In the Westminster
Sir: I write on behalf of the Board of Governors of Westminster Hospital. On November 18, 1972, you published an article by Jennifer Hawley relating her experiences in a hospital. Your footnote identified this particular hospital and gave the dates when she was a patient. Her allegations fall under four headings.
1. Complaints about the behaviour to her of certain staff. After this length of time it is no easy matter to investigate whether there is anything in these allegations. What Miss Hawley has said, however, is not consistent with the attitude of the staff as I know it to be. How one defines someone as looking as if they have leprosy I do not know and most of the phrases used by Miss Hawley can be dismissed I think as journalistic hyperbole. 2. There are other complaints relating to the cleanliness of the hospital. Again, after this length of time it is very difficult to investigate the matter and say whether or not these were in any way justified. Every hospital is fully conscious that standards of cleanliness are not always as high as could be desired but each does the best it can with resources that are limited. On behalf of the Board of Governors, I must emphatically deny that the standards of cleanliness in this hospital are inferior which is the impression created by the article. 3. Various other allegations are made concerning what one can only describe as callousness on the part of nursing and ancillary staff and again I must deny that what Miss Hawley has said accurately describes the attitude generally of the staff of this hospital. Indeed, it is in direct contrast to the appreciable number of letters of gratitude which are received regularly and which often contain donations for the patients and staff of the hospital. 4. There are, however, allegations in effect alleging negligence on the part of the medical staff concerned. Again, I must deny these most emphatically. As some of the letters published since then in your paper show, there are many others who have a different tale to tell of the services they have received in this hospital. It should be recorded in your columns that Jennifer Hawley had been a patient in this hospital before this occasion and that she chose to return here for further treatment. Furthermore, at the time of writing the article she was still undergoing treatment here and she has returned for further appointments with the same consultant after the publication of the article. Your readers will also be surprised to know that the consultant surgeon and the consultant anaesthetist both have in their possession much appreciated letters of thanks from the lady in question for the treatment which she received at their hands.
In the light of these last facts, I feel that you and all your readers will realise that Miss Hawley!s other allegations cannot be taken very seriously, particularly as she chose to make no complaint at any time to any member of the staff as far as we can trace. There is an adequate machinery for complaints which are, of course, received from time to time and given serious consideration immediately. Under all the circumstances, I think it is astonishing that a journal of repute should choose to publish such an article without apparently any attempt to corroborate the facts.
The hospital service here and in this country is kept going by loyal hard working staff who can justly resent the criticism of the service by such as Jennifer Hawley who do not use the machinery of complaint but choose to make their views public in this way.
R. F. MacMahon House Governor and Secretary, Westminster Hospital, Horseferry Road, London SW1.
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