When are lessons ever learned when it comes to negligence in the NHS? - Yorkshire Post Letters

It seems like every other week the news media highlights unnecessary deaths at a NHS hospital and the usual response is that ‘lessons will be learned’. They never are.

I recently contacted the Leeds NHS Trust CEO after learning that I had been removed from a surgery waiting list for no good reason and without being informed. Invariably any complaints are passed down to the patient liaison section to deal with.

Initially I received a telephone call from a lady asking for more information and she told me she would forward my complaint to the relevant people to deal with.

When someone finally got back to me after several weeks, it turned out to be someone who could best be described as the office 'tea boy'.

He told me that I could not be on more than one waiting list for surgery. If that is the case, it follows that if I was on a waiting list for knee surgery, for example, I could not also be put on a surgery waiting list for the removal of a cancerous prostate.

Following his reasoning, I would most likely die from cancer spreading to other parts of my body long before I ever reached the operating table for my knee.