Mistreatment of US wounded by own hospital

It has been reported in today's FT (2 March 2007) that the Head of the Walter Reed Military Hospital has been sacked following an expose by the Washington Post of the living conditions wounded soliders were expected to endure, including vermin infested wards and has been denying some soldiers disabled in Iraq and Afganistan, disability denefits.

The real scandal underlying this is the revellation that the Head of the Hospital was warned about the unacceptability of these conditions as far back as 2003 yet nothing was done and no follow up checks appear to have been carried out.

 

sounds just like selly oak

 

Think you will find sellyoak is quite good, mainly because the consultants are civvies mate. I do have first hand experience of said establishment and people like Prof P are second to none. As i pointed out to wardmaster the other day, i'm not too enamoured about naval surgeons, to which he took offence and spat his dummy out the pram.

NB

 

i have first hand also on medievac at selly oak, and yes i will say its not as bad, but it is FAR from good. i know i have experienced most of what was in the press. i.e remove you uniform as you might offend others in the hospital, well i would of had i had any clothes, forgive me for not having time to pack for my visit from iraq. watching others in the ward been spoken to like pieces of crap. not from the nurses, Dr or the welfare staff (they did a great job) but other inmates and the office workers in the military cell

 

Quite right AAC. The entire situation is a little bizarre and I am having difficulty getting my head round some of it.

They have just sacked Maj-Gen George Weightman. The Walter Reed Hospital was part of his command but he had only had responsibility for it since August 2006. What is strange is that he has been replaced by Lt-Gen Kevin Kiley who was in direct command of Walter Reed Hospital up until the end of 2004 and who [presumably] had a greater responsibility for the state of the wards than anyone else.

Kiley was on the US news rubbishing the Washington Post and anyone else who criticised the state of the hospital and was trying to claim that everything was AOK [move along folks - nothing to see here]. In the middle of it all a HAZMAT clean-up team walked past in the background, fully booted and spurred, breathing apparatus - the full nine yards.

Some white paint had been slapped around and I just saw a funny headline that said "Whitewash at Walter Reed Not Quite Dry Yet".

Regards

RM

 

Yes, I did take offence, on behalf of all the RN MOs I have known who have been among the finest of their profession and who I have been proud to serve with. And to whom the RN and RMs owe a great debt. Whoops! Spat the dummy again! :cry:

 

Junglie, i agree with you mate, my point was towards the good staff that operate out of sellyoak, not the way the wards are run etc., There was a recent incident where a patient on the ward abused a member of the armed forces. I feel therefore that it is a problem the MOD should deal with instead of using facilities that are already in place to save money.

NB

 

Any medical treatment I required during my 22 years was carried out extremely professionally especially my hernia operation which Hasler sorted at short notice during my terminal leave.
We did then though have our own service hospitals and were not under the constraints of civilians

 

Thanks slim, that was my point exactly

NB

 

It's just been announced that US Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey has tendered his resignation because of the growing Walter Reed scandal.

Good to see a politician fall on his sword for a change, but it makes me wonder what level of scandal a British politician would have to be mired in before he or she would even consider resignation.

RM

 

regicide?

 

I do remember seeing a movie (TV perhaps) starring Ray Liotta as a Doc in a US Veterans Hospital in the 70's, had the usual based on a true story blurb, but the conditions were bad and patients mostly Vietnam vets were dying or relapsing due to lack of equipment,funds and low staffing levels. I may be slightly confused as it was one of those home from the pub is there owt on telly things.

 

I think your point was that all Naval Surgeons were/are crap. As the surgeons in RN Hospitals were RN I'm not really sure that your argument has any logic. :???:

 

ever seen the movie "born on the 4th of July" and the conditions in the hospital scenes?

 

The plot thickens on this one and fingers are being pointed in the direction of Shrub and the White House. Turns out that there has been a big privatisation scheme going on at Walter Reed Hospital and that 80% of the highly-skilled and experienced medical staff have left and been replaced by employees of IAP Worldwide Services.

IAP received a $120 million no-bid contract and is headed up by a certain Mr. Al Neffgen. Mr. Neffgen is a senior ex-Haliburton official.

The real hands-on managers at Walter Reed have been warning of these problems for a long time and Maj-Gen Weightman was prohibited by the Pentagon from giving evidence; Congress yesterday issued a subpoena in order to question Weightman.

RM

 

Not sure if this is for this thread but when I was a young baby tiff at Sultan I broke both my wrists playing football, I was sent to Hasler where they wouldn't x-ray me as I was given the wrong chit. I wouldn't mind so much, clerical errors happen all the time, but while I was getting boloked for having the wrong paperwork civvie patients were getting treatment without any questions. I only got sorted cos my DO was married to a doctor who checked me out as a favour. 12 years later and my wrists are still fcuked. There is nothing a naval doctor can do or say that will make up for treating a 17 year old kid in tremendous amounts of pain like a second class citizen. I now only go to a civvie doctor.

 

My experiences of dental and medical in the mob was well below standard.
The MA's weren't too bad, but the MO's (in my experience) were useless.
I had years of back pain in the mob that was made worse when running, the MO's pearl of wisdom? You guessed it "don't run"! What a ******.
Saw more than one over the years and not one would give me a decent examination, not until I came over here and saw a Thai doc who put me in for an MRI and realised I had a prolapsed disc for all that time, I now manage it quite well through exercise. When I think about the years of pain I went through because of those incompetent fools I become enraged.

Sent home from a collingwood dental appointment after a botched route canal, they left a nerve exposed, Pain? Yeah, just a bit, nearly got trooped as well for insubordination the next morning when I told him what a cock he was.

Don't get me started on the gulf war vaccination records being tampered with in my docs and many others, I have loads of proof, caught them in the act.

I am not saying the RN dosen't have any good MO's, I just met very few.

 

Lingyai, you obviously had a raw deal from the RN Medical Service and I have great sympathy for you. It was, of course, easier for us in the Medical Branch to choose the MO best suited to our problems. There were those MOs who we would never have allowed to shine a torch on us, let alone do anything important. I can promise you though that were those who we would have trusted with our lives.

A great RN MO, who retired as a Surgeon Rear Admiral, told me a story about his PMO in RNB Portsmouth in the late 50's.
Young Stoker goes to see PMO.
PMO says, "What's your problem"?
Young Stoker says, "I want a circumcision Sir".
"Why?", says PMO. "
'Cos it bleeds when I f*ck Sir", says the Stoker.
"Are you married?", says the PMO.
"No Sir", says the Stoker.
"Then don't f*ck, now f*ck off!, says the PMO.
Sadly a true story.

 

Having said that, a good friend of mine retd. a few years ago as a 2 and a half, and he was damn good. (not because he was a mate). Sadly in the mob you can't pick your doc.

 

On a Lighter note.

1976 on Ark Royal and I had to go to the sickbay with a sore throat. For some reason was seen by the PMO who's name escapes me but he was a guy with a superb sense of humour. Suggested I gargled with Asprin several times a day, and I was also not allowed to speak. Every morning I had to report to him personally and speak the words "Good Morning" to him. After three or four days my sore throat was cured and my voice back to normal. I reported to him as normal and said my piece. He then tols me to go to the sick bay door and shout at him as loud as I could the words "[email protected] Off" I said I can't do that , he said do as you are told. Well I walked to the door turned around and shouted said words. His reply "Don't tell me to [email protected] off in my sickbay, now F'ckoff yourself".