....so there will be public uproar that will allow them to sell the NHS on!!

The Tories are deliberately forcing cost cutting measures that are impossible to deliver.
In doing so services and patients will suffer and public opinion of the NHS is already being swayed. A propaganda campaign is already underway. The aim is to privatise the NHS by making it fail and in order to do so the Tories need the general public need to support privatisation. Billions of pounds of NHS private contracts have already been awarded to "friends" of David Cameron. It is a disgrace and I pity health bosses who are being made into Tory privatisation policy scapegoats. We need to fight now to keep the NHS before any more damage is done nad before it is too late.

A relative recently spent a week in Warrington Hospital. The standard of care, cleanliness, quality of the food etc is extremely poor. In our case nurses repeatedly failed to deliver medication on schedule and at the weekend our relative was not seen by a Dr. even once. The floors were filthy and there was dried blood and excrement on the walls. I witnessed a patient who was so fed up of waiting to be dealt with AFTER being admitted put on his coat and leave the hospital - this caused the police to be called and two members of staff to be tied up for hours (again completely ignoring the patients in their care).

I have witnessed far superior quality of care in hospitals where care is provided free of charge in so called "third world countries".

Judging by the number of staff sitting on wards in front of computers while patients are ignored, a loss of 200 staff at Warrington Hospital would go unnoticed, at least from the patient’s perspective.

They should sack the management of this hospital and put Dr's and Nurses in charge - or allow it to be run by a private company.

This is nothing to do with Tory cutbacks; the NHS is a hopelessly mismanaged bureaucracy that has become an excuse to provide employment for people whose services are not essential to providing patient care.

I THOUGHT HOSPITALS WHERE ALL ABOUT SAVING LIVES NOT MONEY!!

I agree with jmichael - the patient care at Warrington Hospital is appalling. My husband went in last October for tests - walked in a reasonably fit man - after 3 weeks in there he walked out using a zimmer frame and was 2 stone lighter. When you ask to speak to someone about it it's seems it's no one person's responsibility.

I agree with jmichael

"They should sack the management of this hospital and put Dr's and Nurses in charge - or allow it to be run by a private company"

widnesman says...
4:17pm Tue 5 Mar 13
I THOUGHT HOSPITALS WHERE ALL ABOUT SAVING LIVES NOT MONEY!!”..........
..

WELL BLOODY SAID...

jmichael says...
4:07pm Tue 5 Mar 13 ..

"They should sack the management of this hospital and put Dr's and Nurses in charge - or allow it to be run by a private company"”...

EXACTLY WHAT THIS TORY GOVERNMENT WANTS.. PRIVATISATION.

This mess is down to government cutbacks not hospital management, The sooner these baastards are removed from government the better. You cannot have £11 million less and give the same level of service, I have been in this hospital three times in the last two years and I can only praise them for the level of care I recieved.

old-codger. I am pleased that at least one person seems to be satisfied with the care provided at Warrington Hospital. Based on specific comments made on this article so far you seem to be outnumbered two to one.

Isn't it enough that staff future is uncertain, without public slating the care at Warrington. Until you work as a nurse on a busy ward with shortage of staff and high demanding of paper work and policies and procedures that have to be adhered to then don't judge!! Nurses and doctors want to nurse people to a high standered however due to government cutting nurses it is impossible to be there every second of every shift with every patient. Try nursing as many as 16 patients with complex care needs alone.

It is at times like this when we need to support our hospital and the staff. No one goes to work in hospitals to do a bad job, nurses, doctors, clerical staff and managers all want to do their best for the patients. Lets get behind our hospitals and show them we care. Lets not let this disastrous government privatise our hospitals.

CD1979. I can assure you that I am well aware of the responsibilities of nurses in hospitals (as I am one myself), therefore I am perfectly qualified to judge the standard of care provided at this hospital. If it had been provided adequately there would have been no need for me to constantly remind the staff of the numerous things each day that they forgot to do. Do you think that “Policies and Procedures” take precedence over proper nursing care?

During my relatives’ recent stay in Warrington Hospital basic nursing care was lacking, call bells went unanswered for hours, medications were missed, obs were not taken per Dr's orders etc etc etc. This is in addition the place being filthy.

If nurses and other staff are as busy at Warrington as you imply how is it that so many have time to spend smoking at the bus stop on Lovely Lane? - it is no wonder that the hospital has problems with hospital acquired infections.

If more nurses are required then they can be paid for by getting rid of those who add no value starting with the Chief Executive and those who spend time producing meaningless statistics.

old/codger.my mother died not long ago in that hospital, and the care she got in her last hours was disgusting.i was sick myself we had a audience of visitors watching a death of a loved one.we did ask for a room but our requests fell on deaf ears,if i am in my last days i will be sorting my own death. by the way brother and sis/inlaw. ido hope your in joying your needed cash.soon forgotten hey.

has anyone ever heard this one.a demand for payment to arrange a funera l for your own mother.you two make me sick.funny how money changes people,but saying that there was not much to change.
l

I am truly shocked to read these comments. I had abdominal surgery in Warrington Hospital and the care I received could not have been better. I made a very swift recovery without a single complication and I have no doubt this was due to my exemplary surgeon Mr Holland and the attention his team gave to me during my stay. Mr Holland visited me every day on the ward to check on me and I cannot thank the nursing team enough for all they did.

