1) In your Assessment and Treatment Unit, don’t assess or treat. If a patient is a fun person, you can forget about their patient status. Don’t support their routines – remember, you are here to promote their flexibility, independence and choices. Unless it’s their choice to leave, in which case remember to keep the doors locked and don’t let on to anyone outside the Unit what the patient’s preference is. They can’t choose just anything – they must learn to pick from the choices they are offered. But do remember to do helpfully disorienting things like repainting the rooms of patients for whom order and familiarity is a vital support. Heap their belongings randomly onto cupboards. Shrink-wash their clothes and don’t trouble yourself to make sure that the ones they get back from the laundry are the same ones they sent in. That way they will feel the same as the other patients; it will help them fit right in.
2) Because you are, you know, professionals and therefore omniscient (or as near as makes no difference), don’t bother to take a proper history from the patient’s previous carers. They’re only family. Exclude them as far as possible and if by some mischance you are obliged to grant them access, make them jump through arbitrary hoops to get it. Quoting the patient’s right of self-determination and manipulating the patient’s exercise of said right can provide hours of harmless fun. If, having gained access to the patient, the family carers subsequently try to raise any concerns with you, downgrade and dismiss them. You know so much better than they do. Remember, family carers are likely to be over-involved and unable to see the patient’s best interest clearly. It is your duty to treat them as the main obstacles to the patient’s progress. It makes it so much easier to dump blame where it ought to belong if anything goes wrong. Co-morbidities are not your problem. They are not what you are there to Assess and Treat.
3) Assume that nothing will go wrong. Risk-assessment is a tedious process and can distract you from vital paperwork. Don’t worry about checking that safety and resuscitation equipment is operational. As long as it’s ticked off on the check-sheet, the actual state, or even presence of the – what was it you called it again? Oh yes, the defibrillator battery! – is an irrelevance. When you get a nasty surprise like a patient drowning in one of your bathtubs, make sure to document that resuscitation was provided in line with policy and procedures. If you can ship the patient out of the unit on life-support, then the death will not have occurred on your watch and it will not, nohow, in any way, be your fault.
4) When the patient’s death is certified – elsewhere, well done! – nip in quick and loudly proclaim that this death by drowning was due to ‘natural causes’. It is natural to be unable to breathe when a person has been submerged for up to 15 minutes. Water is a natural substance. Therefore the death is natural. QED. If an independent review finds that actually the death was avoidable, try to keep the report private. Instead, you could send out a letter telling the (dead) person how you are going to manage their information. If that doesn’t work, make the report’s release as late as possible. After 6pm should do nicely. By the next day, all sensible people (and news outlets) will have ‘moved on’ in line with your recommendations.
5) If the report fails to sink without a trace, turn your attention to your deceased patient’s family and friends. A graduated approach is recommended here. Start with patronising them. Referring to patients’ parents as ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ is a good start. Tell them that you understand what they’re going through (see point 2, omniscience, above). Suggest that they move on. If that doesn’t work, try harassment. Pester them for meetings. A face-to-face meeting should let you annihilate the threat with your superior knowledge. If that fails, try innuendo and smearing. It’s maybe not a good idea to suggest directly that they are linked to (unsubstantiated) harassment of staff, but putting them in the same sentence as a non-sequitur mentioning the alleged harassment should do the trick. Put on a sad face and talk about how disappointed fellow-inmates, sorry, patients, were to be excluded from the funeral. Ignore the fact that the patients were welcome, but that your organisation did not make the arrangements that would have allowed patients to attend without the (understandably) unwelcome Unit staff. Say that you were willing to kiss and make up, and parade your hurt at being rebuffed. If you’re still not coming out on top, escalate to level ‘bullying’. Don’t take no for an answer. Even if your Chairman tells you to stop, don’t give up.
6) If that still doesn’t get rid of the awkward, ungrateful buggers, don’t give them another opportunity. Stock up on cartridges of black ink so that you can redact entire pages and documents to a uniform ‘starless midnight’ hue. Don’t forget to give the heads-up to other organisations that you circulated those documents to, so that they toe your freedom-of-information restrictions line. What’s that? You didn’t, so they didn’t? Oops. You may have to resort to the nuclear option – barefaced lying. Oh dear. You already did, and the unredacted documents have shown you up? Hmmn. Double oops with brass (neck) knobs on. May be time to go quiet. Stay under the radar. Naturally, you will keep on surveilling any public-domain information about them, while stoutly denying you are doing any such thing. Why would the fair use provisions of the Data Protection Act apply to you?
7) If you find yourself in a situation – such as, ooh, lemmesee, a coroner’s court – where you can’t keep schtum, get lawyered up. Seriously lawyered up. There can be no such thing as too many lawyers for you. You won’t have to fork out for it – the taxpayer, bless them, will cover it for you. You know it makes sense – those insects facing you are not entitled to any legal support, which is like, totally fair. After all, they are taxpayers themselves, so why would they want to go against the legal representation to which they are already contributing? Then try some of your tactics above on the coroner. It doesn’t matter if you contradict yourself in court. Remember, the important thing is to conceal that you don’t have a leg to stand on. Tell the coroner what he should think and how to go about his business. He will surely appreciate having the benefit of your omniscience and won’t dare to back his professional judgment and tell you to sling your hook. Of course he won’t.
How’s that working out for you?
