Jessica's Letter

Jessica is a staff nurse and the conditions on her ward are horrendous. No this is not about me or my ward or even my hospital. Jessica is a real nurse I know with a name change.

Her ward is so short staffed and dangerous that she started writing letters. She wrote to the NMC and demanded action in the interest of patient safety. They told her to go to her line manager. For real.

Her line manager told her that he sympathised and couldn't do a thing. So she wrote to the director of nursing, risk management, and the chief executive of the trust. The chief executive ignored her and refused to meet with her. The other two expressed sympathy and told her to talk to her line manager. Her line manager told her to talk to the NMC and the chief nurse. She wrote to the unions. They responded and received a letter back from the trust promising to hire the next round of nursing graduates. They backed off and so did the trust with their promise to hire enough nurses. The matrons also said that they "sympathised" but were powerless.

Jess was pissed off. She wrote to her MP. He told her to go to the unions, the NMC and her line manager etc. He also "sympathised" but said he was powerless. She even wrote to Tony Blair when this first started and then Gordon Brown outlining the suffering on her ward. She received a stock letter back from the Prime Minister thanking her for her support and telling her to go to the PCT. The PCT responded to her letter by telling her that she needed to send her letter to the managers at the hospital instead.


And the public thinks that they get fucked over by the complaints procedures.


For how much longer are the managers and politicians going to stand around playing hot potato with people's lives?

And you can bet your ass that if anything happens to one of Jessica's patients and it goes to the NMC, she will get struck off.