When junior doctors make mistakes and nurses make errors - why does the NHS Trust involved get fined £100K plus as a punishment?!

What is the point in punishing a faceless trust by taking money off them and pushing it into further crises?

I don't get it

Is it compensation for the victim of the error?

Its a tricky subject i think.  I know everyone makes mistakes and doctors and nurses are no exception, but if an error caused by doctor/nurse etc costs someone their life/quality of life then i believe that the family/person should be compensated.  Yes the NHS are in crisis but an awful lot of it is down to spending money willy nilly on totally unnecessary (sp?) things, rather than life saving equipment.

But surely they should have insuranc policies against compensation claims?

Fair point Chloe :) but this is the NHS we are talking about, and they must have to pay out millions in compensation, just out of my friends and family i know of 7 people who have claimed or have claims ongoing or in my case negligence resulting in high chance of me possibly claiming, and that is just one hospital!!.  I agree they should be adequately insured but how would they work out such a thing?

The thing that irritates me the most is that in taking money from the Trust it doesn't actually punish anyone responsible - it just reduces the money available elsewhere...

Exactly. The money that goes out in compensation means that someone else misses out on treatment. :(

I think the govt should ban all compensation company ads. A friend of mines father owns one of these claims companies and he is a very rich man as a result of it. He also owns a debt consolidation company - says a lot for the way this country is going really! He takes money off companies, the govt and individuals and then lends it back to folk to get into more debt. Interesting.

Yes taking money from the trust doesnt punish the person responsible and sadly others do miss out on treatment, but would you not agree that someone should pay when another persons quality of life has been damaged or even worse someone has died ?.  Punishment for the person making the error is what is needed but to what extent? there are very few hospitals that probably have the level of staff cover they should, so therefore doctors etc work longer hours and are more likely to make such errors when tired etc.

When I had to visit A&E last year I was given an appointment card for a further visit.  The whole back page of the card was an advertisment for a no win, no fee compensation company. :rolleyes:

My friend always used to say "Accountants erase their mistakes but Doctors bury theirs!"

I'm of the school of thought that many accidents are unforeseeable and unpreventable. Only if there was deliberate negligence should someone be punished.

Mistakes are preventable.........and especially where lives are at risk, incompetence should be punished. Employers have responsibility to make sure that staff are capable.
As my husband points out banks, shops, post offices - anybody really - brush aside mistakes they make and forget all about it but if he makes one he will be putting many lives at risk. I think we are getting too used to being fobbed off with excuses from many walks of life.

Sure, mistakes are preventable in that you can simply do nothing. Where would medicine be if people in the past hadn't tried a new procedure? People frequently died with the early anaesthetics - would you rather such things weren't attempted for fear of possible legal consequences, and we still had to be held down during surgery until we passed out through pain and terror, only to die of shock?

People can have an abnormal, and unpredictable, reaction to well-tested and well-trusted procedures. These are unpredictable and the only way of preventing them is to let nature take its course, and not even attempt to improve the situation.

Many of the things we hear about though are due to imcompetence. Two tragic examples recently, the man who had his healthy kidney removed instead of the cancerous one and the young girl who was given 17 (I think) times the amount of radiation she should have had to treat a brain tumor. When you have an operation you know the risks of unforseen reactions but you don't expect to have your life ruined by a preventable mistake. When my pets need operations I have to sign that I understand the risks of the anaesthetic. If something happened due to a bad reaction then it would be sad but unavoidable. If something happened because the wrong amount had been given then it would be down to incompetence.

Here's a scenario. :)

You have a woman in advanced complicated labour with a mal-presenting baby. The cervix is fully open but the baby is stuck and showing clear signs of distress. An emergency c-section is the obvious route, so you prepare to wheel the mother, nearly unconscious with pain and exhaustion, to theatre. Do you remove the propped headboard and lay her flat (to minimise the risk of her falling off the bed) or keep her propped up to minimise the risk of her uterus rupturing during a contraction (which are by now almost continuous)?

Discuss. :D

Ummmm, well, I would think that her falling off the bed would be avoidable if more than one person was pushing the bed so I would go for the 'keeping propped up'  but make sure she was adequately supported on either side.

Off out for a run now........if I fall over I know it will be my fault !.

Chances are she would already be in theatre as they probably would try forceps/ventouse before it got to that stage :D

Actually they went for the 'lay-flat' option - and boy, I felt it rip!

Interestingly, I was talking to one of the midwives when I had just had Archie. She told me that they can be sued up to 21 years after the birth of the child... thats a big risk and responsibility to take on for the sake of a job...

21 years? No wonder there's such a chronic shortage of midwives. It's not worth the risk. :(

That is indeed true Chloe :( , and yes there are a chronic shortage of midwives.  I know of a situation where 1 midwife was looking after 13 ladies single handedly with no support staff.

