55

I'm referring to this article, where a four year old with suspected pneumonia was, due to overcrowding after the NHS cuts, forced to sleep on the floor of the hospital.

Numerous Twitter accounts, all of which claim to have a sister there, claim this didn't happen and was staged.

Who is right here? Was a four year old with pneumonia forced to sleep on the floor?

chicks
  • 219
  • 1
  • 2
  • 10
Comic Sans Strikephim
  • 1,855
  • 2
  • 17
  • 22
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/102243/discussion-on-question-by-studoku-was-a-four-year-old-forced-to-sleep-on-the-flo). – Jamiec Dec 16 '19 at 08:45

1 Answers1

103

The hospital says it happened:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-50713236

The hospital apologised and said it had had its busiest week since 2016.

Dr Yvette Oade, chief medical officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "Our hospitals are extremely busy at the moment and we are very sorry that Jack's family had a long wait in our Emergency Department."

She added: "We are extremely sorry that there were only chairs available in the treatment room, and no bed. This falls below our usual high standards, and for this we would like to sincerely apologise to Jack and his family."

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/lgi-bosses-apologise-after-four-17385357 gives more detail on that quote:

"Our Chief Executive Julian Hartley has spoken to Jack’s mum and offered a personal apology.

...

"Unfortunately, the unit was also experiencing exceptionally high levels of demand which meant that Jack was required to wait in the clinical treatment room in the Paediatric Emergency Department until a bed became available.

As you've noted, there have been a large number of Twitter accounts claiming it's untrue. Since many of these are clearly copy-and-paste jobs, and political bots are a well-known feature of Twitter, this doesn't carry much weight.

edit: per gnasher729 and TJ Crowder:

A blog alleges that the apparent origin of the counterclaim being pushed by Twitter bots is somebody with family ties to the Conservative Health Secretary.

Guardian and Daily Mail report that she claims her account was hacked and denies the truth of some of the material posted by her account.

Community
  • 1
GB supports the mod strike
  • 1,214
  • 1
  • 9
  • 11
  • 2
    @Chronocidal "the busiest week since 2016" by definition does not constitute an *exceptionally* high level of demand – Will Dec 12 '19 at 09:35
  • 14
    @Will As per the quote included in the answer, the Chief Medical Officer at the hospital said *"the unit was also experiencing exceptionally high levels of demand"* - their words, not mine. (And you would also need to examine how *much* busier the week was in comparison to "normal" operations to determine whether or not it qualified as an Exception, not just that there was another exception 3 years ago...) – Chronocidal Dec 12 '19 at 09:41
  • 2
    @Chronocidal granted you *can* define "exceptional" in relation to multiples of normal demand, which makes it convenient language for the hospital to use, but in the context of *running out* of beds the more relevant norm (because it is normal for demand to fluctuate) is how often the demand exceeds a certain level. The level of demand in "normal" circumstances isn't especially relevant because so long as it's anywhere between 0% and 99% of capacity the number of patients having to wait for a bed remains zero. – Will Dec 12 '19 at 10:48
  • @Chronocidal Levels might "exceptionally" exceed capacity on a monthly or an annual basis, but I'd submit that a Prime Minister *wouldn't* attract politically threatening criticism for funding a capacity that makes incidents like this merely rarer than "twice in 3 years" levels of exceptionalism – Will Dec 12 '19 at 10:51
  • 1
    @Will That depends partly on why the patients are waiting for beds: if they are waiting for beds because there are not enough doctors & nurses to deal with the backlog in a timely manner, then your proposal is that instead of paying a small one-off amount for oft-unused beds to take up floor space (quite reasonable), you are paying large amounts for people to twiddle their thumbs (significantly less reasonable). This is why most hospitals run close to staff capacity, and have regional pools of additional staff they can call upon - problems come when *all* the hospitals make that call at once – Chronocidal Dec 12 '19 at 11:03
  • The owner of the first account tweeting this message has since stated clearly that a) she doesn’t know any nurse at that hospital and b) while the message may have come from her account, she didn’t tweet it. – gnasher729 Dec 12 '19 at 11:41
  • @Chronocidal when demand for emergency treatment is lower than a hospital's (or a regional network's) maximum capacity, the resources being deployed to keep that capacity achievable are not "twiddling their thumbs". Of course it is true that whatever peak capacity one equips for, as much as one may try to put the necessary resources to efficient use the rest of the time they will appear underutilised to some extent. The cost of maintaining the capacity is a tradeoff against the cost of outcomes when capacity is exceeded. – Will Dec 12 '19 at 11:49
  • @Chronocidal in this case the real negative outcome in focus is an emergency patient having to wait for treatment for hours with nowhere to lie down, which is certainly something that could be addressed with physical capacity without affecting medical staffing. Of course the lack of equipment for this purpose may reflect an intent to maintain medical staffing capacity to avoid waits of this length at this emergency level, and it would be far from a visibly reckless spending choice if they chose to reduce these incidents by increasing emergency staffing capacity instead. – Will Dec 12 '19 at 11:55
  • 4
    I'd suggest that discussion about best ways to manage a hospital might be better taken to chat, excepting where it's relevant to the truth of the original claim or the content of this answer. – GB supports the mod strike Dec 12 '19 at 12:00
  • @gnasher729 if you have a link for that, I'll happily edit it in. – GB supports the mod strike Dec 12 '19 at 12:01
  • 3
    @GeoffreyBrent - [Here](https://skwawkbox.org/2019/12/10/seeming-origin-of-tory-fake-news-against-child-on-hospital-floor-story-has-family-link-with-tory-health-sec/), [here](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/10/woman-says-account-hacked-to-post-fake-story-about-hospital-boy), and [here](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7777055/Woman-post-sparked-Little-Jack-staged-photo-claims-insists-hacked.html). But allegations of connections to Matt Hancock in that first link are interesting -- but unsubstantiated as far as I know. (It'd be his style, but that doesn't make it true.) – T.J. Crowder Dec 12 '19 at 12:18
  • 1
    If the Hospital admits it happened, it seems they are working to hide the truth. Who owns the 'political bots' that are posting the posting the untruths? – James Jenkins Dec 12 '19 at 18:35