NHS Cover Ups

National Health Service, the world’s largest health care service is an organization run on public funds and general taxation. It is also the third largest employer and provides medical services such as primary care, long-term healthcare, in-patient care, dentistry and ophthalmology to citizens throughout England and Wales. Although it has some credibility, the NHS has been under a lot of scrutiny and criticism, as the majority of its hospitals fail to meet the minimum standards of an average medical centre.

The most alarming of the NHS mistakes committed are those concerning NHS cover-ups made by the officials or doctors over severe incidents mostly concerning casualties. Many surveys and reports confirm that most of these errors go unreported and more alarming is that the hospital staff members also cite these NHS mistakes as “common”. Several high profile scandals have occurred within the hospitals and have caused major outrage among the public, but the fact remains that such incidents seem to go away after a while and NHS cover ups simply continue. Some familiar scandals are the Alder Hey organs scandal, Harold Shipman and the Bristol heart scandal.

More recently, Julie Hatfield, a brave woman sought help from the local NHS trust for the treatment of her husband who suffered from respiratory illness. It only resulted in improper clinical care for him. Julie has reports that confirm he was administered insufficient oxygen leading to dementia and Alzheimer's disease, one of the more severe NHS mistakes. His condition only worsened and led to his premature death. But the most shocking part of the incident was the hospital’s many cover-ups reasoning his death and their allegations blaming Julie for abuse of her late husband. Sadly Julie died fighting for the exposure of the scandal.

Many find taking the legal route to fight such NHS cover-ups and scandals only a disappointment as they achieve absolutely nothing to censure the hospital staff or the management. It can only be hoped that those responsible for such cover-ups be identified and suitably punished in the future.