What we learnt from the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal

The shocking details of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal were already known, of course. But in forming our view on what needs to change to support patients, we were keen the explore the reaction to yesterday's release of the public inquiry, known as the Francis Report.

More than anything, we believe that the culture of the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was the core problem, driven by failed leadership to embed patient care and safety as the overarching priority. When a healthcare culture becomes driven by a blur of financial performance and spreadsheets, human compassion becomes an inevitable casualty. No doubt overworked staff were stretched beyond their limit. But whistleblowers still raised the alarm and were ignored, across years of willful blindness. It remains to be seen whether an exhaustive list of 290 recommendations will actually change the culture itself, or simply condition the Trust into box-ticking compliance.

Instead, as we have seen work successfully in other industries, we believe a patient-centric culture of care needs to be intuitive, as well as prescriptive. To achieve this requires the resetting of how patients (and loved ones) are cared for as people, rather than occupants of a ward.

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In considering our reaction to this controversial topic, we have used the web-clipping service, Storify, for the first time. The link below will take you to our Storify article which shows 'our workings' and in doing so, is a new and very transparent approach for us. We hope it will both stimulate debate and informed opinion. Feedback is of course welcomed.

Read our Storify article: http://storify.com/cust_faithful/reaction-to-the-francis-report

Photo credit: The Daily Telegraph