Health worker sacked for making cheeky joke as she straddled naked patient was unfairly dismissed

A nurse who cracked a saucy joke as she helped to restrain a patient having an epileptic fit was unfairly fired, the Appeal Court has ruled. Laura Bowater, 34, quipped, 'It's been a few months since I have been in this position with a man underneath me' as she straddled his naked body while doctors tried to give him an injection. The trousers of the 'extremely strong' 31-year-old patient had been removed so doctors could inject his buttock and Ms Bowater sat on his ankles to control his flailing legs.

So reports the Daily Mail. They go on to say that a panel at Watford Employment Tribunal upheld her unfair dismissal claim but North West London Hospitals NHS Trust successfully challenged it at the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The NHS Trust did what? Who works for these outfits? Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, herself a former nurse, called the sacking insane. I get the impression that insanity is a top requisite for working in the NHS these days.

These are the great and the good who run this trust. Any of them put down insanity as a CV page turner? They should hang their heads in shame.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353595/Nurse-Laura-Bowater-sacked-lewd-comments-unfairly-dismissed.html#ixzz1D80aGG2e

Agony aunt Claire Rayner dies at 79

Claire Rayner has died at the age of 79 which as it happens was the same age my mother died. In my mind she came across as familiar to me as she was the spitting image of one of my father's cousins. Not only in size but her voice was very similar. However, her public persona was nothing like that of Cousin Margaret.

I well remember, in the days of TVam, Claire Rayner sitting on the sofa waiting for her turn to talk. It was in the days when Aids was a novel topic with various pundits taking sides and telling us of dire consequences if behaviour didn't change. Then Claire was asked about the subject of safe sex. It caused her to propel herself up from a rather comfy position to sit with one bottom cheek on the sofa. As she moved she said, "Listen, a lot of silly stuff is said about condoms!" and proceeded to pull one out of her hands, as if my magic, and begin demonstrating how to use the thing safely. Much to the consternation of the team that day, it seemed. I thought "Hold on a minute, I'm having my breakfast" and pondered whether I was more surpriseded by the talk of condoms at that hour or the sight of Claire sitting ungainly and precariously on the edge of a cheap TVam sofa, sideways to the camera. If the message merited a direct approach, nothing sat in her way - literally!

She was, she claimed, an ardent atheist. She did a lot of good and no doubt her rather interesting life, dealing with the subtleties and senses of the human condition, shaped her thoughts and beliefs. She's either now in sublime oblivion or tackling some kind of Elysian shock therapy. She told her relatives she wanted her last words to be, "Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him." So maybe the latter is her preferred option.

NHS becomes politically stupid

I don't get it with the NHS mandarins. Obviously they are in need of brain surgery, preferably new brains if possible. Hot on the heels of the Christian nurse being refused permission to wear a crucifix on a chain, we now get the politically muddled becoming politically stupid.

Muslim doctors and nurses are to be allowed for religious reasons to opt out of strict NHS dress codes introduced to prevent the spread of deadly hospital superbugs. So it's OK if you're a Muslim with a need to follow what you think are rules but not a Christian. The department of Health has some nutters in it.

The Koran does not stipulate how a medic washes. Neither does the Bible. Muslim doctors and medical students said baring arms conflicted with the Koran’s teaching that women must dress modestly in public. In public? Are doctors scrubbing up "in public"? I hardly think a disposable sleeve shoved up the arm is going to help fight superbugs. If modesty problems are causing Muslim medics to swoon and faint let them scrub up under some kind of tent or clinical tabernacle!

It's all a load of tripe. It's this sort of nonsense that causes people to think badly about minorities. In any case, once the discreet scrubbing has been done, what part of the hand and forearm can't be exposed during an operation? It's nonsense leading madness. But then we have a lot of nonsensical people in high places producing the maddening policies imaginable.

New Labour's healthy hypocrisy

New Labour is a political creed devoid of political fibre or philosophy. The only thing that holds it together is spin, subterfuge and a social climbing desire. Mostly it has an obnoxious self-righteousness about it.

David Cameron was recently lambasted by Alan Johnson because the Conservative leader dared to suggest that the NHS was being strangled by bureaucracy. Johnson sounded like a maiden aunt had been raped. He talks of 'deceit' and enters an arena for tittle-tattle and innuendo. Also, that sleazy minister Ben Bradshaw, the one who thinks Anglican prayers should have a decent element of buggery as a subject matter, came out all prissy about the Conservatives approach to health care.