I still don't see how removing a healthy kidney instead of a cancerous one can be anything other than negligent. It wasn't an emergency operation with the sugeon having to make a split second decision. Also, the young girl, she had more than one of the incorrect doses of radiation. Both serious and completely avoidable.

Yes, I agree. But lets punish the folk who make such mistakes - after we make sure they are not over-worked, over-tired and underpaid. Only then can we really criticise folk who work under such conditions...

Both serious, certainly. Logically, they could both have been avoided totally if nature had been left to take its course, but let's not go down that route!

I still don't see how fining an NHS Trust, rather than an individual, improves the situation? It won't undo the past ...

As one of those 'rare' breeds - a midwife, I know only too well we can be sued for up to 25 years.
Most of the younger students coming in to the profession get nervous and go on to a different career, and us oldies are taking early retirement.  I think expectations are growing ever higher.  With a section rate of 25-30% I fear that 'normal' birth will become extinct.  I love my job and still feel so excited with every baby I deliver, but it's all the paperwork and politics that really get me down.

I had such a lovely experience on my 3rd birth - even though it ended in a c-sec - that I wrote a letter to thank all the midwives who were involved personally, named each one and what they had done that was so special. I got a lovely letter back thanking me from the Head of Midwifery and I will do it again, if, god willing, all goes well with this pregnancy :)

I agree that someone who is a victim of negligence should be compensated - but shouldn't we see a few more high profile sackings and prosectution of those folk responsible for running the outfit? If a Trust Manager is overworking junior doctors, or allowing their hospital to be understaffed - then they should be held responsible. Perhaps, if they were more concerned about their own responsibilities they would STOP allowing this to happen - and if the NHS grounds to a halt instead of limping on bleeding money - then at least something might be done?

I agree with Chloe's point about making the top brass more accountable.  When things go wrong someone should take both the responsibility and the consequences.  Otherwise people just don't learn from their mistakes.

It's certainly the individuals at the top who should shoulder the burden of responsibility, not the lowly-paid, overworked minions, or 'the Trust' as a whole.

The more people start lawsuits the worse treatment will become, because it will become financially too dangerous to undertake risky procedures. :(

I am of the same school of thought JG but all the cases i know of are/were negligence :(

The trouble is, every decision has alternatives - and you only ever know the result of the chosen alternative. It's impossible to know what would have happened if a different choice had been made - the outcome could have been even worse.

Hindsight is the only 20:20 vision we have - and it's unavailable at the time any decision is made. :(

They don't even have it against items in the hospital never mind anything else from what I understand.  If computers etc. get stolen they have no comeback, not sure what it's about but I think it's something to do with them being a government body!

Though these days with suing as easy as it is there's no way that insurance companies would cover.  People sue for anything nowadays.  A doctor was negligent before my brother died many years ago but suing was the last thing on my parents mind!

My understanding of this particular case is that it is not compensation but a punishment fine.  When passing it the judge commented that he was concious that the money would be taken from care budgets :rolleyes:.  I can't understand the use of it at all.  The junior doctors have received suspended sentences for manslaughter but the Trust was held responsible for not supervising them, fair enough, but the only punishment that could possibly hurt them is a personal fine to the directors not money taken from patient care.  Presumably the deceased man's relatives with sue for compensation and although this will probably be paid by insurance, premiums may be affected thus more money taken from patient care although clearly these people do deserve to be compensated.

I think people should claim against the NHS..
Because what happened to me completely changed and ruined my life.
I gave birth to my son and as the midwife was giving me a wash preparing to move me to the ward I kept telling her I had a pain in my leg  she told me that I will have pains so it was ignored.
I was then put in a ward by this time I had horrendous stomach pain so they pulled the curtain around me and told me to have  a sleep.
To cut a long story short It ended up I had been torn by the forceps in three different places tearing arteries I was bleeding to death they rushed me to theatre along the corridors with me rolling about screaming in pain begging them to put me to sleep..I remember them cutting my nightie off me and pulling me onto the theatre bed I died twice in theatre and had 50 (yes 50) pints of blood I was in theatre for 10 hours they sent for  specialist in veins because they couldnt stop the bleeding and they had to do a hysterectomy to save my life then gave me 24 hours to live.
I then caught phneumonia (sp) and was transported  by ambulance to intensive care my son was left in the maternity hospital .
I was in hospital with my son for months I returned to work a year later but was pensioned off due to ill health .
I have medical problem that will be with me for the rest of my life due to this medical negligence we didnt sue because I was so ill it never occurred to us to be honest then it was too late my son is 21.

Roni

Roni, that is terrible.  As others have said Midwives are responsible for 25 years so it may not too late to look into this.  I certainly do think people who have suffered from negligence should be compensated.  The case being discussed in this thread though is not about giving compensation to the relatives of the man who died but simply fining the Trust that the Doctors worked for.  I presume the relatives will be awarded compensation though as there can hardly be any doubt negligence has occured as the doctors have been found guilty already.