Catching up on news, saw some negative articles on #QEUH. Here’s my experience of the relationship between newspapers and hospitals 1/

All big busy hospitals make mistakes. If the A&E dept sees 100,000 patients per year and they have an error rate of 0.1%, that generates 100 cases per year for review. Some mistakes are unavoidable and in the nature of healthcare. Others are tragic preventable disasters. 2/

These disasters are often a combination of human error and imperfect systems that have failed to trap those errors as they arise. The trick is to take remedial actions with staff and systems to minimise chance of recurrence. 3/

Sometimes a newspaper generates a narrative based on such heart breaking events. The more they publish, the more people come forward with new stories until the institution is seen to be “failing”. Opposition politicians then jump on the bandwagon and call for resignations. 4/

It is important in that case to look at data, especially standardised mortality rates and specific indicator conditions such as stroke & trauma. These indicate the difference between a “failing” hospital & one under undue scrutiny being used by unscrupulous politicians. 5/

All big hospitals have problems to fix especially around demand & capacity. They are also capable of extraordinary healthcare requiring the input of hundreds of staff to save a life. If no problems are being reviewed, they are probably not being reported. 6/

I argued for centralisation of care in #qeuh 20 years ago. I’m now extremely proud to work there and see dedicated expert staff work closely together to save patients that would never have survived a few short years ago. Learn from tragedies, but judge on data. End.