Monday 10 December 2012

Anne Clwyd at least she is being heared.


I'm sure everyone feels huge sympathy for Ann Clwyd and her campaign for more caring nursing after "the callous lack of care" with which nurses treated her husband as he lay dying in the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

Clwyd, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley since 1984 and Tony Blair's former human rights envoy to Iraq, told the Guardian she fears a "normalisation of cruelty" is now rife among NHS nurses. She said she had chosen to speak out because this had become "commonplace".

Describing how her 6'2'' husband lay crushed "like a battery hen" against the bars of his hospital bed with an oxygen mask so small it cut into his face and pumped cold air into his infected eye, Clwyd said nurses treated the dying man with "coldness, resentment, indifference and even contempt".
Owen Roberts died on Tuesday, 23rd October from hospital-acquired pneumonia. The former television director and producer had multiple sclerosis for 30 years and had been in a wheelchair for the previous two years. He had been in the flagship hospital for ten days.
"I have had nightmares about what happened," said Clwyd, speaking to the Guardian after initially making
Guardian December 4th 2012 

However sympathy and respect for her undoubted distress, cannot distract from the fact that she has been a MP for 28 years and must surely have had hundreds of letters and  constituency surgeries where her constituents have related similar horrific stories.

Her Labour Party have been in Power for at Westminster for 13 of the  years since she was first elected  and in power in Wales and running the NHS here since 1999.

So was she right despite her anger and distress to blame the Westminster Government 

 The rowdy House of Commons fell silent when the Labour MP rose to speak at the end of prime minister’s questions. Her description of how her husband, Owen Roberts, suffered “coldness, resentment, indifference and contempt” has sent shockwaves through the NHS.
She said: “The universal healthcare system, free at the point of delivery, is what the overwhelming majority of the British people want – something which I remain firmly committed to. However, there are increasing complaints about nurses who fail to show care and compassion to their patients.
“What exactly will the prime minister do about that?”
Western Mail December 5th 2012



Has she asked Welsh First Minister and his health Secretary the same question ?

Many observers believe that the problems of care go back to Project 2000 a new university-based system of nurse education and greater emphasis was placed on the education of nurses rather than their caring capabilities.

It led to claim that some Nurses saw their role as being above simple caring task's feeding like washing soiled patients who could not carry out such tasks.

A largely unfair accusation but cases like Ann Clwyd , point to concerns that must be answered and I support her campaign to bring caring back to those wards where it has appeared to have disappeared.

But its sad that it has taken her own personal tragedy to open her eyes . At least she has a voice that is being heard.
For many of her constituents there seems to be no one before know to speak for them.

Something that has been her job for the last 28 years




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

More pressing is when is the BBC Wales and UK going to remind her that Cardiff is in Wales and that it is Welsh labour which is running the NHS in this country.

It's got nothing to do with London. Either Ann Clwyd still has a totally British/English mind-set or it ignorant of basic politics ... as is the BBC.

Let's hope Plaid Cymru and the Tories point out her ignorance of the situation. She obviously doesn't want to upset the Labour family or thinks Wales and Welsh Labour are so irrelevant that it's not worth talking to them about it.

Either way, Welsh Labour gets let off the hook again.


glynbeddau said...

Anon

We must also acknowledge through being coalition in the Assembly both Plaid and the Liberal Democrats must take some responsibilityf or the NHS.

But it is Labour who must take most of the blame in Wales and they have simply copied the previous way Westminster allowed the situation to reach this crisis point.

Alwyn ap Huw said...

Actually Ann has been very "clever"!

The NHS may be devolved, but she isn't complaining about the NHS - she is complaining about "nursing standards" which are not devolved!

Sock it to the nurses rather than the Welsh Labour Government!

Welsh not British said...

But then why are nurses not devolved? It all has to come back to Labour. They run this country, they have done for 15 years. Except everytime the BBC refers to our government it's always the Welsh golvernment. When referring to the UK government it's always the Tory/Lib Dem coalition or Tory led coalition.