Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149477 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Synopsis
The figures are shocking - every year about 34,000 people die unnecessarily in today's NHS hospitals and another 25,000 are unnecessariy permanently disabled. These victims of NHS mistakes, bad hygiene and poor care are our loved ones. Amanda Steane's "Who cares?" is one of these 59,000 horror stories. Her husband Paul went into hospital with a minor problem - through repeated neglect in two NHS hospitals, he emerged an invalid. Throughout his time in hospital, his wife Amanda desperately tried to alert nurses, doctors and managers to the things that were going wrong with her husband's care. Each time, she alerted them to a new horror, they would promise that nothing like that would ever happen again - but things just got worse. Finally, an invalid deprived of his independence, his legs, his ability to communicate and everything he enjoyed, he took his own life. Hospital managers denied all responsibility by claiming key parts of Paul's medical records had been 'lost'. But a nurse, outraged at what she saw, sent Amanda copies of the 'missing' records and the police were called in to investigate.

Customer Reviews

Required reading
As another review said, this book should be made required reading for anyone involved in care in any way - be that as a nurse on a hospital ward, a support worker in a residential home or a doctor doing home visits. It outlines what should be basic knowledge for all carers, and how easily it can be missed - and the dire consequences that follow.

Amanda and her family are very brave and courageous to speak out and stand up against the NHS, and having been to a lecture given by Amanda, it is to her credit (and Paul's) that her experiences have not tainted her view of most people who work within the NHS - she just wants to educate them.

Buy one for yourself, and one for the ward......just like I did!

Essential reading
A truly moving and horrifying book. It should be compulsory reading for all the hopeless bureaucrats who run our health service and for the politicians who ruin it.

Did this really happen, if it did we should all be ashamed.
This story gripped me, did this really happen? I have to find out. What a complete waste of a very brave man,the destruction of a family, I can't believe that repeated attempts by Amanda were ignored, by so called professional people.I need to know more about this very brave family, what are they doing today?How did it all turn out legally? What are they doing today? please don't leave us like this, wondering if anyone paid the price, PLEASE.