I just logged in and read the all of the comments.
My mother recently received excellent care at Warrington in fact they saved her life.
Whilst I appreciate that everyone has their own stories and there are always areas that can be improved upon is the intelligent response to sack everyone and privatise ? The NHS is being forced to be run as a business, senior managers are having to fight for the hospital as a cut throat survival of the fittest policy evolves. A hospital does not fit a standard business model as it is too unpredictable and if you all think privatisation will improve the service well get ready as nurses pay and conditions and training budgets will be slashed as will the regulations because the NHS cannot compete with private facilities as they are so heavily regulated and have to follow national pay and conditions, private hospitals do not they can pay what they like etc and cheap labour equals profit margin.
The public sector doed waste money and of course services can be improved but Im caring for my terminally ill mum with lots of help and support and its exhausting so please take a moment to consider the
hard work that our NHS staff do every day and no its not perfect but its one of the best healthcare systems in the world and its being systematically decimated by the Tories who dont need it as they go private and are carving it up and selling it to their pals so instead of critising NHS staff educate yourselves and support your local hospital whilst you still have one !

This Con-Dem coalition is slowly destroying the NHS, it is no secret that the Tories want to privatise it! they are slowly running it into the ground so they can tender the rights of services to their well-to-do mates for a knock down price! on another note, how many avoidable deaths do the Tories want on their hands?

Jmichael, you can't be much of a nurse if you think smoking causes hospital infections. Unfortunately your opinion is devalued by factual inaccuracies. You don't sound credible or objective, You just sound bitter. I'm with Alexsar we should support our hospital. You don't know what you've got till its gone

We need to support the hospital and all the nurses who work so hard everyday to provide excellent care....when all we read is negativity about nursing care its no wonder that experienced caring nurses are leaving the profession.

The care at Warrington hospital is exemplary and we are so lucky to have a local hospital that provides all our health needs.

Just to say that they should bring back the matrons who used to be in charge of everything on the ward from when the doctor comes to which nurses are doing what to cleaners.
Too many people associated with the NHS lining their own pockets.

Julieemb wrote:
We need to support the hospital and all the nurses who work so hard everyday to provide excellent care....when all we read is negativity about nursing care its no wonder that experienced caring nurses are leaving the profession.

The care at Warrington hospital is exemplary and we are so lucky to have a local hospital that provides all our health needs.

From my experience, it's not exemplary and the comments made by JMichael shouldn't be brushed aside as an attack on good people who are trying their best. I wonder what the letters page in the local press in mid staffs looked like before the news broke? Probably people sharing experiences and being told to shut up and get behind the staff. It will benefit everybody if there can be an open discussion about the level of care on offer and how improvements can be made

I and my family have been both inpatients and outpatients at the hospital many times. On most occasions the overall care we have received has been exemplary, on others average and on a few poor. Even with that said, on some of the poor or average experiences parts of it, and some of the staff have been fantastic, similarly in the really exemplary episodes there has been the odd hiccup or one or two staff with poor attitudes.

What does that tell us about our hospital? That at worst it it doesn't get it perfect every time. Now if every one of my experiences had been consistently awful I would concur that some of the previous commentators had a point.
They haven't been, quite the opposite. I for one am very happy with the services I have received, and I'm worried that the hospital, indeed the majority of hospitals have now been set up to fail.

T Ruth wrote:
I and my family have been both inpatients and outpatients at the hospital many times. On most occasions the overall care we have received has been exemplary, on others average and on a few poor. Even with that said, on some of the poor or average experiences parts of it, and some of the staff have been fantastic, similarly in the really exemplary episodes there has been the odd hiccup or one or two staff with poor attitudes.

What does that tell us about our hospital? That at worst it it doesn't get it perfect every time. Now if every one of my experiences had been consistently awful I would concur that some of the previous commentators had a point.
They haven't been, quite the opposite. I for one am very happy with the services I have received, and I'm worried that the hospital, indeed the majority of hospitals have now been set up to fail.

Maybe if the few poor occasions contributed to the suffering or death of your family members you might not be so understanding. If ofsted visit a high school and find it poor then things generally change. I have a friend who works as a locum nurse. She's worked in hospitals the length and breadth of the country. She lasted two days in Warrington general and won't return.

Apage1 I and my family don't go to the hospital for fun, we go because we are sick, suffering and more often than not in pain. I'm not going to apologise for being grateful to an organisation that has always appeared to try is hardest to alleviate those things for us.

T Ruth wrote:
Apage1 I and my family don't go to the hospital for fun, we go because we are sick, suffering and more often than not in pain. I'm not going to apologise for being grateful to an organisation that has always appeared to try is hardest to alleviate those things for us.

