Healthy Skepticism Library item: 819
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Carvel J.
Lack of information worries NHS patients
The Guardian 2005 Feb 21
Full text:
Millions of NHS patients think doctors do not give them enough information to make sensible choices about how they want to be treated, the health inspectorate for England warned today.
The Healthcare Commission’s annual survey of patients found 30% did not feel fully involved in decisions about their medical care. The survey of 140,000 patients also confirmed anxiety about lack of cleanliness in hospitals.
On the positive side, people are noticing that waiting times are getting shorter.
The findings are likely to influence the political debate about giving NHS patients more choice which is set to be a key theme at the general election.
The commission did not ask patients’ views on whether they wanted choice about where they were treated. But it discovered many wanted more of a say about how they were treated once in hospital.
Only three-quarters of outpatients thought the doctor fully explained the treatment being proposed and 69% got answers they could understand when they asked questions. Nearly a quarter were not told how they would find out test results; 39% said they were not given information about possible side effects of medications; and 37% were not told about danger signals to watch out for regarding their illness. In A&E departments, 36% said they were not fully involved in decisions about their treatment and 44% of those in pain thought staff did not do everything possible to control it.
Nearly half said doctors and nurses did not address their anxieties as fully as they would have wished. And 49% received no information about the side effects of medication.
The survey – based on questionnaires completed by 850 patients at each hospital between last June and August – found that 17% described A&E toilets as “not at all clean” or “not very clean”, compared to 15% in 2003. This rose to 30% or more in 14 NHS trusts.
The trust with the worst rating was Newham University hospital in east London where 45% of patients said the A&E toilets were unclean.
Kathy Watkins, the trust’s chief executive, said it always passed cleanliness checks by outside inspectors. “My view is that the figures are not very accurate, but if it’s what patients think, then it matters,” she said.
The commission said it was difficult to tell whether hospitals were becoming less clean or patients more alert to the problem after recent publicity about MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections.
Anna Walker, the trust’s chief executive said: “There is much to celebrate but patients still – and rightly so – expect further improvement in their health service.” The survey found 77% of patients reported being treated within four hours of arriving in A&E, compared with 69% in 2003.
This differed from the most recent government figures showing 95.8% of patients were treated or admitted to hospital within four hours.
The Department of Health said the survey did not mean its data on waiting times was wrong, because the statistics were not comparable. Since the survey was conducted, the NHS had begun a major initiative to improve cleanliness and reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public service union Unison, said A&E departments were not going to get “very clean” status until more cleaners were employed.
