The good, the bad and the ugly: The many faces of our health system

I don’t hate the NHS. If it wasn’t for the NHS, my identical twin brother John would almost certainly be dead and I would be in a graveyard on our birthday laying flowers instead of down the pub with him sinking a pint.

John was cared for in the Wansbeck Hospital in Ashington, Northumberland, for six long and troubled weeks.

He had septicaemia caused by salmonella which he blames on a dodgy kebab in York, the staple diet of students out on the lash since records began. This led to a bone infection in his spine called osteomyelitis which caused several of his vertebrae to fuse.

My family watched him waste away day after day at the age of 21 while doctors pumped him full of antibiotics until they finally found one that seemed to work.

He was in such terrible pain he could scarcely move out of bed and was high as a kite on the opioid pethidine most of the time. His studies for his English degree at the University of York, for which he later earned a first class honours, were cut short and so, we feared, would his life.

A doctor in York had failed to diagnose the problem, blaming his symptoms on heavy drinking which was probably not much worse than that of any other young man in northern England in the prime of his life.

While in hospital his body was racked by rigors – an uncontrollable, convulsive shaking brought on by high fever – and he was very frightened. In fact, that’s what I remember most – the fear.

Fear has a way of soaking into everyone and everything like the stench of a smouldering cigarette.

My sister turned up at the hospital from her home near Hawick in the Scottish borders.

When she left the ward, she didn’t know whether she’d see him alive again.

But John, who is now 32, pulled through and when they let him out he was little more than skin and bone. His flesh was grey, his face was gaunt and his eyes were sunk deep in his sockets.

He looked like he had wandered, bewildered, out of a concentration camp. But he was alive.

My family owe a huge debt of gratitude to the NHS – from the doctors and the nurses who never gave up on him to the GP who called an ambulance when my anxious mum first brought him to the surgery in Alnwick.

You won’t find anyone with a bad word to say about Nye Bevan or the NHS in my house and there must be many other people who have similar, inspirational stories.

This is what makes last month’s report by the Care Quality Commission into one of our local hospitals, the Alexandra Hospital (wards five and 11) in Redditch, so shocking. When the NHS works it’s a beautiful thing – but when it doesn’t, things can get really ugly.

Faith in the NHS was already badly shaken by damning reports into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which suggested there could have been between 400 and 1,200 needless patient deaths between 2005 and 2008.

NHS chiefs across Worcestershire said they would listen and learn from the mistakes at Stafford Hospital.

So how on earth did it get to the stage where patients in the Alex had to be prescribed water? Where they had to eat with their hands like animals? Where they could not even reach their meals at all and their plates of cold food were taken away untouched?

It’s heartbreaking enough to read the report but when you hear the hurt in the voices of patients and their families, see it etched in their faces, it really hits home.

I can only guess at the pain of 71- year-old widow Patricia Hodges in Evesham, looking at the wedding photo of herself with late husband Laurence, who was admitted to the Alex in January after he suffered a stroke. He died a fortnight later.

She gave him water soaked in a cotton wool swab because she said the nurses hadn’t bothered.

She is still haunted by the memory of him crying out for water. It was the last thing he said to her. I think she will hear him calling to her until the end of her days.

Don’t forget 39-year-old Mark Smith, a disabled man left bedridden by a pressure sore he developed at the Alex.

He couldn’t even get out in his wheelchair to watch the cricket at New Road. He told me with chilling clarity how he left the hospital in a worse state than he came in.

I had many phone calls from people who had similar experiences. Harry Turner, the chairman of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, immediately said sorry. That took guts. An apology is perhaps the best possible foundation on which to build a better future.

But the trust has to save £60 million over the next five years and frontline job cuts have yet to be ruled out. We also have an ageing population, particularly in Worcestershire. Can staff shoulder this burden at a time when service and job cuts are a real possibility?

How much of the appalling care at the Alex was down to the poor attitude of staff and how much to the colossal pressure they are under?

I don’t know. But the CQC report shows why the trust should have abandoned disciplinary action against men such as Brendan Young, one of its shadow governors, who revealed plans to close 16 acute stroke beds at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.

Mr Young has since resigned from the council of governors, but would have been pushed had he not fallen on his sword.

When will those in the boardroom forget about their own bruised egos and realise that men like Mr Young are a blessing, not a curse?

They shed light on pitfalls in healthcare before patients plunge into them and are never seen or heard from again. Men like Brendan Young prevent irreversible mistakes from being made. If there are enough people like Brendan Young and they are vociferous enough and brave enough, they can prevent a potential catastrophe.