SUFFERERS ofIATROGENIC NEGLECT

• SIN was set up in Nov. 1998 as a pressure and support group for victims of poor medical care and their relatives who wish to improve standards in the NHS.
• We accept that mistakes will happen but the trauma really starts when medical mistakes are denied, documents disappear or are apparently modified and a cover-up begins.
• Often patients and their families are subjected to a character assassination if the complaint is serious and they persist.
• In March, 1999, a Panorama programme on the gynaecologist, Richard Neale, exposed the awful truth that there is very little quality control in the British Medical Profession, and a blind eye is turned towards incompetent and malpractising doctors.
• This programme highlighted how ineffective and casual were the safeguards employed by the Trusts, Health Authorities and the GMC to investigate doctors who could put patients at risk.

• Most people cannot afford to go to law, and try to use the NHS Complaints System, which should in theory, be able to expose medical negligence / professional misconduct etc.
• In practice, the Executives of Trust Hospitals, Health Authorities, or indeed the Regional Health Authorities, never investigate a complaint thoroughly, impartially or accurately.

• Those who try to go through the NHS Complaints Procedure (including the Health Service Ombudsman's Office) get nowhere for they eventually find, after exhausting themselves by letter writing and attempting to use the system, that it is all a farce. [SIN's critique:"The Emperor Has No Clothes"]

• The burden of exposing incompetent /malpractising doctors should not fall on ill patients and their families: this is the responsibility of management.
• The government now accepts that a culture of cover up exists. Such a culture is bad for patients and bad for doctors. We desperately need more doctors with the courage and integrity of Stephen Bolsin.

• When patients, on legal aid, attempt to exercise their rights by going to law to sue for justifiable compensation, the way is obstructed because the medical profession closes ranks making it almost impossible to obtain a medical expert
• This "closing of ranks" is a euphemism for collusion and British doctors seem to have a stronger allegiance to colleagues, who may be incompetent, than a duty of care to the innocent and trusting patient.
• Many patients are isolated and in trauma and often find that they have been victimised because they have dared to complain. Iatrogenic patients are "hot potatoes", many finding they can no longer obtain specialist medical care having discovered that the care received had been substandard.
• Something has gone badly wrong with the British Medical Profession when, in a civilised democracy, vulnerable patients and their relatives have to fight for honesty and good quality health care. It is because of this unacceptable state of affairs that the support group SIN came into being

SIN believes that iatrogenic patients should form a united front and so ensure that the voice of the mistreated patient is heard. If people of good will can work together, perhaps a real culture change could be achieved which would be of mutual benefit to both doctor and patient. A new approach to iatrogenically damaged patients is imperative to ensure that the basic human right to adequate health care is upheld. (Article 25 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN, 10/12/48). © July 1999.

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