By stewartb

In an ideal world, actions could be taken which would lead to the elimination of all medical errors in hospital settings. This would of course deprive Mr Sarwar of one of his favoured political ploys  viz. the use of the ‘salient exemplar’.

Unionist politicians commenting on Scotland favour a tactic that seeks to exploit the built-in tendency of the human brain to conflate the aberrant with the norm. Mr Sarwar – aided and abetted by a supportive mainstream media that favours the avoidance of context, perspective and positivity when reporting Scotland – is well practised at this. 

From Psychology Today ( February 27, 2017 ) – see  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-in-the-intersection/201702/if-you-ve-seen-one-you-ve-seen-them-all 

‘Single influential experiences are what linguist George Lakoff has called “salient exemplars.” Salient exemplars come to mind immediately. What applies to one seems to apply to all. Politicians use salient exemplars.’ However, in a Scotland context, responses that seek to raise public awareness of circumstances associated with other groups and/or other places are dismissed as ‘whataboutery’.

Returning to the matter in hand – the hospital incident referred to by Mr Sarwar – regrettably such incidents do occur within health systems elsewhere, even in one ‘overseen’ by a British Labour Party government. From May 21, 2019, Wales Online had this headline: ‘Hospital blunders sees sick children given 10 times too much medication – A senior doctors says human errors were to blame for the incidents’.

‘… six hospitals in Wales reported a total of 25 cases of “tenfold or greater medication errors” between 2017 and 2018.’

‘David Tuthill, consultant paediatrician at the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales and author of the report, said several “human errors” were to blame. These included calculation mistakes, decimal places not being clear on prescriptions and confusion between mg and mg/kg.’ What about the Labour government?

“There were over 80,000 admission of children that year, so while this is very infrequent and involves a small number of patients, we are trying to get it down to zero,” he said.’

‘Dr Tuthill added that most of those affected were children under the age of four who were more likely to be given liquid forms of medication – a more difficult form of drug in which to provide an accurate dosage.

‘He added that many of the errors were likely to have occurred in high-pressure situations in acute or neonatal intensive care when medication needed to be given quickly.  “You cannot be an expert in all dosages,” Dr Tuthill added.’

Based on this Wales Online article, no Welsh Labour government politician was troubled for a comment on the above at the time.

On June 26, 2019 Wales Online had this headline: ‘The huge numbers of patients dying or being harmed due to mistakes made by the Welsh NHS – Thousands of others have suffered some form of harm as a result of the errors’

‘New Welsh Government figures show 77 patients died due to an “unintended or unexpected” safety incident between June 2018 and May 2019.’

‘Over the same period, 372 patients suffered “severe” harm while a further 8,463 experienced “moderate” harm.’

I have little doubt that the vast majority of professionals in NHS Wales and British Labour Party politicians and officials in the Welsh government then and now are striving for a better, safer NHS.

My impression based on mainstream media coverage of NHS Wales and its responsible Labour government in Cardiff, is that Wales lacks the equivalents of Tory Gulhane and Labour’s Sarwar/Baillie amongst the opposition parties. I wonder why the tactics – or is it the motivation or the ethics – in the political opposition to Labour and in the mainstream media in Wales are so different from the opposition to the present Scottish Government?