Yet you're quite happy that service is poor, so long as it's not all the time. We pay a lot of money to these organisations, it would be easy of them to become complacent if we were all grateful for bad service because it was better than none. I admire your Dunkirk spirit but I think that saying it's ok for things to be average and poor isn't helping the rest of us.

Put the doctors in charge? The doctors don't want to be but Cameron has forced it through anyway!

Everyone slated Labour but look at what the Tories are doing. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Ok Apage1, move over and I'll jump on that bandwagon with the rest of you.

I'll selectively choose to focus only on the minority ( and it really is a minority) of less than exemplary experiences I have had and big them up to make it sound like they are an accurate and definitive representation of what happens to EVERY patient ALL the of the time. It's hardly a balanced, reasonable or even rational approach is it? But hey if it makes you feel better....

T Ruth wrote:
Ok Apage1, move over and I'll jump on that bandwagon with the rest of you.

I'll selectively choose to focus only on the minority ( and it really is a minority) of less than exemplary experiences I have had and big them up to make it sound like they are an accurate and definitive representation of what happens to EVERY patient ALL the of the time. It's hardly a balanced, reasonable or even rational approach is it? But hey if it makes you feel better....

Hey no problem, you used the word "poor" not anyone else on here. Poor but that's ok, what low aspirations you have for the health and well-being of this town. Heard of "every child matters"? That made teachers focus on the importance of every child in a school. EVERY patient matters too and it's not acceptable to say it's ok because not everyone was neglected. It's not a criticism of all the hospital staff, many of whom do great work. But we need to challenge poor service and so do the people who work in the hospital, without fear of reprisals or abuse for daring to speak out

benny188 wrote:
Just to say that they should bring back the matrons who used to be in charge of everything on the ward from when the doctor comes to which nurses are doing what to cleaners.
Too many people associated with the NHS lining their own pockets.

Quite right - bring back the matrons, SRN's and SEN's and get rid of hospital managers. Nurses with degrees don't want to take patients to the toilet

Warrington hospital is a joke when staff cuts are made it is the front line staff who carry the majority of job losses while the various members of the "management team" sit in their ivory towers getting paid a fortune to do what exactly? The NHS cannot function without nurses care and auxilliary staff many of these staff work without proper breaks and rest periods to try and provide a service to the patients, this should not be happening. Too many mistakes are made jepordising patient care this hospital needs a restructure and rather than spending vast amounts of money paying "managers" to paper push and come up with stupid ideas to try and make things look better they should concentrate on employing more front line staff and bring back the old system of matrons and sisters to manage wards, at least this seemd to work in favour of patients.

Matrons are around they are not on the wards they are busy in offices dealing with bed shortages staff shortages equipment shortages and complaints.

Nurses do not go to work to do a bad job. No nurse has ever woken up and thought 'I know today I'll give really poor care and not do my job properly' they work with what they have. If they have nothing it makes life hard but they carry on regardless. patients always come first.

nurses are aloud to have a break (its a legal requirement if you at work for more than 6 hours). Those lucky enough to get one either scoff so fast they don't chew or go off site for a smoke.

I hope those people who received what they perceived to be poor care from the hospital complained to PAL's or the ward manager or the staff looking after their family members. If its not addressed it will never be fixed and allegations of poor care should always be investigated.

nursing documentation is computer based which is why we sit in front of them.

As for nurses who have degrees not taking patients to the toilet that is flippant and very presumptuous thing to assume. I have a masters. I do extra learning to make me a better nurse. I still toilet people, I wash them, I dress them, I feel them and I nurse them. That is my role and that is what I love doing. I treat patients as I would want my family members treated. (Even the aggressive, rude and abusive ones.) All nurses do. That's why we nurse. That's why I nurse anyway.

All the people that are whinging about the service that the NHS provides have the choice of using private healthcare providers, yet most of them do not. I wonder why this is? Could be that private healthcare providers in this country do not provide emergency services or critical care services, could be that people are not prepared to pay for what they think is 'free', the NHS is not a never ending pot of money.
Yes, services can always be improved and mistakes should be learnt from. People should be held accountable for their practice.
However, those that have only negatives to say about Warrington Hospital and the NHS, may I suggest you use somewhere else.

Apage1 wrote:

T Ruth wrote:
Ok Apage1, move over and I'll jump on that bandwagon with the rest of you.

I'll selectively choose to focus only on the minority ( and it really is a minority) of less than exemplary experiences I have had and big them up to make it sound like they are an accurate and definitive representation of what happens to EVERY patient ALL the of the time. It's hardly a balanced, reasonable or even rational approach is it? But hey if it makes you feel better....

