It may have been the “apparently high mortality rates in patients admitted as emergencies” that prompted the first of many investigations into Stafford Hospital. But it’s the reports of bedridden patients lying in their own urine and excrement that illustrate the depth of the “systemic failure” at the hospital. Because everybody knows that isn’t right. You need no training – medical or otherwise – no management expertise or experience, no special “vocation” or long-honed skill, to understand that you don’t do that to animals, let alone humans.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Our intensely hierarchical economic system runs on specialisation – the attainment of qualifications, the accumulation of experience, the possession of skill, talent, instinct, flair, ruthlessness, the ability to manage or make money, all wrapped up in a bundle that makes an individual special and unique. So the things that all humans are expected to comprehend, and be able to turn their hand to, have no value.
I’m not just talking about the NHS. Of course, hospitals contain concentrated numbers of people who can’t get to the loo by themselves, and a lack of cleanliness can and does have sometimes fatal consequences. So the general failure to reward “menial” tasks is particularly egregious in hospitals.
Long fight: Julie Bailey, who has campaigned for justice at Stafford Hospital since her mother Bella died there in 2007
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