The Mid Staffs scandal

On 6 February the Francis report was published. It was the outcome of a public inquiry—lasting more than two years—into one of the NHS’s biggest scandals.

The stories of patient mistreatment at Stafford Hospital have become notorious. Patients and their families reported dirty wards, a lack of nursing care, and long waits for medical attention. Patients were left lying in their soiled bed sheets because they had not been taken to the toilet, and receptionists dealt with triage in the emergency department.1

The inquiry was set up in November 2010 to examine the failure of regulators to spot poor standards of care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. As well as patient reports of appalling conditions in the hospital, it also had 500 more deaths than would have been expected between 2005-6 and 2007-8.

Examples of neglect of patients include the story of Joan Morris, 83, who was treated at Stafford Hospital in 2006. Her family said that food and water were left out of reach and that Morris did not have a bath or shower in the month she was in hospital.2 The daughter of Ellen Linstead, 67, said that her mother contracted Clostridium difficile and meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at Stafford Hospital and that she often had to wash faeces off her mother’s hands.

In March 2009 a report from the Healthcare Commission found the standard of care at Mid Staffordshire was “appalling.” An independent inquiry, chaired by Robert Francis, reported in February 2010 that failures in patient safety and care were caused by inadequate training of staff, staff cutbacks, and overemphasis on government targets. In November 2010 the public inquiry began, again chaired by Francis, with …