Hey no problem, you used the word "poor" not anyone else on here. Poor but that's ok, what low aspirations you have for the health and well-being of this town. Heard of "every child matters"? That made teachers focus on the importance of every child in a school. EVERY patient matters too and it's not acceptable to say it's ok because not everyone was neglected. It's not a criticism of all the hospital staff, many of whom do great work. But we need to challenge poor service and so do the people who work in the hospital, without fear of reprisals or abuse for daring to speak out

I know staff who work in the hospital in various roles they all say basicaly the same - care is not good enough and when you report it to management they don't want to know. Suggestions for improvement are ignored by managers, staff are de moralised and there is no motivation. There is a fear of challenging decisions as jobs are being reduced all the time and no one can afford to be seen as a trouble maker. At the end of the day the NHS belongs to the public we pay for it and it is us who will suffer if it is allowed to be eroded away by a government who could not care less and a management team who are lining their own pockets at our expense.

I had an Operation the end of 2010 in warrington, and felt as though I was on some sort of production line ( go in, job done, kicked out ready for the next one ! )

The consultant wanted me out 1 day after the op, needless to say after the 24 hours I was still unable to get myself out of bed, unable to go to the loo etc..

When the nurses got told that I was to be discharged they refused as they knew I was not ready. The nurses there are great and very understanding ( for me anyway ) to what was needed by the patient, not this production line that the doctors have been forced into to keep the powers above happy.

Sliver wrote:
All the people that are whinging about the service that the NHS provides have the choice of using private healthcare providers, yet most of them do not. I wonder why this is? Could be that private healthcare providers in this country do not provide emergency services or critical care services, could be that people are not prepared to pay for what they think is 'free', the NHS is not a never ending pot of money.
Yes, services can always be improved and mistakes should be learnt from. People should be held accountable for their practice.
However, those that have only negatives to say about Warrington Hospital and the NHS, may I suggest you use somewhere else.

Great idea but I think you'll find we have all paid towards the NHS and as a public service we are therefore entitled to expect the level of service stated in the patients charter as a minimum and to compalin to the powers that be when they are not reached.

testify wrote:

Sliver wrote:
All the people that are whinging about the service that the NHS provides have the choice of using private healthcare providers, yet most of them do not. I wonder why this is? Could be that private healthcare providers in this country do not provide emergency services or critical care services, could be that people are not prepared to pay for what they think is 'free', the NHS is not a never ending pot of money.
Yes, services can always be improved and mistakes should be learnt from. People should be held accountable for their practice.
However, those that have only negatives to say about Warrington Hospital and the NHS, may I suggest you use somewhere else.

Great idea but I think you'll find we have all paid towards the NHS and as a public service we are therefore entitled to expect the level of service stated in the patients charter as a minimum and to compalin to the powers that be when they are not reached.

My thoughts exactly. Why should we pay for medical care twice?

As for my 'flippant' comment about nurses with degrees not wanting to take patients to the toilet - when my 81 year mother in law found herself in Warrington General after falling and breaking both elbows, the medical care was good. But when she asked staff to help her to the toilet, she was told she could manage - with both elbows in plaster?

If anyone is interested I would encourage you to look at the following link:

http://www.warringto
nandhaltonhospitals.
nhs.uk/page.asp?fldA
rea=1&fldMenu=5&fldS
ubMenu=3&fldKey=855

Alternatively search for Warrington Hospital Board Trust. There are 12 Board Members. If anyone thinks any of these is critical to the operation of the hospital please feel free to say so.

There is probably £1Million of expense to the hospital on this single website page.

A Director of Commercial and Corporate Development? – (supervision of collection of the parking fees?) – is this a post that is really necessary?

Director of Governance and Workforce – not required.

A Director of Finance and a Chief Operating Officer – no expense spared here.

A little further web research will quickly allow you to discover that a number of members of the board have followed one another around a variety of NHS positions in the North West. Nepotism in this workplace? – surely not - but looks like jobs for the boys to me.

Save a £million, sack the board. Spend the money where it is really needed - on nurses and cleaning materials.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, watch this space as there are many more job losses in the pipeline

ilovewazza wrote:
Matrons are around they are not on the wards they are busy in offices dealing with bed shortages staff shortages equipment shortages and complaints.

Nurses do not go to work to do a bad job. No nurse has ever woken up and thought 'I know today I'll give really poor care and not do my job properly' they work with what they have. If they have nothing it makes life hard but they carry on regardless. patients always come first.

nurses are aloud to have a break (its a legal requirement if you at work for more than 6 hours). Those lucky enough to get one either scoff so fast they don't chew or go off site for a smoke.

I hope those people who received what they perceived to be poor care from the hospital complained to PAL's or the ward manager or the staff looking after their family members. If its not addressed it will never be fixed and allegations of poor care should always be investigated.

nursing documentation is computer based which is why we sit in front of them.

As for nurses who have degrees not taking patients to the toilet that is flippant and very presumptuous thing to assume. I have a masters. I do extra learning to make me a better nurse. I still toilet people, I wash them, I dress them, I feel them and I nurse them. That is my role and that is what I love doing. I treat patients as I would want my family members treated. (Even the aggressive, rude and abusive ones.) All nurses do. That's why we nurse. That's why I nurse anyway.

