NHS patients bullied and sworn at in ‘wards with an aggressive atmosphere’, say concerned health workers
Staff at Southern Health Foundation NHS Trust raised alarms about the treatment of patients cared for by the mental health trust
WORRIED health workers at a troubled NHS Trust have told how patients were bullied and sworn at while emergency bleep alerts were ignored.
Staff at controversy-hit Southern Health Foundation NHS Trust also claimed an employee spent a patient’s cash and raised concerns about the use of restraint on wards by untrained workers.
The complaints were recorded after a whistleblowers’ hotline was set up after a string of damning reports into the Trust, which provides mental healthcare in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
Workers at the Trust – which provides services to 45,000 people – voiced concerns about low staffing levels and said patient safety was risked by the way care meetings were handled.
There were even reports that staff used the computer logins of colleagues to browse “inappropriate” websites.
The dossier of staff concerns - passed confidentially to Trust managers - recorded more than 50 serious worries about patient care and the behaviour of staff and managers since the start of 2014.
There were also claims of low staffing levels, long working hours and wards with an aggressive atmosphere.
An inquiry in December found the trust had failed to investigate up to 1,259 ‘unexplained’ deaths over a four-year period because managers did not deem them serious enough.
The victims included 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in a bath in 2013 after suffering an epileptic seizure at a centre in Oxford.
Then an investigation in April by the Care Quality Commission warned that patients were still being put at risk because staff were failing to learn from their mistakes.
Katrina Percy, the £250,000-per-year head of the Trust resigned three weeks ago after initially stepping aside as Chief Executive but taking up a role as Strategic Adviser.
A Freedom of Information request has now disclosed a string of concerns being recorded under whistleblower guidelines where anxious staff can report worries without fear of being targeted.
Among the claims were a case of a staff member swearing at a patient and another where the employee was spending the patients’ cash.
There was also an allegation that bleep alerts in the trust were going unanswered.
In one case it was alleged that staff were being asked to work so many hours that it breached official regulations.
There was also an allegation about the way patients’ confidential records were kept secure as well as a complaint that the cleaning contractors were not up to scratch.
It is not known how many of the allegations made by whistleblowers were ever followed up by the Trust, and how many of them were confirmed to be true.
related stories
A spokesman for Southern Health said: “We are committed to creating an open and responsive culture where our staff feel they can raise concerns, are confident they will be listened to and action will be taken.
“We have appointed a Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, who will work in an independent capacity and support staff to raise concerns.”