Who By Fire 
Oh this is fantastically well written…bravo. Everything I have ever had to deal with regarding Southern Health over the last 13 years…this is it summed up perfectly.
Thank you – as I really though it was me all along…but then that’s what these bastards want – you to doubt yourself, so they can sleep at night.
This is the side of Southern Health that I know, and the one that they try to keep hidden.
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Spot on.
They can, and do argue black is white. 2 +2 can really make 5.
I noticed that with my daughter on several occasions ie on her escape from her enforced highly abusive NAS home, ONLY by her own refusal to go back.
We could not have got her out, as they would have got a care order/ emergency child protection. She had to do it herself, and then make it impossible for them, to physically get her back. Boy did they try, as we were forced to do, otherwise we would be deemed the dreaded uncooperative.
She was worth at least 177.000 per annum to them for life now with independent living. What a cash cow.
They spend weeks camped out in vans with every possible incentive but she poor thing resisted their lures.
And then when they gave up they sent the heavies in ie the CAMHS team at 9 AM, ever hopeful, as she had a pooh impaction and PTSD, she would make a good impression, covered in pooh, refusing to get dressed, preferably naked.
But no, she foiled them, with her sixth sense.
For the first time ever, on my saying the social workers are coming, she jumped out of bed, bathed, washed hair, and when they were sitting in their cycled chairs in the kitchen, walked in looking perfect, and sat down next to them. It was beyond belief and wonderful.
Meanwhile, I noticed, our social worker whispering in the CAMHS psychaitrist’s ear, what must have been that Issy was hearing voices, and kept repeating what they said, and needed anti-psychotics, as on coming back into the room, you can;t leave them alone for a second, I heard the psychaitrist say ‘Oh we don’t like to give them that unless they are psychotic. Obviously respiridone as this is the only result of a Camhs assessment centre, where they where here to take her to, so they could claim their 70,000, and cosh her for life.
The phrases Issy repeated in her anquished PTSD episodes, sometimes for hours, were things like ‘ You f….In idiot you can’t live with your family’ You have got no f…in friends’. Stop asking your f….in questions’ all in thick yorkshire accents- And all her 48 bruises occuring on a day she had been restrained were self- harm
Such is cover up.
Will come back to this, as not yet got to point about comments, rel to your post, and Issy in a bad mood must go.. .
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Ow-ow-ouch, Finola, hope Issy was OK on Friday and remains so now.
In so many of the stories – and I was thinking of LB’s in particular, but it applies equally to far too many others’ – the bottom line is all about power and control. It’s about who has the power of control, how far those who have it are prepared to go in order to hold on to it, and what they are prepare to do to resist scrutiny of their use of it. LB’s story, both before and after his death, epitomises how abominably power can be misused by those who are supposed to be serving the public.
According to the Beeb, the NHS is apparently the world’s fifth-biggest employer: the only larger organisations are two international corporations (Maccy D’s and Walmart) and the defence departments of China (people’s Liberation Army) and the US. Two multinationals, the army of the most populous country on Earth and the Defense Department of the richest nation in the world, compared with an organisation that is confined to a single country, which isn’t even in the top 20 most populous.
The concentration within the NHS of day-to-day power over UK residents’ lives is enormous, and the opportunities to misuse that power correspondingly high. It’s not just patients. I’ve recently been hearing a very unpleasant story of how a health worker has been hounded for – inadvertently – exposing the incompetence of, and mismanagement by, people further up the pecking order. That pecking order has closed ranks to try to crush both the worker and the family of the patient in the case.
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Thanks just spotted this.
Worse still add NHS to LA and there is no hope.
This is what the new ECH statements have done for all special needs children, unless you are allowed to pay ie go private.
About to put last blg post on what happened so won’t spoil it for you, but the allegation was worse than I realised ie that she had been punched in the stomach……
They all have a standard modus operandi, and everyone now is frightened, fear rules thats why we have only terrorism, and sexual offences and whatever future control they want to ensure ie mental health, on the news.
This is not about incompetence, that is what they will blame, when they are found out.
This is about clever, orchastrated. from the top, via government policies made vague law, with now no possible law enforceable by the individual or defence,to control the population, and use them for profit.
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Hi Finola I’ve just read The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Kootz It’s an analytical account of how the Fascist regime conditioned the German population to accept their ideology and the extermination of the Jews and others. You might want to have a look.
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Thanks will have a look on Amazon.
Illuminati by Makow and corporatism by grupp, are particularly good about what is going on.
Its over from USA they hot house us for pharma, autism, even domestic violence, NHS, adoption.
The scientists etc from Nazi death camps went over to work in USA and the Tavistock centre London Uni, is connected to CAFASS NSPCC ETC and brainwashing..
Common purpose etc came from new labour and stitch up the LA and brainwash and rule by fear..
It is clear, that a totalitarian state in the UK has been planned since Blairs/ mendelson’s third way.
But what can we do about it ??? Except try to show how the poor public are being oppressed and abused.
The Us rule and the Them are frightened and all their power removed as law cannot now be enforced, as a lot of the them want to and think they can be part of the us…
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I’ve often thought that Blair & Mandelson must have learnt their lesson & techniques from totalitarian leaders & thinkers. Talk about malign!
Still, we have to live our lives in the times we’re given and try to stay cheerful, even while fighting monsters!
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