Invitation: 6th June 2016: Meeting with NSFT about unexpected deaths at 6 p.m. today at Hellesdon Hospital

We’re meeting the Director of Nursing, Jane Sayer, and the Medical Director, Bohdan Solomka, of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) to discuss the extremely disappointing report into the alarming increase in unexpected deaths at NSFT to a record number.

Worse still, the number of unexpected deaths continues to rise but NSFT remains complacent: there were 45 funerals in the first three months of 2016 alone.

NSFT is failing to put the interests of patients and the prevention of deaths above its institutional interests and media spin. We received phone calls from distressed bereaved parents who read about the report into unexpected deaths in the EDP before they themselves had received a copy.  If we hadn’t been at the NSFT Board meeting on 26th May 2016 asking questions, the Board of NSFT and members of the public would have been unaware from Jane Sayer’s presentation on unexpected deaths that the number of deaths has increased 78 per cent and continues to rise. NSFT couldn’t even accurately report the number of deaths and the percentage increase this year in its own Board papers: NSFT reported a percentage increase nearly forty per cent lower than the reality. Luckily, the BBC can add up. We know that NSFT can’t.

There still appears to be no sense of urgency as the number of people dying continues to rise. If the number of people dying continues at the rate of the first three months of this year, the number of unexpected deaths this year will be more than double the number of deaths in 2012-13: an increase of 104.5%. That will be 180 deaths: an NSFT service user will be buried every other day.

If you want to hear what NSFT has to say and to make your own voice heard, join us at Hellesdon Hospital at 6 p.m. this evening. Meet us at main reception to Hellesdon Hospital just before six. If you can’t make it, get in touch and we’ll ask your questions on your behalf. Sorry about the late notice.