“It was a kind of bullying”

Monday 21 January 2019

An islander with severe pain issues, who described the way she was treated by Health officials as “a kind of bullying”, has hit out at the lack of consequences for those who mistreated her.

Mrs X* contacted the States Complaints Board over the way her complaint against the doctor who had referred her to the UK for severe pain was handled by the Health Department in 2017.

Last week, she learned that her complaint had been upheld by the Board, who slammed the department in a damning report suggesting that the behaviour of officials had been “cruel and potentially negligent”, involving discourteous email exchanges.

Pictured: The complaint revolved around a dispute over the Health Department's Travel Policy.

At the centre of the complaint was a two-year dispute over the Health Department's Travel Policy. Mrs X had been due to attend a four-week pain management course in the UK, but expressed concern that this would mean spending five weeks away from her children.

Due to her stay totalling 27 days rather than 28, Mrs X wasn’t entitled to funding for return flights at the weekend - despite the fact she would have been on her own with no television or internet at weekend, as all other patients would have gone home.

The Complaints Board, chaired by Geoffrey Crill, noted that Mrs X made it clear to the Department “myriad times” that her financial situation prevented her from paying any expenses upfront. Yet, the Board said the Department “either wilfully ignored” what Mrs X told them or that its record-keeping was so poor that the information was not recorded and retained. 

Pictured: Staff from the Health Department were "inappropriate" in their language, style and tone.

Worse, they added that employees failed to deal with Mrs X in a “flexible or empathetic way.”

The Board said an independent investigator described email staff’s language, style and tone as inappropriate in their email exchanges with Mrs X. "The level of professionalism that should be expected from staff with a duty of care for vulnerable patients’ was not met. This is not the attitude that should be expected from staff working for the principal care provider in the island," they said.

The Board said the Health Department “continuously left her down” and that its behaviour had been “at best extremely discourteous, and at worst cruel and potentially negligent."

“The Board hopes that the Department will put measures in place to ensure that no other patient is ever ignored in this way again,” the report read.

Pictured: Mrs X was continuously let down by the Health Department, the Complaints Board said.

They recommended a review of third party providers to whom islanders may be referred as well as an update of the Travel Policy to assist patients like Mrs X who can't pay for expenses upfront. They also recommended that staff should be reminded of “the importance of responding to patients in a timely and professional way, and of providing accurate information to them", as well as “accurate record-keeping” so that patients don’t have to continually provide the same information. 

Speaking to Express after the report's publication, Mrs X said she felt vindicated and expressed her relief that someone “finally believed" her. “I was mentally exhausted. I know I am not the same person I was four years ago," she said.

"Reading the report made me realise that it was a kind of bullying,” she continued. “We always talk about physical abuse but staff can also be abusive in the way they talk to people. One of them was, and I hate to use the word, downright obnoxious. They told me to just borrow money and even put the phone down on me.”

 Pictured: Mrs X says she was left "mentally exhausted" by her dealings with the Health Department.

Despite the Board making recommendations to the Department, Mrs X said she has little hope the department will actually implement them.

“The [Health] Minister has another two months to respond…They never hit a deadline before. What could he possibly come back with?" she questioned.

Mrs X described herself as being disillusioned with the department, and if it's possible to hold other States services to account, which she said is evidenced by the fact nothing was done after her initial complaint.

Pictured: Mrs X says her experience has left her disillusioned with the States as a whole.

“There is no accountability like you are in school or at work. The department breached its policies, but what are the consequences?... How much has the Department spent in management hours dealing with my complaint for the sake of a couple of flights? Who else have they done this too? I know I’m not the only one.”

“We have to account for everything when asking the States for help,” Mrs X continued. “But some departments don’t work as efficiently as they should, and it has a knock-on effect on other departments. They spend more time correcting their errors than doing their job right.”

Since the Complaints Board hearing, Mrs X has received money from the Health Department to fund her own treatment and has been discharged from the Pain Clinic. She recently started seeing a UK consultant but says she is still far from the end of the tunnel.

Pictured: Mrs X has since been given some funding.

“I don’t know how far the money is going to go,” she explained.

“I am going to keep going until I can. I will never be pain-free but I am taking each step as it comes. I am still worried about what will happen if I, or my children, ever need the hospital here.”

*Name changed to protect anonymity.