Thanks for finding the time to write in. It's a bit of a shame that nurses not only have to worry about patient care they're the ones who join these discussions to defend the work that they do and the organisations they work for. Who in their right mind, would criticise a hard working nurse? Reading your message I have an issue with matrons being distracted dealing with bed shortages, staff shortages and complaints when maybe they're needed on the wards. Who can make it so that they are were they need to be? and why don't they make that so? Maybe matron might put a steady hand on the tiller thus improving the working environment, reduce complaints and days lost to staff sickness etc. Why are nurses not taking breaks/ 'being given just enough time to scoff so fast that they can't chew their food'? How are they expected to function properly if this is the case? Who is making our nurses skip their breaks in this way?And is the result,staff that are so exhausted they told LJ's mother in law to take care of herself when she needed to go to the toilet? The picture you paint makes me feel stressed just sitting here reading, I have no idea how you cope every day. Maybe if more of these discussions took place in an open forum the people responsible for meeting targets and ticking boxes might realise why people like you do the work that you do and lineup to support you in your job. Are 50% of NHS staff obese because they're stressed, over-worked and de-motivated? Are nurses using up break time to go off site for a smoke for the same reasons? That's a lot of questions I know but...lets not let it be whingers vs nurses, that confuses the issue. We're actually all on the same side.

I'd like to see the comments if the NHS becomes privatised and we have to pay for our care like the USA. moaning about a service that is regulated by the goverment who every year pulls the purse strings tighter and makes the NHS make savings. you should be ashamed of yourselves i couldnt agree more with peoples comments we all have good and bad stories to tell but my guessing is you'd moan a whole lot more if you were made to travel to Liverpool or Manchester as your had lost your local hospital and then have to pay for the care you receive. do you think you wont be treated like a product then, get you in get you out?? of course you would cause you'd be a profitable item not a patient and they'd want bigger turn over, you'd get less care and attention.

Suzannet: You don't know what you are talking about as regards the way medical treatment is provided in the USA. More than half the population of the USA, over 100million people, are covered by free Medicare and Medicaid e.g. like the NHS.

You seem to be missing the point about Warrington Hospital - no one wants the hospital to close - we should all be entitled to a minimum, consistently delivered level of care, in a clean and safe environment. This is not happening at the moment and someone needs to be put in charge who is capable of turning the place around – the current management have had their chance and need to be replaced by a more competent team.

There are a variety of opinions posted in this article, on balance, there are at least as many dissatisfied people as satisfied people – this is not good enough – delivery of basic healthcare is not a lottery and should not depend on whether or not your nurse or Dr. is having a good or bad day. At the end of the day this is down to the hospital board – they don’t get to take home the fat salaries and have no associated responsibility. They need to do what they are paid for or be sacked and replaced, same applies to anyone else who works there who thinks that the world owes them a debt of gratitude just for showing up each day – anyone can be replaced even if it means bringing staff from overseas – having said that I know a Dr. from an Eastern European country who worked at Warrington who said it was the worst place he ever worked and that he couldn’t believe how rude, arrogant, disrespectful and ineffective a significant number of the medical staff at Warrington are.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with nurses having degrees. There should be more of them. To get the degrees the nurses have to be trained and that's what we want more trained staff on the wards. The problem is that there is no training for nursing assistants and cash strapped NHS hospitals therefore hire as few nurses as they can get away with and try to make up the deficiency using untrained nursing assistants from all over the world.

people should open their traps more and say there piece; i am never afraid to say whats what,even if it does upset anyone .can;t stand too faced t..../wanted me out the bed before i was well enough to go home i suppose it was to put another number in place.sad place to die .would not do a nurses job for all the money in the world.

jmichael wrote:
Suzannet: You don't know what you are talking about as regards the way medical treatment is provided in the USA. More than half the population of the USA, over 100million people, are covered by free Medicare and Medicaid e.g. like the NHS. You seem to be missing the point about Warrington Hospital - no one wants the hospital to close - we should all be entitled to a minimum, consistently delivered level of care, in a clean and safe environment. This is not happening at the moment and someone needs to be put in charge who is capable of turning the place around – the current management have had their chance and need to be replaced by a more competent team. There are a variety of opinions posted in this article, on balance, there are at least as many dissatisfied people as satisfied people – this is not good enough – delivery of basic healthcare is not a lottery and should not depend on whether or not your nurse or Dr. is having a good or bad day. At the end of the day this is down to the hospital board – they don’t get to take home the fat salaries and have no associated responsibility. They need to do what they are paid for or be sacked and replaced, same applies to anyone else who works there who thinks that the world owes them a debt of gratitude just for showing up each day – anyone can be replaced even if it means bringing staff from overseas – having said that I know a Dr. from an Eastern European country who worked at Warrington who said it was the worst place he ever worked and that he couldn’t believe how rude, arrogant, disrespectful and ineffective a significant number of the medical staff at Warrington are.

i think you forgot to mention that Medicare and Medicaid are usually only free to people in employment and as for your comment about negitive comment on here this is only a small forum and doesnt speak for the entire warrington and halton community as a whole.