Both these ministers are so wrapped up in big government that they can't see the little problems growing into much bigger ones. Now they've got a new report on their hands. The Care Quality Commission (another quango) has said that one in eight NHS trusts has been told it must urgently improve the care it provides. We're back to hygiene and safety again. Mike O'Brien, a health minister, blithely comments that the report states good things.

When it comes to the NHS this New Labour shower are a mixture of ostriches in a sand pit and Croesus on speed. Now there's a mind-boggling thought!

Patient Foster went to Gloucester!

Andy Burnham has come up with a good wheeze. Patient choice. That is he wants us all to have the ability to choose the doctor's surgery that we want. So do the Tories, who are keen to tell us they thought of it first. Sounds good in principle but there's bound to be a catch. I can think of three to start with. First, some doctors are just better at the bedside manner than others. Grouchy types may find patients have left en masse. Now that may be an incentive for all to become more patient friendly, but a bedside manner is not the first requirement in patient care.

The second is what happens on referral to consultants. If you've decided to travel 60 miles to see a doctor because that particular doctor is the best you think you know, where will you be referred if you need an operation. And thirdly, for children and those who work away from home the choice is not about one doctor but the chance to register with two, which is not allowed at present.

As with a lot of things it sounds good on first hearing. Chat about it a bit more and you find it's not so simple. I'm reminded of a family holiday to a boarding house in the wilds of western Scotland in the Sixties. A Yorkshireman and his wife were in the same establishment. He had decided he was unhappy with the food on offer - basically what you saw is what you got. One evening he leant over from his table and whispered, knowingly, to my father, "I've been down t'other 'otel 'an they've got menya cards!" Needless to say it caused a stir in the dining room and the proprietress was at a loss as to know why.

I'd suggest that Andy Burnham makes sure his menu cards don't have too much choice on them otherwise we could all get an unhealthy dose of indigestion!

Supermarionated Andy Burnham - the anti-democracy man!

Andy Burnham takes the biscuit - the ward round biscuit! Not only is he New Labour automoton led, but he has a nasty streak of anti-democratic nature about him. Being in charge of the NHS has gone to his head. Nobody must dare to criticise the National Health Service of Britain. It is wonderful beyond measure, nurses are sweet and caring, the conditions perfect. Critics can go hang. They are unpatriotic. They are stupid. They are....whatever you want them to be so long as it is nasty.

Now the ridiculous Burnham suggests that David Cameron should ban NHS critics ( I prefer realists) from the Tory Party Conference. Ban, ban, ban, that's all Labour knows. Ban fox hunting (but not quite), ban smoking (but not quite), ban MPs expenses (but not quite), and so it goes on. Why should those who seek a different approach to health provision be banned? It is arrant nonsense.

The truth is out there! Mr.Burnham knows it but follows his master's voice without even bothering to think for himself. Yes, the NHS excels in fine health care. Most people have the highest degree of satisfaction. But money is still thrown at it like confetti. Staff still spend large amounts of time walking through buildings with clipboards looking busy whilst wondering what to do next. Not everything is rosy.

I suggest this. That Andy Burnham puts on a disguise and spends a day just sitting in a hospital watching things happen. He will get a far better education from that than any departmental briefing will ever give him!

The sainted NHS - Woe betide the gainsayers!

It is never a good idea to speak the truth about the NHS. If you do you get pilloried. By the supermarionated Andy Burnham, who looks like he's just had an NHS facelift. Or by the morally accurate compass maker, who doubles up as our prime minister. And now David Cameron has weighed in to criticise Daniel Hannan, who Cameron describes as an eccentric. He who won't have a word said against the outfit.

The trouble with the NHS is that it was a con from the start. Aneurin Bevan decided the people were too stupid to follow the real politics so he duped the country by inventing National Insurance. Nothing whatsoever to do with insurance. Slush funding at its best. Right from the start people thought they were paying into something and that "claiming" would be easy. It has always been underfunded. Only Keith Joseph spoke up and suggested a proper funding portfolio, but he was dismissed for his pains. Pity!

