Rachel Hext

#LongCovid October 2020, NHS whistleblower , Zero Lessons Learned, Disabled NHS Staff. Co- Founder Keyworker Petition UK, Long Covid Advocate, I’m on Blue Sky

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

3 years ago today, I tested positive for an infection that has changed my life. I’m 36 and have been disabled for 3 years. I will have to take medication for the rest of my life. I have had pain every day for 3 years. I have learnt to parent with deafness, blurred vision, 1/3

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

A massive rise in sickness in the #NHS since the pandemic is of course people swinging the lead and nothing to do with repeated #Covid infections ruining their immune systems. Get clean air and real PPE!! Sickness will go down!
#LongCovid

@NHS @NHSuk

https://t.co/7g8AkX17a5

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@educationgovuk @bphillipsonMP I can’t believe after the first release you actually went ahead with this. You are an international embarrassment!

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

Why @wesstreeting shouldn’t be Prime Minister in one tweet…. ⬇️

[Wes Streeting @wesstreeting]

When the GC met BP 🔥

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

What the hell is this?! As if the non consultation wasn’t bad enough, we now have reality tv people taking the actual piss out of our pathetic education system?
@bphillipsonMP should resign for this alone!! @BBCNews @JeremyVineOn5 @itvnews

[Department for Education @educationgovuk]

Gemma Collins is in the building and she's got questions.

Coming soon📷

@bphillipsonMP

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

Enjoying the birthday programme for a real natural world legend. Sat watching with my 6 and 8 year old sons. I hope they never lose the wonder they are watching with right now, I know I haven’t! Sir David opened a world to us that we could only ever dream of! #DavidAttenborough

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

SHE FILMED DYING PATIENTS BEING NEGLECTED

Margaret Haywood had been a nurse for over 20 years when she decided she had seen enough.

Elderly patients at the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton were being left to die alone. Others waited hours to use the toilet. Complaints had already been made.

So in 2004, she agreed to go undercover for a @BBCPanorama investigation. She wore a hidden camera for 28 shifts on an acute medical ward.

The programme aired in July 2005. The nation watched. People were horrified.
Then the Nursing and Midwifery Council (@nmcnews) stepped in.

Not to investigate the hospital. To investigate Margaret.

In April 2009, she was struck off the nursing register. The charge: breaching patient confidentiality.

The patients she filmed had all given consent after the fact. The hospital had a zero-star rating and an £8 million deficit before she ever set foot there with a camera. None of that mattered.

The public response was instant and furious. Over 43,000 people signed a Royal College of Nursing petition in her support.

An MP tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons. She was sacked from her job as a nurse training manager because of the NMC ruling before she even had a chance to appeal.

Three days before her High Court appeal was due to be heard, the NMC quietly backed down.

The striking-off order was replaced with a one-year caution. She got her registration back.

Her barrister pointed out the problem nobody wanted to say: because the NMC settled before the case was argued in court, the fundamental conflict between patient confidentiality and patient safety was never actually resolved.

The question of what a nurse is supposed to do when the system fails them was left deliberately unanswered.

The hospital carried on. The regulator carried on.

Margaret Haywood nearly lost her career for doing the job the hospital refused to do.

That is not an accident. That is how the system protects itself.

Sources:
@BBCPanorama
@guardian
@thetimes
@NursingTimes
@RCNnews

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

NHS DOCTOR INJECTED HIMSELF WITH DRUGS ON DUTY

Dr Patricia Mills worked at West Suffolk Hospital @WestSuffolkNHS between 2019 and 2021. She did what any responsible doctor should do. She reported a colleague who was injecting himself with drugs while on duty, with patients' lives on the line.

The hospital's response?

Launch a disciplinary investigation against her.
Not against the drug-taking doctor. Against the whistleblower.

An independent NHS review later described that investigation as verging on "victimisation."

In December 2021, Dr Mills was fully exonerated. The review was highly critical of how she was ignored and targeted. @guardian and @BBC both covered it.

This is the @NHS whistleblowing system in action. You see something dangerous, you report it, you get hunted. The charity Protect describes the system as fundamentally broken.

The law, PIDA, was supposed to protect people like Dr Mills from day one of employment. In practice, West Suffolk Hospital spent that time building a case against her instead.

Nobody has been held to account. Nobody ever is.

The NHS has over 900 Freedom to Speak Up Guardians. Dr Mills got a disciplinary hearing. You do the maths.

Source: The Lowdown NHS / lowdownnhs_info |

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

The NHS is a dirty cesspit. Employees are just statistics not people. I should know.

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

SHE REPORTED NHS FRAUD. THEY GAVE HER CANCER AND A P45

Sharmila Chowdhury @sharmilaxx spent 30 years working in the @NHS without a single disciplinary mark. Then she caught two consultant radiologists at Ealing Hospital NHS Trust billing the NHS for sessions they were spending at a private hospital down the road. Double-dipping on public money.

