Hospitals
Mad
patients at Rampton interviewed jobseekers and
helped choose new staff for the top-security
hospital. Social workers were stunned when they
were told that as well as satisfying a selection
panel they had to be approved by a group of sick
detainees. The patients asked them about their
careers, opinions and backgrounds. Their
recommendations were then relayed to senior
officials. Staff at the hospital were staggered
by the move and branded it the “ultimate in
stupidity”. Patients include killers and
rapists — and about 75% of detainees have
committed “very serious crimes”. One
furious worker said, “Talk about the
lunatics running the asylum. When we heard that
applicants would have to be interviewed by the
patients we thought someone was joking —
then we realised it was true.”
Rampton, on a 190-acre landscaped site near
Retford, Notts, has already been criticised for
its cushy lifestyle. Patients have en-suite
rooms, a well-stocked library, a 25-metre
swimming pool, and a £50,000 gym. The 400 male
and female patients can mix at discos on Saturday
and Sunday evenings. They don’t have to
work, they have access to radios, TVs, newspapers
and magazines. They even get a weekly allowance
of around £13 to spend in the hospital shop. The
food is said to be superb. Each inmate costs
taxpayers £180,000 a year.
The hospital costs £52million-a-year to run,
with each patient’s care running at about
£2,000 a week. Some of Britain’s most
notorious prisoners are held in Rampton. Nurse
Beverly Allitt, 33 — dubbed the Angel of
Death — was sent there in 1993. She was
given 13 life sentences for murdering four
children and attempting to kill nine others.
While in Rampton she became engaged to another
detainee — “vampire” Mark Heggie,
35, who battered an old woman and drank her
blood. Other inmates include Richard Fielding,
23, who killed seven people in a firebomb attack
in Chingford, East London, in 1999. Soham
caretaker Ian Huntley, 28, accused of killing
schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, is
being held there on remand.
Rampton chiefs admitted that four patients and
two carers had made up the interview panel. A
senior official said, “We thought it was a
good idea.” A spokesman added, “The
patients interview the applicants and then
managers take into account the views of the
patients. It helps if patients know they have had
an input in the selection process.” But the
insider said, “The whole thing is absurd.
Rampton holds some of the most unstable and
violent people in the country. There has to be
some authority imposed by staff — but how
can you have authority if they have given you
your job?”
A
study in March 2003 revealed half of all drug
injections given intravenously in hospitals were
done wrongly, with a third of those being
potentially dangerous. British researchers
uncovered the disturbing level of errors when
they examined drugs given intravenously by nurses
in two hospitals in the UK. They believe the rate
of mistakes they found is likely to be
representative of practice across Europe and the
US.
Nick Barber and Katja Taxis, at the School of
Pharmacy, London, tracked the preparation and
administration of over 400 intravenous (IV) doses
given to patients on 10 different wards in the
hospitals. "We were surprised about how
commonly errors occurred," said Barber.
"But not all of these were serious."
However, the error rate they calculated from
their data predicted one serious error every day
in every hospital in the UK, which is a concern,
he said.
The most common mistakes were injecting doses of
concentrated drugs too rapidly and preparing
drugs incorrectly, by either using the wrong dose
or dissolving them in the wrong solution. All
could be fatal in certain circumstances. For some
drugs, the speed at which it enters the body is
crucial, Barber explained. If they are injected
too fast, they can induce anaphylaxis - a
life-threatening allergic reaction.
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