Politics and patient care.

摘要

Some patients in hospitals run by the UK's National Health Service (NHS) do not receive adequate pain relief, are not helped to go to the toilet, and are not given enough to eat or drink. These were the stark headlines of a report published last week by the Patients Association, which presented first-hand accounts of the treatment of 16 mostly elderly patients in NHS hospitals. The report, sourced from stories phoned in to the Patients Association's helpline, provided no statistics for the overall quality of care available throughout the NHS, or for how often incidents such as those presented occur. But it adds to a body of reports about serious shortcomings in care in some NHS hospitals.