Straightforward fraud.

She reported it. To her line manager. To the Medical Director. To the HR Director. To Counter Fraud. To the Chief Executive. To Number 10. To the Treasury. She had a paper trail so solid that ITV later sent undercover cameras to the hospital and caught the same consultants still at it years later, taking cash from patients for private ultrasounds inside an NHS building.

The Trust's response? They sacked her. On fabricated counter-allegations.

The man who raised those allegations later sent an email signed off "0800-F***-YOU-B****." He received a 'Top Mentor' award from the Trust that same year.

Sharmila won at tribunal.
She won her appeal. The judge asked the Trust to reinstate her. The Trust said no. She was blacklisted across the NHS.

One job offer was withdrawn the moment they found out who she was. Her legal costs hit £130,000. She developed breast and lung cancer, which her doctors believe is linked to the years of sustained stress.

The consultants kept their jobs.

George Osborne couldn't get involved. Andrew Lansley couldn't get involved. David Cameron couldn't get involved. Because everyone decided it was an "employment matter."

A proven fraud case, covered by ITV, the Guardian, Daily Mail and Channel 4, and the official position of Her Majesty's Government was: not our problem.

This is what the UK does to people who try to protect public money. It destroys them and promotes the people they were trying to stop.

Read Sharmila's full case: sharmilachowdhury_com

Sources: Health Select Committee written evidence | @DailyMail | @Independent | @BBCNews | @Channel4 | @guardian | @thetimes | @DailyMirror | @Channel4News |

[M.C @melanie_morby]

I used to be a Nurse, disabled & dismissed for catching Covid at work. Let down by NMC; RCN & especially the NHS. I’ve lost everything my career, my marriage, my home, my health,family, friends & colleagues. Most of all me 😷#LongCovid

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

Patients harmed as Covid pandemic brought NHS close to collapse, inquiry finds.

In 2016 Exercise Cygnus concluded that the NHS cannot cope with a hypothetical H2N2 influenza pandemic. Tory govt did nothing.

232,000 died from Covid. NHS yet to recover.
https://t.co/kfHhAAM1i6

[Key Workers Petition UK @KeyWorkerPetUK]

The Covid Inquiry’s Module 3 report shows the NHS was pushed to the brink — but key workers with Long Covid are still left without answers.
We need accountability. We need action.
#LongCovid #KeyworkersDeserveBetter #CovidInquiry

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @BBCHughPym

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff My inquiry recommendations-
1. The decision makers to publicly apologise for getting it wrong & appropriate accountability for this
2. Compensation scheme set up & awarded
3. Long Covid clinics and research financed
4. Make Long Covid an occupational disease, not an injury

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff Many feeling like this @1goodtern,
I remember clearly, standing in front of the Head of Infection control in my trust, asking if viruses don’t go around corners, pointing at the massive gaps in my FRSM. This highly educated individual told me I would be ok if I washed my hands…

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff It’s a pretty hideous picture. We were clapped, disabled, then sacked. Now they want us forgotten as it’s an inconvenient reminder of the incompetence from the very top down. The decision makers have blood on their hands and whilst the inquiry reveals this, it doesn’t act on it.

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff My requests were ignored. A few weeks later my colleague contracted it from a patient again and is also massively disabled by long covid. Ill health retired and pretty much housebound. Neither of us have ever have an apology or anything resembling care from our NHS employers

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff Once I contracted covid, I was so ill I thought I was going to die. I made my will, made arrangements for the guardianship of my two young children and from my sick bed contacted my trust CEO and union reps begging them to support my ward with PPE so they didn’t end up like me

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff Long covid clinics are closing down, research packages are ending, people are struggling to get support or to be awarded financial help or retirement. What a way to repay the service and sacrifice of those who were in harms way and risking themselves and their loved ones.

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff I have personally spoken to hundreds of healthcare professionals who have lost their careers and health to Covid. European countries have compensation schemes for their disabled frontline workers in the pandemic, but we don’t. Our once clapped heroes now have empty bank accounts

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff And the support from the NHS and the trade unions has been very poor. We are now an inconvenience that they want to forget. Staff have been thrown on the scrap heap and the pandemic is now ‘over’ according to them. WHO was the IPC cell accountable to? They ignored the evidence

[Rachel Hext @HextRachel]

@1goodtern @OT_Skiff Another nurse lost to the NHS, we were just cannon fodder in an invisible war. Totally disposable. The trade unions let us down badly, they should have fought harder for PPE and ventilation for us. There’s been winter flu planning for decades, they all knew PPE was needed