Ashen faced, grey to the point of colourlessness. Black suit, white shirt, standing against the ironmongery of a doorway, on an unseasonably, cold grey-day. It could have been 1960.
Niall Dickson was a forlorn figure as he faced the media. The chairman of the troubled East Kent Hospitals Trust.
Dickson could be forgiven for questioning his whole life's work…
In his early days he worked for Age Concern… the state of our care homes and services for the elderly tells us, no one is concerned.
He rose to the top of the BBC in journalism. Despite hundreds of reports of failings in social affairs, they are still, regular news items.
He ran the GMC. Doctors and the system he helped regulate, still fail us.
He was awarded a CBE for his services to patient safety. Safe is an absolute… safer doesn’t cut it.
Dickson was not there to apologise. He looked the viewers in the eye and said, simply, ‘I am sorry’. A human, heartfelt sorry. No plastic corporate hand-wringing apology. Naill Dickson said sorry and he meant it.
The birth of a baby was bungled, fouled-up and covered up in an unforgivable tangle of avoidable events and consequences.
The parents were left as David in a system of Goliaths, to fight themselves to exhaustion to squeeze the truth out of a system, that institutionally dissembles.
A locum doctor hired, their experience not checked, their work unsupervised, the birthing pathway lead to disaster and death.
Who was responsible for the hiring? Who was responsible for the lack of supervision? How did the pathway go so badly wrong? I don’t know. There must be a name attached to these events.
I wonder if Dickson knows?
Now, he leads a Trust facing a financial mountain and a trashed reputation. The first to be prosecuted and fined this gargantuan amount.
The CQC demonstrated, once again, they are powerless to influence quality and now show us how stupid they really are, embarking on a prosecution that even the parents of the dead child, questioned.
The fine will come from the Trust’s capital budget. Meaning development, repairs and renewals stopped. Maybe, if the DH are sympathetic, it could be adjusted in their public divided capital and absorbed into the balance sheet. An accounting conjuring trick.
Naill Dickson is Naill Everyman. Every man and every woman who depends on the NHS, left asking how it could happen.
We know the answer. We let it happen. Collectively, we… all of us. We all know…
NHSE and their regional apparatchiks knew the Trust and many like them, was short of staff, struggling to balance their books, ravaged by austerity, flat-line-funding. Victims of their geography, history and economy.
The CQC hounded them and scores of other Trusts, to achieve the impossible, driving managers to game, fiddle and lie their way through the days, the months and the years of inspection and audit. Corners cut, desperate measures turned into disasters.
We all know.
The NHS is only as safe as the shortcomings we are prepared to walk past. Yet, we all know, honest working people, when they say; ‘this isn’t safe’, are hounded and made a pariah.
Dickson stands for all decent people in their lifetime of work to make the NHS safe but he must have learned by now...
... there is no system that keeps people safe, only the systematic and individual commitment to the pursuit of excellence.
If we fail one family we fail them all. It’s our job to create nothing more than peace-of-mind.
We know, if it is not safe for one, we or one of ours, could become that one.
I want East Kent to succeed but every person working there must be part of the recovery, founded on honesty… stripped pine honesty.
If the Board is to be more than a collection of trophy names, their commitment must be nailed on the front-door, with a message that says; if there is something wrong tell me… now.
The NHS can’t recover until we all ask; What have I walked-by today, that I shouldn’t have?
Our health services will never change until the incentives switch from punishing failure, to rewarding success.
The health service can’t recover until we realise there are three quarters of a million reasons why excellence comes from sharing the best that we do, openness and talking to each other...
... not three quarters of a million pound fine, in a courtroom.
>> I'm hearing - Ben Nunn, Keir Starmer’s Director of Communications, has resigned.
>> I'm hearing - Trusts are being warned to be prepared for the return of “financial disciplines”. Ouch!
>> I'm hearing - digital provider Livi UK has been rated “outstanding” overall, as well as in the responsive and well-led domains. This is the first time an on-line service has been rated.
>> I'm hearing - insurance company, Legal & General has established a partnership with Sir Michael Marmot to address UK health inequality; 'to examine how improvements to the design and construction of our towns and cities can help to address health inequalities'.