I have had first hand experience of the NHS recently. As with most British institutions it is good in parts. If you get a good bit, you'll probably praise it to the rooftops. I take a realistic approach, I think. It is staffed in the main by well-meaning, mostly caring people who can get a tad pissed off with a day's work. Some of the patients leave you wondering about your fellow human beings.
On one stay I had my first evening meal sitting up in bed with my trousers round my knees, soaking wet from urine, with a newly fitted catheter. Nobody had been able to attend to me. You see, time is not always of the essence. Before I got my meal, I was severely reprimanded for being past the five o'clock scoffing time. 6.30 was when the puddings had stiffened. I had asked for my meal at nearly 7!

In an NHS hospital you are more likely to contract a new disease than ever get one on the outside. Added to that, you get all kinds of nocturnal happenings. One of my co-patients used the washbasin by my bed as a urinal at 2.30 in the morning. Now I never asked for such added attractions during my stay. It just happened. Also, visiting time is a joy, especially when grumpy relatives ask you to join in to discuss their loved ones' problems!

Daniel Hannan is in hot water for daring to suggest that there may be an alternative way. David Cameron is said to be beside himself with a mixture of embarrassment and outrage that a Conservative could think in such a way. I'd like to know if David Cameron would care to eat a meal with urine-soaked trousers about his knees. Maybe that's just the price we have to pay for not putting our heads above the parapet?

The Conservatives would do better if they just got a grip of the truth. The truth being that the NHS system is overloaded and overworked. That it doesn't always run smoothly with sweet smiling nurses and a grade A service. I don't want an American system where the doctors are mainly driven by money. In the USA unnecessary surgery is conducted so that $10,000 can be pocketed instead of $1,000. The US system is great for the fully-insured when they are not sick.

Both countries have the potential for great health services, properly funded with everyone catered for. If the politicians got their faces away from the mirrors, stopped listening to vested interests and just admitted that things need to change, we will succeed in getting proper health provision. Otherwise it's the same old rubbish for the next generation.

School kids run NHS swine flu hotline

The government is always doing things on the cheap. The war in Afghanistan is a prime example. So is the NHS. Actually, I should say we get the results on the cheap but the method is one of extravagance and profligacy. Now it is revealed that the Swine Flu Hotline, which we were led to believe was being staffed by knowledgeable nursing types is actually full of 16-year olds biding their time whilst they wait for their GCSE results. We are told, as reported in the Daily Mail, by an insider that "many have accents which are difficult to understand and some have difficulty in reading from the prepared script." I can understand that having had experiences with oriental call centres and ending up at cross purposes with them.

The revelation that GCSE students are diagnosing flu comes just days after nine out of ten family doctors said they feared phone diagnosis would lead to serious diseases being missed. And they have. Menegitis being one of them. Andy Burnham continues to waffle on like a double-glazing salesman at 11.45pm desperate to prove he's not in the wrong job. However, the whole swine flu thing has been a complete disaster from an organisational point. If a disease wants to find a population, it could do no better than England. It's a germ's paradise.

The outfit running this call-centre calamity is NHS Professionals. Another outsourced in-house operation at arm's length from anyone who is vaguely responsible for something. On their website, NHS Professionals trumpet that they have "been developed by the Department of Health to provide innovative flexible staffing solutions." So flexible that youngsters can be plucked from school to speak to anxious patients about a pandemic that could kill. One hour's training and they're ready.

I'd say that that was like throwing caution to the wind. Which pretty much sums up the New Labour approach to finance!

Ooh Matron! Nurse is waving her wages at me!

It is a sad reflection, following on from the Settle shopkeeper, that there are organisations where money isn't exchanged so well. The National Health Service is one example. Admittedly being vastly larger than a small shop, it is nevertheless proper budgeting that is a necessary requisite. So we now hear, through the Freedom of Information Act, that some agency nurses cost £250,000 a year (pro-rata) to the NHS. In all, the NHS spent almost £800 million on agency staff.

Of course, if the hospitals were managed better, then none of this extravagant nonsense would be happening. Agencies are getting rich because of others' incompetence. Nothing new there, but surely it is high time to change this slack attitude to easy hiring of staff. And it's not the nurses getting all this money, although some do better than permanent staff nurses. It is the agency contractors who have "overheads".

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley is right. He obtained the figures for us to see. He says, "For years the Government have been telling us how many extra staff they have hired for the NHS. So surely we should have reached a situation by now where we no longer need to keep paying out millions each year to agencies and their staff? It is a dreadful waste of taxpayers' money at a time when we can least afford it."

