Is Kettering General Hospital all that bad?

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Kettering General Hospital (KGH) gets a ridiculously bad reputation from a large proportion of the residents of this town - but is it really as bad as some make it out to be?

Perhaps a couple of years ago, yes. But yesterday I saw a young girl spurting her very angry feelings about the staff at KGH on Facebook. A little bit more respect for those in charge of looking after our family members when they get rushed into hospital is needed.

KGH was singled out as one of the worst five hospitals in England last year by independent health watchdog Monitor.

Phillip Hollobone MP for Kettering made it clear that KGH was one of the worst performing acute hospitals in England, admitting only 74% of it's patients with-in the 4 hour A&E target time. 

How things change in just a years time.

Perhaps the radical improvement could be down to the Ambulatory Care Unit (ACU). Their implementation coincided with the dismal 74% of patients being dealt with with-in the 4 hour A&E target time, and a year later we see KGH report a 99% success rate. That 25% increase saw KGH named as one of the best performing A&E unit's of its type in England. Bare in mind the national target is only 95%.

Jane Ellison, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health praised KGH for it's brilliant turnaround. She said: "It is really, really impressive."

Forget the horror story surrounding the unfortunate death of Victoria Harrison in 2012; her death during routine appendix surgery does not mean you should fear going to your local hospital. 

Despite the fact that nurses and doctors are very skilled professionals and actively take responsibility for our lives when we become ill, does not mean they don't make errors. They. are. still. human. Mistakes happen. We've all lost a loved one at KGH, please show some more respect to those under-paid, over-worked heroes. 

A survey carried out by 'Nursing Times' found that eight out of ten nurses felt they did not have enough time to give patients adequate care, with a quarter believing they had put a patient's life at risk due to them being busy or over-worked. 86% of nurses felt they were underpaid. 

No matter how badly we thought/think of KGH we should be grateful for the hard-work that everyone involved at the hospital puts in to saving lives. 

By Joe Shine

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