EU: Healthcare

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I basically support many of the aims of the working time directive. None of us wants to see junior doctors exploited or working until they are so tired that they are a danger to the patients for whom they care.

The two judgments in SiMAP and Jaeger were most unfortunate and in fact skewed the working time directive in a very bad way. The result has perhaps been damaging to one very large group of patients—frail older people, who form a quarter of the patients in our hospitals. As we know, some tasks previously carried out by doctors were understandably handed over to nursing staff. This can be a good thing, but in many cases what was previously carried out by nurses has been handed on to healthcare assistants. Healthcare assistants are largely untrained, are not regulated and do not always have the competences that are needed. We know, sadly, that much basic care, such as help with feeding, adequate nutrition and hydration, and even basic toileting, has not been carried out well and has had dreadful consequences, which unfortunately we read about in the press all the time.

These very frail patients—a quarter of the patients whom we treat—often suffer from some form of cognitive loss or dementia. They need to be cared for by people whom they understand and feel they can trust, and language is very important in this. We must be certain that these patients feel safe with the people who are caring for them. Therefore, we need language testing by regulators to make sure that the standard of care that our frail patients receive respects their dignity and human rights, and we must work towards that.