But New Labour are rather like the Pushmi-pullyu. The want to say they are spending money and getting things right whilst at the same time saying that everything is managed by agencies, imlpying a hands-off approach to responsibility.

So £800 million being tossed in the direction of employment agencies is no real surprise. Onwards with the change!

Ben Bradshaw claims doctor has only two patients!

That illustrious minister Ben Bradshaw, a man with a penchant for rubbing people up the wrong way, has decided to take on the general practitioners with a combination of innuendo and bribery. He has attacked them for operating "gentlemen's agreements" whereby they promise not to accept other doctors' patients. Where these are he cannot say. He insinuates that there is a doctor with only two patients in his/her practice, "surviving" on the existing arrangements. He said government research had found this one practice in Southern England, but he has refused to say exactly where that is. Neither will he say how widespread the issues are.

So he smears the doctors by saying they are being deliberately obstructive and working against "real patient choice". Personally, I swapped doctors within Solihull due to location reasons (a new practice was set-up nearer to me) and I had no trouble. It's not the doctors who are the problem, it's Mr.Bradshaw and his inability to stop meddling. In that, he is very New Labour!

I am very interested in a group called Doctors for Reform. The way the likes of Bradshaw will have it is that no criticism of the NHS can possibly be heard. Everything is saintly sound and he is one of the guardian angels. Tory types like me can go hang. Doctors for Reform want proper reform. They say "We all work in the NHS. We are committed to its values. But we believe the time has come to consider a new way to deliver healthcare in Britain." I echo that, and I hope many more will do the same.

The time has come where it is not possible to keep this slush fund of Nye Bevan's going. Currently 8% of our nation's wealth is spent on the NHS. In 2020 it will have to be 20% if we are to keep up with the high cost of procedures, the increasing number of elderly, and so on. Whatever Bradshaw and his ilk in this New Labour outfit think, 20% is unrealistic. Instead of antagonising the medical profession, he had better think again. Reform his brain before he tries any more reforms on the NHS.

NHS Dentistry back to teeth pulling and pain!

What can be said of the state of NHS Dentistry. Not a lot. Well, to be fair, it's probably better to respond as the proverbial curate did. "It's good in parts!"

I've not met a dentist yet who actually likes the way government handles dentistry within the NHS. Of course, coming up to the 60th birthday bash for the NHS, it is a brave person who will actually criticise full on. Complaining about the way the NHS is run is rather like being accused of denigrating Nelson Mandela. Heaven forfend that there is anything wrong with this behemoth created by that wily Welsh wonder, Aneurin Bevan.

It was, of course, Bevan that perpetrated the biggest con on British society. He introduced National Insurance to pay for the NHS. INSURANCE? Humpty Dumpty could not have dreamt of such a misuse of a word. Even today, people come on the television saying "I've paid my contributions!" as if they were in some sort of policy for health care. Nothing of the sort. It was a slush fund from the start.

Now if it had been properly run, with those "contributions" being properly invested, then we would be seeing some sense today. But even Margaret Thatcher recoiled at Sir Keith Joseph's desire to see the National Insurance scandal reformed.

In his Commons report, Kevin Barron said, "It is disappointing that so far the new contract has failed to improve the patient's experience of dental services." He sounds like a man who's just discovered something new! I prefer the comments of Susie Sanderson, from the British Dental Association, who described it as a "damning report". She said, "It highlights the failure of a farcical contract that has alienated the profession and caused uncertainty to patients." Damning indeed.

A Department of Health spokesman said it would "carefully consider" the recommendations of the Commons report but said that the benefits of the reforms were already emerging. "We have invested over £200m in NHS dentistry this year, over and above increases in the last three years. This takes our total investment to over £2bn." TWO BILLION! I ask myself, are these people fit and proper persons to be handling such large sums of money? There must be a better way. Divide the population of the country (say 60 million) into this sum and you get enough for free check-ups all round. I think some people are lining their pockets on the way. We must be fools indeed!

So dentists are pulling teeth rather than expending time on expensive treatment for which they will not be paid. No wonder Candid Camera was dropped from our TV screens. "Smile, please! You're on Candid Camera. Well, actually, on second thoughts, don't!"