What should we expect?

The debate about our local hospitals has returned centre stage again with the recall visit of a large team of CQC (Care Quality Council - kind of the NHS's Ofsted) inspection team to East Lancashire.

It is in no-ones interests for our hospitals & their staff to be anything other than the very best that they can.

By this I mean the clinical service provided but I also mean in the reception & non clinical treatment we get. How people are treated is based on how they're perceived.

We should deserve, demand & experience being treated with dignity, being an equal respected partner in a process which a) we pay for & b) is very personally about us or our loved ones. We want communicating with in a mature manner in ways we can understand.

There has been doubts raised about the perception of our reputation of our hospitals.

Hospitals are people to people organisations. By & large we as the citizen-patient only engage with our hospitals when we or someone we love is in pain, frightened, on medication, outside of our normal comfort zone.

The standing of our hospitals is not helped by the front page, staged managed anguish images of things when they appear to have gone wrong. Often these folk run to the Press before even engaging with the hospital's procedures.

Is there a glimmer of litigational, ambulance chasing "compo" here?

Does our NHS see any criticism or complaint as something to rebuff, deny, resist? Shouldn't it be an opportunity for a "learning" organisation to engage with its customers, review it's procedures, learn lessons to make improvements?

Most of us, into the top 90s%? have a great experience when attending our hospitals, the overwhelming preponderance of the hard pressed staff are vocationally committed to serving us.

The hospital on the hill does seem removed from its community, too many of the top folk are not engaged in our community, our community wants the best it can get.

The hospital needs to learn quick lessons, be open, engaging, treat us with respect, open mature dialogues. The signs in Latin derived words, the procedures of waiting etc unexplained, stress already stressed people, both patients & staff, taking time to explain stuff in simple language is time well spent. Is the place understaffed, are some wards? We can't we have things explained?

There needs to be fresh engaging effective dialogue. Condescending, top down, we know best, we're the professionals needs to be binned. This us OUR NHS.