Rayner backs group over deaths
Broadcaster and agony aunt Claire Rayner has backed calls for a public inquiry into Stafford Hospital.
The 78-year-old health guru, a former A&E nurse, visited Cure The NHS founder Julie Bailey yesterday at her café in Newport Road, Stafford.
On a wall of the café she saw for herself the photographs of many of those patients who have died in the hospital in Weston Road and whose relatives are now members of the group.
Ms Rayner, president of the Patients' Association, said she was "horrified" by the revelations of lack of care and said there should be an inquiry, so more scrutiny can be made of the management.
"It's horrific it is happening here," she said.
"This very brave group of families have been fighting for 14 months and have not been getting anywhere with the Government, the Strategic Health Authority or the primary care trust. It's appalling. There must be a public inquiry even if it is going to cost a fortune.
"That whole place needs the windows opened wide and a strong breath of investigative air allowed in. You only have to look at this wall."
She blamed the hospital management for the situation and said she would like the association to hold a conference entitled Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?, or Who Watches the Watchers. It would look into the issue of how hospitals are managed and how the bosses can be made accountable for their decisions.
Ms Rayner added: "It is down to the management, but they are caught between two millstones. The one coming up is the Department of Health and the one coming down is patient and medical pressure.
"No country can provide everything, but they can provide the basics: decent care, clean surroundings and nurses who will talk to you."ympathised
One of her concerns from looking at the wall in the Breaks Café was how many of the people were older. She feared that ageism, with preferential treatment being shown to younger people, was a growing issue in hospitals across the country.
"Of all the isms, this one is particularly cruel and we are dealing with a group of elderly people who, if ill, can't do much for themselves when they are in bad wards," Mr Rayner said.
She said she sympathised with A&E staff because as a former A&E nurse herself she knew the pressures.
"You have to feel sorry for the staff, their life is difficult. It is like the little Dutch boy with his thumb in the dyke, it is like trying to hold the water back from flooding the village. But I am furious.
"I was nursing for 12 years and I can't imagine patients ever being treated like that."
