THE Care Quality Commission has revealed that 121 unsafe incidents were flagged up at Great Western Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department in the first four months of this year, writes BARRIE HUDSON.

There were delays in patients’ conditions being assessed and reviewed, staff not being able to take adequate rest periods and feeling unable to cope, and instances of patients’ essential needs not being met.

Risks to patients’ safety were not always addressed quickly enough and records were not always kept up to date.

If you happen to be a member of the front line A&E staff, or the front line staff anywhere else in the hospital for that matter, I daresay your morale isn’t exactly in the stratosphere at the moment.

I daresay some of you are worried that stories like this, along with coverage of issues such as ‘never events’ happening with disturbing frequency, mean the rest of us have a low opinion of you.

Perhaps it’s even been suggested by certain people in authority that the media is some sort of malicious instigator of negative feeling.

If you have such worries, please put them out of your minds immediately. You see, the rest of us have eyes to see and ears to hear, and for the most part we’re not daft.

We know what you can do and what you can’t do. We know why you can’t do what you can’t do and we can have a damned good guess as to how much effort you put into doing what you can do.

We know what you’re responsible for and we know what you’re not responsible for.

We know, for example, that if we ever find ourselves involved in a calamity which sees us wheeled into hospital on a trolley, it is you who will greet us. It is you who will do your best to save us and to alleviate our pain. It is you who will console our terrified loved ones and our terrified selves.

It is you who will realign any limbs which are not pointing in their accustomed direction. It is you who will grasp any squidgy, pulsating bits of us – the sort of bits most people can’t even think about without coming over a bit faint - which happen to have escaped our torsos and restore them to their proper places.

It is you who will ensure that no bits are left over afterwards unless the bits in question are so knackered that we’d be better off without them.

If the knackered bits left over are vital to our continued survival, comfort or both, it is you who will arrange for replacements to be installed, whether sourced from a donor or a factory.

If we are in hospital with a chronic condition, we know it is you who will do your utmost to alleviate any discomfort caused by that condition. If our trip to hospital turns out to be a one-way affair, we know it is you who will strive to make our final days painless and dignified.

We know all this because we are or were patients of yours, have known patients of yours or have the honour of calling you friends or loved ones.

We also know perfectly well what falls outside your capabilities and influence.

One is being in two or three or more places at once.

Another is doing the physical and mental work of more than one person for weeks or months or years on end without mistakes being made and holes appearing in the service you provide.

Still another is changing the entire healthcare climate to ensure that enough people work there. This could be done right now, just as it could have been done 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.

If the people really responsible for that last one don’t realise we’re on to them, then they’re even more arrogant than we already give them credit for.

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GREASE and Back to the Future are to be given outdoor screenings at Lydiard House this weekend.

Tickets are still available for what sounds like a thoroughly great pair of events, and can be obtained by visiting The Luna Cinema’s website – thelunacinema.com.

The idea is that you bring your own food and drink, pick a spot, sit back, chill out and enjoy the films.

Of course, some of us are more used to conventional cinema experiences, and might be a bit thrown by this alternative form of big screen entertainment.

Maybe The Luna Cinema should hire some people to creep up behind patrons, rustle sweet packets really loudly and suck up drinks through straws with a noise like somebody unclogging a drain.

And maybe have long conversations at full volume about who’s saying what to whom in the film and why.