An Edinburgh psychiatric hospital has upheld hundreds of complaints from concerned family members, MPs and MSPs over the last five years a freedom of information request has revealed.
The Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Morningside received thousands of complaints about the staff over the last five years but the NHS were unable to provide further information on the outcomes from the upheld complaints due to data privacy rules.
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While most complaints came from worried family including 353 from mothers and 233 from daughters, a further 57 were made by MPs and ten by MSPs.
Over 1000 of the complaints were made up solely by family members who have had concerns regarding the staff caring for their loved ones.
The hospital staff received a total of 3,524 complaints against them over the last five years with a concerning 1170 being upheld and a further 927 being partly upheld between 01/07/17 and 01/07/22.
This comes just weeks after a nurse at the Royal Edinburgh was taken to the Nurses and Midwifery Council (NMC) and found to have caused mental distress to a schizophrenic patient by tapping his door and running away.
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We spoke to a concerned family member of the vulnerable patient who claim the incidents had been going on for years and that her brother is still scarred from the time he spent at the hospital.
She also explained that it was allegedly an extremely difficult process to raise the complaints and get it brought to the NMC and even then the staff member wasn’t struck off but just given a caution order for two years.
Now out of the hospital her brother still has nightmares about the treatment he received.
Edinburgh Live found that of the 1170 complaints upheld there had only been 15 cases investigated by the NMC over the same time period.
Alison Macdonald, Nurse Director, NHS Lothian, told Edinburgh Live: “In NHS Lothian, our hard-working teams are dedicated to providing safe, effective and high quality care to hundreds of thousands of our patients every year.
"Lothian covers a core population of 826,000 people and is responsible for the treatment and care of 350,000 inpatients, as well as outpatient activity. Last year alone, our acute teams treated and cared for over one million cases."
Adding: “We regularly urge patients to give us their feedback, good or bad, to help us to take action to shape and improve our services.”
If you or a family member has been affected by the issues raised in this article please get in touch at iona.young@reachplc.com
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