You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Commentary
The Francis report: a call to arms
  1. Susan M Robinson1,
  2. Ruth Brown2
  1. 1Emergency Department, Addenbrooke's NHS Trust, Cambridge, UK
  2. 2St Mary's Emergency Department, Imperial College Healthcare Trust, Imperial NHS Trust, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Susan M Robinson, Emergency Department, Addenbrooke's NHS Trust, Hills Road, Box 87, Cambridge CB2 0QQ, UK; Susan.robinson{at}addenbrookes.nhs.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2013-202959

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    On 6 February 2013 the much-awaited Francis report1 into events at Mid Staffordshire hospital was published. The 1782 pages within it are mandatory reading for all clinicians working in emergency departments.

    What makes particularly difficult reading are the stories that tell of the absence of basic human kindness shown to some of the most vulnerable patients and the subsequent disinterest in their relatives who rightly complained. We acknowledge that what occurred at Mid Staffordshire is not isolated to this organisation; colleagues will have witnessed incidents or be aware of similar concerns within their own hospitals or departments. Each of us has our own stories to tell—as will many of …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors Both authors proposed the idea of a short editorial. SMR wrote the first draft after extensive discussion of the Francis report with RB, who subsequently made significant contributions to the content of the editorial.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.