Thank goodness it’s Friday I thought as I left an HCSA council meeting last week preparing for the 4.25pm flight from Leeds to Southampton.
The flight actually left at 9 o’clock that evening and arrived at 10.15 pm. Flybe (or as I now call it Flymaybe) claimed that the delay was due to a “technical failure” which cut no ice with my fellow passengers, many of whom said that this was a frequent occurrence - particularly when insufficient passengers had bought tickets to make the scheduled flight economic.
I thought about this when I received an email this week from a consultant asking my views on who should tell a patient that his/her operation had been postponed. Should it be the doctor, manager, ward clerk, nurse or patient liaison officer? So far as Flybe was concerned the answer is simple; no-one has that responsibility. All the information you need to know is on the departure board which unhelpfully read “waiting” or some similar unhelpful advice.
And the NHS? Communications are important. Of course the patient must be told why the operation had to be postponed; ideally the patient should be warned that this could happen and be reassured as to future treatment and care. Communications are vital in the NHS, not just the doctor/patient relationship but in the wider context of its management.
And then I read in the Health Services Journal about how foundation trusts are facing real difficulties in this recession: The chief executive of one NHS trust with a large PFI scheme told HSJ there was “absolutely no way” the trust could take forward its plans for a new hospital and still achieve foundation status.
The chief executive asked not to be named as the trust does not want to anger Monitor in advance of its application for foundation status, but said: “What they have effectively done is cancel the rest of the PFI pipeline. I’m not even sure the Department of Health knows what’s going on here.”
Well I doubt that Flmaybe can learn from the Department of Health - but like the anonymous chief executive I do wonder what is going on now we have left the era of boom and entering one of bust. Perhaps we will be told!
Tags: Communication, PFI
