Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC Scotland today:
Scotland’s first ever Patient Safety Commissioner is set to be appointed. Experienced healthcare executive Karen Titchener will take up the role after two previous recruitment drives for the £93,094-a-year role failed. There has been a patient safety commissioner in England since 2022.
The BBC Scotland report misses something quite important that the above Scottish Health Secretary put in place – see below. Never mind the facts on the ground in hospitals these 18 years, what does it look like to the media?
You have to wonder just WTF England’s commissioner has been up to these last three years and what she will be able to do now that the UK Labour Government has just announced scrapping NHS England altogether, which had oversight of patient safety, and now making huge cuts to funding.
Reported in the Health Service Journal today, Senior midwife Donna Ockenden said: “The government has taken a wrecking ball to work being done across the country to make care safer.” https://www.hsj.co.uk/patient-safety/patient-safety-watch-swinging-a-wrecking-ball-through-safety-work/7039199.article
What has been happening, with no commissioner, in Scotland, since 2007?
Leading European expert says Scotland is ‘at the very top pillar with regards to patient safety’ since 2007
From BBC Scotland, December 26th 2024, 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, they year England appointed its commissioner:
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: https://t.co/OWSCa7AXEn
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
” There has been a patient safety commissioner in England since 2022 “
Jimmy Saville died in 2011, Matt Hancock resigned in 2021, just sayin’….
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I don’t understand does Scotland now have a PSC, and if so who installed them (EngGov?) and who are they?
If England’s NHS is being sold off, Scotland’s will be under pressure to do the same. US Starmer trade deal…no mention of NHS apparently in announcement, well why would they let on about that, of course it will be a huge part of the UkEngUS trade deal.
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” MSPs will be asked to approve Mrs Titchener’s nomination to His Majesty the King on 15 May and she is expected to start the role in September ” gives a clue…
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The obvious candidate for this job is …Damn Jaikie Baillie . Over the years she has demonstrated that no one in Scotland is more concerned with patient safety than she , and quick to make political capital out of it .( Hence the well earned title ‘Damn Jaikie ‘)
Every day ( it seems like , anyway ) she is busy putting the boot into the Scottish NHS , highlighting the cases of carefully selected ‘patients’ , some of whom are not even Labour Party apparatchiks , BBC Scotland reporters or arse-licking GMB officials .
Damn Jaikie is the best candidate to push patient safety as she is by far responsible for the greatest amount of fear mongering in Scotland’s Health Service today .
If she takes the job it will be the first time she has contributed positively to Public Life after spending every year since 1999 as moaner-in-chief at Holyrood .
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Will the Patient Safety Commissioner address the issue of poor quality indoor air in hospitals which aids the spread of airborne pathogens such as Sars-Cov2, influenza virus etc.? Improved ventilation and HEPA filters throughout hospitals and Medical Practices for example.
Will she push for masking for staff and patients alike? Not the blue baggies but FFP2 and above.
In not then her title is a misnomer. Patients are going into hospital whether as an out-patient or in-patient and whatever ails them they can catch Covid etc when they go for diagnosis or treatment.
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I don’t know how many have seen this worth a look,he is the son of Margaret Curran of the Lords and also have a look at Wikipedia on him.
https://x.com/DaveDooganSNP/status/1920509005430206886
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What a walloper…
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Yep this is yet another subservient Labour MP to Labour HQ , one Chris Murray, took Tommy Sheppard’s seat in Edinburgh East in the 2024 GE.
He is my MP , well he was elected by others , but he neither speaks for me nor represents me as an MP.
However he does speak for Labour HQ and he does represents them. Labour HQ, in Scotland.
He is also on the Advisory Council of ‘These Islands’ , of course he is.
(I am sure he also , like Ian Murray, attends the ‘Scotland in Union’ Burns supper, as both they and he tries to burn all of Scotland’s chances in being economically successful as a nation within their UK ).
In May 2024 he tweeted
“Sewage overflow is pumped into Scottish waters and it isn’t even monitored. There is eight times more sewage debris on our beaches than England’s (which are in a state too!). This is a scandal. The Scottish Government should act – our beaches deserve better”
He was called out for false reports that he 9instinctively) made about Portobello beach in Edinburgh as in July 2024, Portobello beach, in Murray’s constituency , was closed for a short period after high levels of bacteria were present in the water. Murray falsely attributed this to sewage, but it was later confirmed by SEPA not to be a pollution related incident.
As to Labour and English waters and sewage pollution well the now famous environmentalist and clean water campaigner (and once the former Undertones singer) Feargal Sharkey has said that Labour “has no real plan to tackle the sewage crisis damaging England’s rivers (which the ‘I’ newspaper reported that he said was “damaging Britain’s rivers”).
Vote SNP in 2026 via a majority, as we do need to show solidarity against those Labour MP’s that some elected in 2024 under the false apprehension that they, as Labour MP’s, would indeed offer us a “change” but have now proven that they are actually a “Change” for the worse.
Scotland does not vote Tory by a majority yet that trend was well and truly ‘bucked’ when they voted for 37 Labour MP’s in 2024, forgetting the memo that states ‘Never trust a Tory’ (of any colour , be it red , blue or even Lib Dem colour Ha Ha)
Liz S
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O/T
Paul Hutcheon and the Daily Record
“EXC: Sir Alex Ferguson backs Labour candidate Davy Russell in crunch Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election: “He’s a man of integrity, determination and deep commitment to his community”
That’s nice , but then he, Sir Alex Ferguson neither lives in that constituency nor indeed does he live in Scotland either.
So why should we, and also those constituents in Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse, listen to the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, as it will not be him nor will it be his family who will need to suffer with another Labour MSP working on behalf of Labour HQ more than they work on Scotland’s behalf.
Did Paul and the Daily Record not find any other ‘celebrity’ of Scottish origin who was backing the SNP candidate in this by- election, as in one who stated in their opinion that the SNP candidate was also a person of “integrity, determination and deep commitment to the community” or did Paul and the Daily Record only seek the opinion of a ‘celebrity’ who supported the Labour candidate.
Hardly politically impartial and non partisan but extremely apt for both Paul Hutcheon and the Daily Record as part of the (un)official client media for the Labour party in Scotland (though the DR is owned by company who are not based in Scotland which then explains their , the DR support , as a newspaper, for a pro UK British Nationalist political party like Labour).
BTW Sir Alex Ferguson currently lives in Goostrey, Cheshire as in not in Scotland.
He purchased a £1.2 million house there in 2023.
Good for him but perhaps he, as a resident in an English area, should be more concerned with who both his own local council are and also the MP for his area too, as in where he lives and not interfere in our politics in Scotland. Especially as whoever is elected in this Scottish by election as an MSP will not directly impact him, his family or indeed his life (style).
He was another say NO to independence ‘celebrity’ in 2014 who then, after the Independence Referendum, had nowt more to say when Scotland had to suffer under a succession of various terrible Tory governments and Tory PM’s, including the current one. However I guess with his money he need not worry how cruel the current Tory government is as it will not negatively impact him, will it.
What say Sir Alex on Labour’s Grangemouth Refinery betrayal, would that also be nowt or does he think that their lack of action and their awful decision on Grangemouth was one of “integrity, determination and deep commitment to the Grangemouth community” including the workers at the Refinery.
Jog on Sir Alex (and PH and the DR too).
Liz S
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