Former health boss “sickened” by hospital documentary

The Channel 4 Dispatches programme that aired earlier this week, showing undercover footage within hospitals ran by the Pennine Acute Trust was a hot topic at the full council meeting held on Wednesday 13 April.

Reporters posing as a porter and a trust volunteer secretly filmed patient care and hospital life including conversations with and between members of staff mainly at North Manchester General 13 December and 4 March.

Scenes appeared to show one staff member describing an elderly patient as t**t, staff swearing loudly near patients, elderly patients at North Manchester Hospital accusing one staff member of bullying, operating theatres without enough staff, and staff claiming that a patient had died because they were moved between wards too quickly.

The undercover reporters said they had witnessed caring staff, but the programme branded the Pennine Acute Trust, which runs the hospitals in Rochdale, North Manchester, Oldham and Bury, as “struggling to care for patients”.

Former health boss, Councillor Robert Clegg, said the scenes showed “appalling behaviour” and he found it “unacceptable” and felt “sickened.”

The Trust has since invited the Care Quality Commission to review standards and said that the scenes made for “uncomfortable viewing.” However, they denied that patient care was being compromised to meet targets.

Councillor Clegg described the Trust’s attempts to deny the behaviour was “pointless.”

He also suggested that the nurses shown behaving in a disgraceful manner should be referred for striking off on the grounds of gross misconduct.

The Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Councillor Dale Mulgrew said he still has “no confidence” in the Trust.