as a member of staff at this hospital I would like to put forward my view. I am proud to work at Warrington hospital, we are not perfect but find me a hospital that is.Everyone's experience is different and from reading some really sad and personal accounts on this thread, that is obvious. what I can tell you is that in my experience, the workforce are hard-working and dedicated to patient care. our board are doing their absolute best to provide 'high quality, safe health care' with extremely limited funding, which we have already made many cuts in the last two years. I don't know what the answer to the financial struggles of the nhs is but what I do know is that negative and nasty comments do nothing but demoralize peopme.

jmichael wrote:
A relative recently spent a week in Warrington Hospital. The standard of care, cleanliness, quality of the food etc is extremely poor. In our case nurses repeatedly failed to deliver medication on schedule and at the weekend our relative was not seen by a Dr. even once. The floors were filthy and there was dried blood and excrement on the walls. I witnessed a patient who was so fed up of waiting to be dealt with AFTER being admitted put on his coat and leave the hospital - this caused the police to be called and two members of staff to be tied up for hours (again completely ignoring the patients in their care).

I have witnessed far superior quality of care in hospitals where care is provided free of charge in so called "third world countries".

Judging by the number of staff sitting on wards in front of computers while patients are ignored, a loss of 200 staff at Warrington Hospital would go unnoticed, at least from the patient’s perspective.

They should sack the management of this hospital and put Dr's and Nurses in charge - or allow it to be run by a private company.

This is nothing to do with Tory cutbacks; the NHS is a hopelessly mismanaged bureaucracy that has become an excuse to provide employment for people whose services are not essential to providing patient care.

What was the reason for all the atrocities which happened at the Staffordshire Hospital from 2005 - 2008, resulting in over 1000 needless deaths.
Was there a shortage of money then or was their staff shortages then.? If people don't do their jobs properly then it doesn't matter how many people you have. Ten people could do a job better than one hundred if the one hundred don't do their work properly.
What is needed is what happens in the private sector; that is UNANNOUNCED AUDITS, in and on every department. The Unions would be up in arms about it, imagine having your work checked; but that is the only way you will get all the work done as it should be done with the minimal man power required.

loulou1907 wrote:
as a member of staff at this hospital I would like to put forward my view. I am proud to work at Warrington hospital, we are not perfect but find me a hospital that is.Everyone's experience is different and from reading some really sad and personal accounts on this thread, that is obvious. what I can tell you is that in my experience, the workforce are hard-working and dedicated to patient care. our board are doing their absolute best to provide 'high quality, safe health care' with extremely limited funding, which we have already made many cuts in the last two years. I don't know what the answer to the financial struggles of the nhs is but what I do know is that negative and nasty comments do nothing but demoralize peopme.

Loulou, You sound like a hard-working and dedicated member of staff and when I read the bit about 'negative' and 'nasty' comments it makes me feel bad that I may have contributed to you feeling bad today..Then I remember the anger that I felt at the shocking lack of care and human compassion shown, not by all,but by many in that hospital and, with respect, I forget to care about making you feel bad. Do me a favour, the next time one of your colleagues says they 'can't be bothered today'. Please remind them from me the impact that can have on a family for very many years.

Could anyone tell me how we can support the hospital and staff in a way that would do some good? Lots of comments here include words like "we should support it / them" so how do we do that?

I have recently had a very poor experience in Warrington hospital and am currently going through their complaints procedure so will not go into detail here.

Interestingly, on one occasion during my time in there a deputy matron was stationed on our ward to help facilitate the day to day activity and boy, did she move things! The operating of that ward was completely transformed by some simple operational changes.

Karlar wrote:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with nurses having degrees. There should be more of them. To get the degrees the nurses have to be trained and that's what we want more trained staff on the wards. The problem is that there is no training for nursing assistants and cash strapped NHS hospitals therefore hire as few nurses as they can get away with and try to make up the deficiency using untrained nursing assistants from all over the world.

Yes there is nothing wrong with nurses having degrees, but unfortunately this also means that they have never had hands on experience, most nurses these days opt for degrees have never done a bed bath, handed out bedpans etc, I used to work on the wards at the hospital & I can say it was the most enjoyable job I ever had but nowadays nursing is not nursing it is just paperwork & computer skills, all the proper nursing jobs are done by carers who get no thanks at all from the senior staff, they just get **** on from a great height just get rid of all the so called managers who to be honest could not manage the proverbial in a brewery, and let the nurses get back to doing the job they trained for, the amount of money wasted by the trust each year is unbelievable is the cost of the trees they had planted outside the new entrance only for them to be uprooted soon after.

A friend of mine bought an izuzu truck. It came with a thank you from the CEO of the company and on it she included her HOME telephone number! Just in case he had any problems with the machine or service provided. That's a bold statement to make. It's like "Yes you'll find me at the top of this organisation....but also at the bottom if I'm needed". Where's the gaffer here?

Apage1 wrote:
A friend of mine bought an izuzu truck. It came with a thank you from the CEO of the company and on it she included her HOME telephone number! Just in case he had any problems with the machine or service provided. That's a bold statement to make. It's like "Yes you'll find me at the top of this organisation....but also at the bottom if I'm needed". Where's the gaffer here?

