How helpers could prevent new Mid Staffs

VOLUNTEERING is paramount to making the NHS more transparent, according to the chairman of the Mid Staffordshire hospital inquiry.

Sir Robert Francis said volunteers improved ‘the understanding amongst the rest of us about what’s actually going on in there’.

He also said volunteers improved hospitals’ ‘humanity’ and ensured they could better respond to patients’ needs.

Sir Robert’s inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire hospitals scandal was published in 2013. Hundreds of patients died needlessly at the trust between 2005 and 2009.

Some were left so dehydrated they drank water from vases and doctors admitted they became ‘immune to the sound of pain.’

Sir Robert’s inquiry prompted major reforms of the NHS to undo the culture of secrecy and encourage doctors and nurses to report concerns. He has now thrown his weight behind the Mail’s Christmas campaign.

He said the Mid Staffordshire hospitals had very strict visiting hours and ‘kept the outside world out’. An organisation that ‘welcomes people in to help ... is less likely to be a place where things go wrong’, he said.

Referring to the benefits of volunteering, Sir Robert said: ‘Not only does it provide extra helping hands, and helps with the humanity, but it helps with the transparency.

‘ It increases the understanding within the service about what people need and it also increases the understanding amongst the rest of us about what’s actually going on in there.’

Sir Robert is now chairman of Healthwatch, a charity which recruits volunteers to find out what patients think about their local hospital or health service.

He said: ‘We’re not asking people to volunteer to be the regulator but it’s simply that any member of the public ... should feel free to raise the issues and make suggestions about how things could be made better.’ He added: ‘People can bring to the service so many things, they can bring their help, they can bring experience and they can bring views.’