By By Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC Scotland, this morning, after their ignorant and tasteless Christmas Eve attack, with the Scottish Cons and Labour’s Jackie Baillie, on the reputation of the staff at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, they’re back at it again today with more inaccurate reporting, this time on patient safety, with:
A recruitment drive for Scotland’s first ever Patient Safety Commissioner has failed for a second time. MSPs passed a law creating the new independent public advocate for NHS patients in September last year.
The first round of interviews for the £89,685-a-year role in April failed to produce a suitable candidate and then last month a second round of interviews saw the preferred person then turn the job down. Campaigners have described the latest delay as “incredibly frustrating”.
Dr Henrietta Hughes was appointed as England’s patient safety commissioner in 2022, external.
Looks bad doesn’t it? How long before an opposition MSP tweets to blame the SNP for this?
Far less time than it will take any of them to tell you this, about patient safety in NHS Scotland:
From the Westminster (UK Parliament) Health Committee, in January 2022:
The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP), introduced by the SNP Scottish Government in 2007, has been praised by a leading European expert on patient safety.
In Westminster’s Health Committee, Dr Pelle Gustafson, CMO at Swedish Patient Insurer, responded with “Scotland”, when he was asked which country he would hold at the very top pillar with regards to patient safety.Dr Gustfason said: “If you take all preventative work in regard to patient safety, I would say Scotland, I am personally very impressed with Scotland. I think in Scotland you have a long tradition of working, you have a development in the right direction and you also have a system which is fairly equal all over the place. You have improvement activities going on. So I am very impressed by Scotland”.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DrGregorSmith/status/1481211002301685760
How long has England not had a ‘top tier’ patient safety programme?
The 30 year-long neglect of patient safety in NHS England exposed as SNP Government records 17 years of its ‘at the very top pillar’ safety programme first launched by Nicola Sturgeon
In May 2024, the Health Editor at the Sunday Times reported:
Why don’t things get better on #patientsafety? One reason is that the NHS & government do sweet FA to act on inquiry recommendations. The @Thirlwall_Inq [led by a senior judge] has published a comprehensive assessment of the last 30 years of inquiries. It is not a good read:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I was reading an STV News website article about an amazing new integrated Health and Care Hub in Parkhead which is due to open in January 2025, which said it was one of the largest buildings of its kind in the UK. It does look impressive, but I wondered if it was only Scotland that has these new integrated Health and Care Hubs?
This is from 2017
https://www.hoskinsarchitects.com/en/projects/healthcare
“The Scotland-wide hub programme is based on a partnership between the public and private sectors to deliver new community facilities. Operating across five geographical areas, public sector bodies have formed a joint venture partner with a private sector developer partner to form a company, known as a hubCo.
Each of the hubCos takes a long-term planning approach to identify the buildings it needs to support the delivery of improved community services. Collectively, the hubCos are developing and delivering a diverse pipeline of best-value, award-winning community infrastructure, currently valued at more than £2.6bn which is anticipated to grow to over £3bn in the coming years.
This value of construction work is supporting many thousands of full-time jobs as well as creating many graduate and apprenticeship appointments and training positions.”
ps. There link to the £2.6bn hub pipeline document doesn’t work.
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BBC Scotland’s negative framers working overtime this Christmas?
A visit to the Wales ‘politics’ section of the BBC News website reveals that the most recent article is now four days old.
On BBC News’ Scotland equivalent, there have been two negatively framed articles in the last 1-2 days, both about the health service.
Today’s negative is about a Scottish Parliament recruitment process.
The Scottish Parliament is in recess. Its last news release is dated 13 December: there is no recent news release on the topic being covered by the BBC News article today entitled: ‘£90,000-a-year patient safety role remains unfilled.’
Why this, why today?
A negative a day keeps national self-esteem away?
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Aye, read the Andrew Picken piece https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kvez3516jo and immediately wondered which political mechanic managed to screw up the contract’s terms and conditions simply for it’s propaganda value ?
Strip aside the human interest angle, then consider how preposterous the implication is, that nothing has been happening due to this one person not being appointed – Would the entire BBC have ceased to function had James Cook not been appointed ? Or would the standards of BBC Scotland journalism simply have improved instead ?
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I despise BBC SCOTLAND.
To coin a quaint colloquialism.
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Wonderful ♥️
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