Probably (select as appropriate) - not at the helm as she should be.

Gaffer, get yourself a pay as you go phone ( nothing too flash, we're not made of money) and give every in patient and their family members your number. Commit to answering it day and night for 1 week and lets see if things improve. C'mon...what do you say?

jmichael wrote:

Apage1 wrote:
A friend of mine bought an izuzu truck. It came with a thank you from the CEO of the company and on it she included her HOME telephone number! Just in case he had any problems with the machine or service provided. That's a bold statement to make. It's like "Yes you'll find me at the top of this organisation....but also at the bottom if I'm needed". Where's the gaffer here?

Probably (select as appropriate) - not at the helm as she should be.

]Probably (select as appropriate)

- in-a-meeting:
- at a conference:
- out of the office today:
- on leave:
- on a training course

- not at the helm as she should be.

akabaz wrote:

Karlar wrote:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with nurses having degrees. There should be more of them. To get the degrees the nurses have to be trained and that's what we want more trained staff on the wards. The problem is that there is no training for nursing assistants and cash strapped NHS hospitals therefore hire as few nurses as they can get away with and try to make up the deficiency using untrained nursing assistants from all over the world.

Yes there is nothing wrong with nurses having degrees, but unfortunately this also means that they have never had hands on experience, most nurses these days opt for degrees have never done a bed bath, handed out bedpans etc, I used to work on the wards at the hospital & I can say it was the most enjoyable job I ever had but nowadays nursing is not nursing it is just paperwork & computer skills, all the proper nursing jobs are done by carers who get no thanks at all from the senior staff, they just get **** on from a great height just get rid of all the so called managers who to be honest could not manage the proverbial in a brewery, and let the nurses get back to doing the job they trained for, the amount of money wasted by the trust each year is unbelievable is the cost of the trees they had planted outside the new entrance only for them to be uprooted soon after.

Karla wrote......Nothing wrong with nurses having degrees"!
I totally disagree. You do not need to have a degree to do basic nursing.Otherwise everyone would need to have one for carrying out their everyday activities looking after people
in their own homes.
We never used to have nurses who had degrees looking after the patients on wards and they were well-looked after. We never heard of atrocities like what has happened at the Staffordshire hospital.
They get a degree and they then think doing the nursing duties is beneath their qualifications. They are more interested in spending the time they should be looking after their patients, swatting/studying for exams which if they pass no doubt will pay them more money.

Is anybody naive enough to think or believe that the majority of nurses want to be sat filling in countless Governmant lead paperwork which is then repeated on databases rather than spending time hands on with patients. Quit bashing Doctors and Nurses all the time and try to understand the hurdles and fences that all healthcare professionals are legally bound and obliged to provide via the massive amount of documentation required which displays the care provided. The world unfortunately is now one littered with litigation and responsibilty whether we like it or not.

I read the article as well and all the comments. The subject was 200 job losses, "lets all batter the hospital! was most definitely NOT the subject!!!!

Well that's us told! It's the "worlds" fault. Move on, nothing to see here. I read the article as well and see reference to the cuts resulting in"worse services". It seems that some on here have already experienced a "worse" service, I hope you never do. There are lots of innovative ways to run an organisation like this more effectively and provide better patient care, I've heard numerous examples of good practice discussed this week on the radio and in the national press. I share your reverence for those who do, but those who don't are not and should never be, beyond the reach of criticism and God help us all if they were. It's NOT about "bashing doctors and nurses". That's a well used ,simplistic and divisive argument that stops real discussion and improvement from taking place.

Is the Board of Directors of this Trust connected to the real world that the rest of us live in?

On Tuesday of this week up to 200 staff redundancies were announced.
On Thursday the board advertised the position of Deputy Chief Executive.

The position is advertised at the web link below - I encourage as many as possible to apply.

Where are the reporters at the Warrington Guardian on this issue - remarkably quiet on such an important item for the town? How can the board of our Trust announce 200 potential redundancies one day and then two days later advertise another board position that will no doubt cost well in excess of £100,000 per year? What we would prefer? A new Deputy CEO or some more nurses?

http://www.hsjjobs.c
om/job/2561685/direc
tor-of-finance-and-c
ommercial-developmen
t-as-deputy-chief-ex
ecutive/?utm_source=
jobfeed&utm_medium=f
eed&utm_campaign=Job
%2bExtract%2b-%2bLiv
e&ProcessedTrackID=6
1

jmichael wrote:
Is the Board of Directors of this Trust connected to the real world that the rest of us live in?

On Tuesday of this week up to 200 staff redundancies were announced.
On Thursday the board advertised the position of Deputy Chief Executive.

The position is advertised at the web link below - I encourage as many as possible to apply.

