It’s too easy being an armchair whistle-blower
After raising the alarm, these nurses were met with a conspiracy of silence
Imagine a dark, cursed corner of a healthcare system, where older patients are secretly, systematically “put to sleep” using powerful sedatives. Unbeknown to them or their families, even minor injuries such as a fractured shoulder are destined to end in death. Even sitting up, eating, drinking and chatting to loved ones, planning for the future and looking forward to going home, won’t save them from being hooked up to pumps filling their bodes with diamorphine.
Why? Because someone, somewhere has unilaterally decided their lives are worthless and their recovery is pointless, not worth the investment of resources.
It sounds like the sick plot of a horror movie, but this is what was happening at Gosport War Memorial Hospital. More than 600 patients had their lives cut short after drugs were administered without medical justification.
It beggars belief that such heinous practices – nobody has yet been charged, but justice must be done – could be carried out in plain sight within the NHS.
Hospital GP Dr Jane Barton has been held responsible for policies that led to these deaths between the late Eighties and 2001. Despite police investigations and a GMC hearing that found her guilty of serious misconduct, she wasn’t struck off and continued working until 2011. She now lives in Spain. Dr Barton’s sunny retirement bitterly contrasts with the harrowing, horrifying, heartbreaking stories emerging now from the Redclyffe Annexe, over which she presided until 2001, when deaths tailed off dramatically.
Elderly people admitted for rehabilitation in high spirits were written off, given painkillers when they weren’t in pain and high doses of end-of-life opiates.
In 2001, following treatment for a stroke, 86-year-old Dulce Middleton was admitted to Gosport to prepare for her return home. She was denied food and water, and given unnecessary drugs. Her daughter insisted she be transferred elsewhere, but the damage had been done, and she died.
Elsie Devine was 88 and weighed seven stone when she was admitted to recuperate after a urinary tract infection. She was given “enough drugs to lay out a 6ft man”, say her family – and she died.
Robert Wilson 74, was transferred to Gosport in 1998 for rehabilitation after breaking his shoulder in a fall. He was prescribed morphine and diamorphine, and died four days later. His last words to his son were: “Help me, son. They are killing me.”
On patients’ notes, the euphemistic “please make comfortable” was widely understood to mean the patient should be started on strong painkillers before death – even when they had arrived with a discharge date.
The nurses followed orders, and nicknamed the 20-bed Redclyffe Annexe the “death loss ward”. But two night nurses, Anita Tubbritt and Sylvia Griffin, were courageous enough to complain, to speak out, to risk their jobs by raising their heads above the institutional parapet, and told hospital bosses about what was going on.
We like to believe it’s what any of us would do in a similar situation: break ranks, question our superiors, take our concerns to the very top.
Of course, we would. Or, at least, we like to think we would. But then it’s easy to be an armchair whistle-blower.
It’s far, far harder to actually do it. And it’s downright tragic to demonstrate such bravery – and find nobody is willing to listen. Because, after raising the alarm as early as 1991, these two nurses were met with a conspiracy of silence, cover-ups and denials.
They were even accused by colleagues of “making waves”; saving people’s lives was viewed as less important than closing ranks. It was only after a relative made a complaint, following the death of her mother in 1998, that any sort of action was taken.
Other patients’ relatives have done the same, tirelessly campaigning for the truth to be told, but that should be no reflection on those too sad, too despairing, too defeated.
That’s the anomaly at the heart of the NHS. It’s our best-loved institution, it’s publicly accountable – and yet its workings remain so Byzantine and impenetrable, it can be impossible to make headway against officialdom.
I’m convinced that’s why so many end up suing hospitals; they want their story to be heard, their hurt and pain to be acknowledged.
Of course, in some cases, terrible instances where babies suffer the lifelong consequences of a mismanaged birth, seven-figure sums are needed to provide a lifetime of care. But many would be happy with an apology long before lawyers get involved.
Yet the NHS is unconscionably slow to admit fault, however trivial, and – over and above the human cost – taxpayers are paying out millions in clinical negligence claims every week; cash that could be spent on improving front-line services.
A Public Accounts Committee report published at the end of last year identified a “prevailing attitude of defensiveness” from NHS trusts, which has helped to quadruple clinical negligence costs from £400million in 2006-07 to £1.6billion in 2016-17.
“The NHS must move more quickly to share best practice in the handling of harmful incidents and complaints,” said Meg Hillier MP, its chairman. “This should be a fundamental part of what remains a disappointingly slow-moving shift towards openness and transparency.”
And so we, the patients, must battle against obfuscation, stonewalling and an unwillingness to come clean on human blunders and systemic malpractice alike.
But what of the medics who condoned Gosport’s – Dr Barton’s – culture of euthanasia-by-default? Those who kept their heads down and got on with the job, even if it meant shortening people’s lives?
These two whistle-blowers deserve our admiration and respect, but why didn’t more speak out? Dr Barton was not the only doctor. They were not the only nurses. Every person who worked on those wards, and knew or suspected what was happening, must examine their conscience.
For NHS bosses to dismiss grave allegations as unthinkable, doesn’t mean they aren’t true. And for evil to flourish on our hospital wards, it only requires good doctors and nurses to do nothing.