I still feel upset at cries I heard when verdicts were read out
GP tells how he’s rebuilding patient trust after horror of Shipman
way with killing for so done it. But in the end t Smith said: “I think re without motive. s warn me that it is man’s own mind, there ivation. All I can say is dence of any of the bserved, in my experimotivate murderers.”
r is that Shipman’s killshattered trust among ts in Hyde – which Dr as been rebuilding. says: “When the story plete disbelief. People our doctor for him to to murder you. area. People here die the national average which is one of the reasons nobody picked up on the excess deaths. It was almost, what do you expect? You live in Hyde.
“It might not be talked about on the news any more, but it is still very vivid in people’s minds and it causes distress and mental health problems. I am still dealing with the fallout of Shipman to this very day. It doesn’t go away.”
Ingrid Brindle was one of Shipman’s patients. “I thought he was an excellent doctor because I had a long-term medical condition and he gave me everything I needed,” she says. “I really thought he was excellent and so did a lot of other people.”
It was important for Dr Hannan to regain the trust of his patients. It was one simple act which changed everything. He said: “I remember about three years into the job I was talking to a patient during a consultation and just turned my computer screen round so they could see what I was typing. As I turned that screen around there was a flicker of a smile I had never seen before.”
From then on Dr Hannan, who has moved to the new Haughton Thornley Medical Centre in the town, gave every patient access to their medical records, and ensured that they understood them.
He says: “It’s possible Shipman convinced his victims, ‘Well, you’ve got heart disease so that is why I am giving you this morphine’. And they just went along with it, because why would you question a doctor?”
Educating and fully informing his patients
DR AMIR HANNAN GP WHO REPLACED SHIPMAN has become a labour of love for Dr Hannan. As well as providing a practice website full of local and medical information, he’s encouraged all his patients to download one of a range of free NHS recommended apps such as Evergreen Life where they have instant access to their medical records, including everything the doctor has written about them, scan and blood test results and repeat prescriptions.
“It means my patients can access their GP records at any time of the day or night, wherever they are in the world,” says Dr Hannan. “As soon as my patients leave my surgery today they can read what I have written instantly.”
■ Anyone affected can find support at nhs. uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/ mental-health-helplines/ or contact a GP.
TWENTY years ago yesterday Harold Shipman was found guilty of the murders of 15 women – and I remember it so clearly.
As the guilty verdicts were read out at Preston crown court, each family gave a gasp and wept. Not dramatic, but gentle genuinely painful cries and as 15 fresh waves of grief built up, they filled the courtroom with the most intense grief.
It was one of the most distressing moments I ever experienced as a journalist, and I still feel upset as I remember today.
I had broken the story 16 months earlier. The Manchester Evening News had been tipped off about the investigation into Kathleen Grundy’s death.
Greater Manchester Police did not want to comment on the case in Hyde, my patch working as district reporter.
But the people of Hyde did – they had been calling Shipman Dr Death for two years, at first as a joke. I’ll never forget the words of two old dears: “Oh, all the old ladies die with him – they say he’s a good doctor but you don’t last.”
When I approached Shipman, still working at his surgery, and asked him to reassure his patients he was innocent of any wrongdoing, he declined in a thin, reedy voice, his beady, pale eyes staring at me through his glasses. As I left, an old lady sitting in the waiting room tutted at me for daring to question him.
But the exhumation of
Mrs Grundy’s body, the first of
12, ripped apart the community.
I felt so sorry for all the families who had lost loved ones.
That final day in court was everything to those families: the “small army of sons, daughters, friends and neighbours,” as crown prosecutor Richard Henriques QC described them.
They were ordinary people, most of whom had never seen the inside of a courtroom before, still grieving for the women they had lost, who’d had to find the strength to give evidence and bring Shipman to justice.
But they did just that, and with courage and determination. And then they did it again. They came together and fought doggedly for a public inquiry into why Shipman had got away with it.
No more ‘behind closed doors’ – the exact reason he had got away with it, on such a shocking scale for so many years – to make sure no one else would go through what they had. To keep us all safe.
Now we expect inquiries into tragedies, such as Grenfell and Hillsborough, to be public. We insist that we see the authorities address a problem. We watch and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
That is the legacy of those families, that community. It brings a lump to my throat when I think of them today with pride.
Reporter Sitford was distressed by case
You go to your doctor for him to help you, not kill you