Where are the reporters at the Warrington Guardian on this issue - remarkably quiet on such an important item for the town? How can the board of our Trust announce 200 potential redundancies one day and then two days later advertise another board position that will no doubt cost well in excess of £100,000 per year? What we would prefer? A new Deputy CEO or some more nurses?

http://www.hsjjobs.c

om/job/2561685/direc

tor-of-finance-and-c

ommercial-developmen

t-as-deputy-chief-ex

ecutive/?utm_source=

jobfeed&utm_medi
um=f
eed&utm_campaign
=Job
%2bExtract%2b-%2bLiv

e&ProcessedTrack
ID=6
1

Maybe a polite word the next time they get together?

http://www.wolvesfou
ndation.com/trustees
.php

Yes there sometimes are problems at the hospital, although my wife had excellent care during and after her operation. But most of the problems in the NHS come from forcing privastisation and a market into the NHS - begun by New Labour, now continued by the Con-Dem coalition. Former health Secretary Frank Dobson has written this very clear article on the subject:

http://www.dailymail
.co.uk/news/article-
2290900/Blame-Labour
-Mid-Staffs-scandal-
-says-ex-Labour-Heal
th-Secretary-Frank-D
obson-warned-Tony-Bl
air-introducing-targ
ets-competition-hosp
itals.html

Have to agree that Warrington Hospital is badly managed, I have had a number of bad experiences. Some of the staff attitudes is appalling.

Compare it with Halton which is excellent.

I forgot to add, the emergency resus team at Warrington are excellent, they saved my life.

Unfortunatley when I went on to the ward they tried to kill me off again through negligence.

lots of assumptions and inaccuracies going on here about nurses in general and their education.

firstly with regards to all nurses being obese....the average clothes size of a lady in the UK is apparently a 16. take into account that large proportion of the nurse work force are women. and then come to your own conclusions. However before you do ask yourself what's your own dress size/lifestyle like. (The words 'Glass houses' and 'stones' come to mind.)

Nurse training is 50/50 split between practice and theory whether you do a degree or a diploma. The majority of nurse training is now a degree program. that's a government thing.

Nurses work just a hard as OT's Physios, Doctors, Radiographers etc all of which study at uni to obtain a degree in a profession so why cant nurses have the same rights to a degree? It is a profession after all.

student nurses work 37.5 hour weeks on the ward and then have to spend time writing assignments and portfolios of evidence with regards to their practice. (This is the same for degree and diploma.)

It just seems that this has become a forum to belittle and slander the hospital work force and the NHS as a whole.

If you have a problem with the care at the hospital or any services then you should take it up with the hospital or your local MP. You shouldn't be going into it on here. This is not the correct place to air your grievances.

ilovewazza wrote:
lots of assumptions and inaccuracies going on here about nurses in general and their education.

firstly with regards to all nurses being obese....the average clothes size of a lady in the UK is apparently a 16. take into account that large proportion of the nurse work force are women. and then come to your own conclusions. However before you do ask yourself what's your own dress size/lifestyle like. (The words 'Glass houses' and 'stones' come to mind.)

Nurse training is 50/50 split between practice and theory whether you do a degree or a diploma. The majority of nurse training is now a degree program. that's a government thing.

Nurses work just a hard as OT's Physios, Doctors, Radiographers etc all of which study at uni to obtain a degree in a profession so why cant nurses have the same rights to a degree? It is a profession after all.

student nurses work 37.5 hour weeks on the ward and then have to spend time writing assignments and portfolios of evidence with regards to their practice. (This is the same for degree and diploma.)

It just seems that this has become a forum to belittle and slander the hospital work force and the NHS as a whole.

If you have a problem with the care at the hospital or any services then you should take it up with the hospital or your local MP. You shouldn't be going into it on here. This is not the correct place to air your grievances.

Sorry, read it again. I didn't say "all nurses" are obese. I said 50% or 700,000 NHS staff are, as reported this week in the national press and in the nursing times - here...

http://www.nursingti
mes.net/nursing-prac
tice/clinical-zones/
management/nhs-shoul
d-have-targets-to-re
duce-staff-obesity/5
053188.article

They're saying that NHS staff are setting a bad example. I'M saying I'm not surprised this is the case when I read about nurses "scoffing"down their lunch if they're lucky enough to get one, as mentioned on here by a member of staff previously.

It doesn't sound like a happy camp to me and believe me, I want my doctors and nurses to be the happiest, most relaxed, motivated, looked after and respected people in the town. I want you all jumping out of bed in the morning determined to make a difference to people's lives. For that to happen you need support.

We shouldn't be going into it on here?

A free press and the opportunity to pass comment is a vital part of our democracy. If you don't like it..the answer Is simple.

toffeeman_4ever wrote:
Is anybody naive enough to think or believe that the majority of nurses want to be sat filling in countless Governmant lead paperwork which is then repeated on databases rather than spending time hands on with patients. Quit bashing Doctors and Nurses all the time and try to understand the hurdles and fences that all healthcare professionals are legally bound and obliged to provide via the massive amount of documentation required which displays the care provided. The world unfortunately is now one littered with litigation and responsibilty whether we like it or not.

I read the article as well and all the comments. The subject was 200 job losses, "lets all batter the hospital! was most definitely NOT the subject!!!!

Well said! Here here.