A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers
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This is part 2 of item 9, (part 1 is here). It is about the proposed move of vascular services from Arrowe Park Hospital to Countess of Chester hospital at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from … Continue reading “Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Wirral Council) 10th September 2012 Item 9 Vascular Services move from Arrowe Park Hospital Part 2”
This is part 2 of item 9, (part 1 is here). It is about the proposed move of vascular services from Arrowe Park Hospital to Countess of Chester hospital at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
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This is part 1 of item 9, part 2 is here. It starts with Martin McEwan of NHS Wirral talking about the proposed move of vascular services from Arrowe Park Hospital to Countess of Chester hospital at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
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Declarations of interest: This is a guest post written by Leonora Brace but edited by John Brace. Leonora and John Brace are married to each other.
I have now been married to John, for four years, but John’s mother, also his brother, don’t want us to be together. I have gone out of my way to be there for him, but his mother said I should not stand by him if he wants to help the people with their problems. I should tell him to say “No!” Why, when he loves helping them?
Also, he loves writing, for his paper on the laptop. She said no, no, but he loves to write the truth. Also she does not want him to be happy as he is with me. She likes to treat him like a small child, but he is a grown man in his thirties.
Also, because I am not English born, she does not like me. Also, as she hit me in my face on the 27th December 2011 and made me have a black eye. Then a few days later, when I was at home having a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), and I dialled 999 for help. The ambulance came, but also the police came first and they demanded to take John away, because as I still had a blackened eye, which his mother had given me, they took John away.
I did not go with the ambulance to the hospital, but stayed behind. I waited an hour to make sure I could drive and went to the Custody Suite after ringing up. His mother had phoned the Custody Suite and did not contradict that he gave me the black eye when it was her who gave it to me. After I got there, one and half hours passed before he was allowed to come away with me.
We decided to have nothing to do with his mother or any member of that branch of the family. On the 10th May this year 2012, John and I had gone to bed. We have a cat called Stranger, a black cat, whom he loves very much.
During the night, or early morning, Stranger started to cry. He got out of the bed to see what the matter was, but unfortunately fell down the stairs. He banged his head and broke his arm.
Once again I informed the ambulance and we went off to the hospital. They couldn’t see to his arm there and then, but on the 12th May we were called back in again where they operated and plastered him up. Late afternoon they allowed him to go home.
A few days later, he was having a bit of a problem with the pain in his arm, and I was not feeling very well, so I dialled 999 to call an ambulance for myself. Once again the police came and they had been informed that I had pushed him down the stairs, but I had not pushed him down the stairs.
Going by what she had said to the police previously, even though I was having a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) they put me into handcuffs and dragged me away to the Custody Suite, for six and a half hours. They did not allow John to travel to the hospital with me. They dragged me down and up the steps causing injury. When John got to the Custody Suite, after having first gone to the hospital and missing me by five minutes, she stated to the officers not to let me out. Eventually they let me out after six and a half hours with no charge.
She is now stating that I don’t look after her son. She has informed Social Services of this fact, she desperately wants to break us up and for John to move away, so that she can keep him like a little boy for eternity.
© John Brace and Leonora Brace 2012
Sadly due to an accident at home involving broken bones in my arm and a head injury after a fall down the stairs on the morning of Thursday 10th May I was taken to hospital (Arrowe Park) by ambulance.
At Arrowe Park Hospital I was taken to Accident & Emergency where I was seen to, sent to X-ray, sent back, got twelve stitches on my head and a plaster cast, then admitted to ward 11 for an operation.
Sadly an operation couldn’t be arranged for Thursday, due to various reasons one of which being other patients with a higher clinical priority (and issues to do with the strike of hospital staff on the Thursday).
I was given a provisional date of 12th May 2012 (Saturday), however this:-
a) could be changed and
b) was provisional on the hospital having a spare bed on Saturday
So, I discharged myself on Thursday morning and returned by arrangement as a day case on Saturday morning. After three other people had had their operation in the morning, I was operated on under general anaesthetic, then taken back to ward 11 about 1.30 pm.
After the required time and tests I was then discharged early evening. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the doctors, nurses especially the ever patient nurse Julie on Ward 11 and medical students from the University of Liverpool involved with my care. I thought I recognised at least one of the 5th year medical students from my time at UoL.
I’d also like to thank my wife too for her care, as I realise it’s a lot of upheaval for her and being a former NHS employee she had a few differences of opinion with the staff at the hospital.
She did get asked to leave by the staff on a number of occasions, but I wanted her there, and to be honest, on each time this happened (except once) they weren’t justified in asking her to leave and the problems were caused by factors outside our control, such as the strike on Thursday causing the staff to be stressed, poor communication between some of those involved in my care (and with her) and the fact that I didn’t repeat to her everything told to me by the staff when she was only a few feet away and other things. Certainly some staff aren’t fully aware of current hospital policies and internal communication within the hospital (between staff) could be improved, which would lead to increased efficiencies and shorter patient stays (and less cost to the taxpayer).
Sadly the day I had my accident many hospital staff were on strike. The main service affected during my stay on Thursday was the hospital porters. This job was done by managers, who weren’t as familiar with the role (or layout of the hospital) as the porters are. Things ran more smoothly on the Saturday when they were not on strike.
During my stay on Thursday and Saturday there were some minor errors made by staff, most of which were sorted out, but considering the disruption and stress caused due to the strike some of this was understandable on the Thursday. The hospital ran much more smoothly when the staff weren’t on strike.
However I cannot type or write effectively with my right arm in plaster and it’ll be a while before I’m back to 100%.
Casework brought to my attention during the election will take longer and I will be doing the election expenses return later than planned and relying on my agent to do most of it.
If you do email me it may take me longer to reply than normal and updates to this blog will be less frequent until I am fully recovered.
Unusually about forty people were in the audience of last night’s meeting, so many that Committee Room 2 had to be opened up so everybody had somewhere to sit.
The proceedings were interrupted several times, with the Chair calling for calm. The committee heard from one of the consultants at Arrowe Park Hospital Mr R Chandrasekar. It also heard from:-
Kathy Doran, Chief Executive of NHS Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral (West Cheshire)
Gary Doherty, Acting Chief Executive Wirral University Teaching Hospital (the NHS Trust that covers Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge hospitals) NHS Foundation Trust
Peter Herring, Chief Executive Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust
The Labour Chair read out the long history of the matter, stating that more people would be inconvenienced by longer journeys to the Countess of Chester, that Wirral had higher rates of vascular disease, that Arrowe Park Hospital was a renal centre and that it met the four criteria.
She then proposed a motion. Her motion called for the matter to be referred to Wirral Council’s Cabinet, however a Conservative amendment (accepted by Labour as friendly) agreed that vascular services shouldn’t be moved from Arrowe Park Hospital to Chester but called for a report to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee after the 12 week public consultation on the change (which will run from December to February of next year).
The amended motion was accepted and agreed unanimously by all councillors.