By Editor,Mark Branagan,Paul Bracchi,Tim Stewart

Copyright dailymail

On Wednesday, two weeks ago, the front page of the Blackpool Gazette featured the single, bold headline: ‘JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE VIC…’

The sarcasm would not have been lost on readers who knew exactly what it meant.

The ‘Vic’ – short for Blackpool Victoria Hospital – has been embroiled in multiple scandals in recent times and here, inside the respected local paper, were reports of not one, not two but three more in the same edition: ‘Neglected patient died in toilet – P5’; ‘Surgeon jailed for groping colleagues– P11’; ‘Hospital named in national inquiry into maternity care – P12’.

Hard to imagine a more damaging news day for the ‘Vic’, coming on top of a spate of such high-profile controversies.

Among the most notorious are the two nurses now behind bars for drugging stroke victims for an ‘easy life’ and a pensioner sexually assaulted on the same ward.

It means, almost unbelievably, that six medical staff at the hospital have been sent to prison for serious criminal offences in the past two years alone and the tally doesn’t include the consultant who was found by a tribunal to have raped a woman at his home.

Lancashire Police still haven’t concluded their inquiries, either.

The hospital itself is still under investigation – it’s called ‘Operation Bermuda’ – for potential corporate failings contributing to the death, ill-treatment or neglect of patients.

So the Gazette’s hard-hitting front page could not have been more unwelcome.

In the circumstances, would it be unfair to say Blackpool Victoria, despite having many dedicated staff operating in the most challenging conditions, is possibly the worst hospital in the country?

The underlying metrics, aside from the scandals, suggest it could be.

Six NHS hospitals in England are rated ‘Inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission, the lowest rating the CQC can score, and one of them is the Vic.

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTH), of which Blackpool Victoria is a part, is also 125th out of 134 in the new NHS performance league tables; in the bottom ten, in other words.

What is undoubtedly true is that the affection in which the Vic used to be held has given way to anger at what has happened and trepidation among some members of the public about what might happen if they have to go there.

‘I would be frightened to go into that hospital, to be honest with you,’ resident Julie Knowles told the Daily Mail. ‘Speaking to people, I think they are scared as well because we have now heard so many horror stories.’

Her words carry extra weight because they are born of personal grief. Julie’s only son Jamie Pearson – ‘a kind, gentle and talented 27-year-old’, whose story was trailed in the Blackpool Gazette’s front page, killed himself in a toilet after waiting 22 hours for treatment following his admission for taking an overdose of painkillers.

Up until that point, when he experienced a sudden psychosis, Jamie, a plasterer and joiner who ran his own business, had always been fit and healthy. At his inquest earlier this month, the coroner said ‘neglect’ contributed to his suicide a little over a year ago.

‘He never needed the NHS before. The only time he did they let him down,’ explained devastated Julie, 59, a former medical receptionist at a Blackpool GP surgery. ‘Everyone at the hospital kept saying: “I am sorry, I am sorry”, but that is not going to bring my son back.

‘He had everything to live for. He was always laughing and smiling. He was very well known in Blackpool and no one can believe what happened to him. Jamie has lost his life and in turn it has destroyed mine.’

Julie’s poignant, quiet rage is shared by many others.

The front page of the Gazette was posted on X, and underneath people have made their feelings known.

One comment perhaps epitomises the general mood. ‘This is UNBELIEVABLE,’ it declared. ‘The number of victims just goes on and on. That this culture could have happened in the NHS is sickening.’

Sickening, yes. Surprising, not really.

The truth is that the NHS, once lauded as the ‘envy of the world’, has been beset by scandal after scandal in the past two decades. One of the common denominators which links all of these outrages was a lack of compassion among the nursing staff.

At the Vic, they bragged about sedating those under their care in WhatsApp messages with sign-offs like: ‘ha, ha or pmsl (p*** myself laughing’).

At a hospital in Mid Staffordshire, patients were left unfed and unwashed.

While in Shrewsbury and Telford, more than 200 babies and nine mothers could have survived with better care.

Yet, in its own way, Blackpool Victoria is uniquely disturbing because criminal behaviour or systemic failings in care have affected so many different areas of the hospital.

The latter received little publicity, so let’s deal with them first.

One of the reasons the hospital was rated Inadequate by the CQC was because of the way the urgent and emergency services unit, which deals with many of the common, non-life threatening problems people go to A&E for, was run.

‘At times,’ inspectors observed, ‘the department felt chaotic and we had concerns about the lack of oversight the leadership team had of the risks.’

Maternity services, where a shortage of midwives and lack of consultant availability causing delays in providing care for high-risk pregnancies, were highlighted by the watchdog and will now be part of a national inquiry into what has been described as ‘failures in the system.’

Could any of those ‘failures’ be more heartbreaking than the tragedy of Ayla Newton?

Ayla died 13 days after she was born in February 2023 because her brain was deprived of oxygen and blood flow during birth.

A delay to her caesarean delivery ‘materially contributed to her death,’ an inquest heard in April.

Her parents told how ‘repeated concerns raised by multiple midwives were ignored’.

The Trust said it was ‘truly sorry that our care fell below the standards they [her family] deserved’ but processes and training, the statement said, had been improved since Ayla’s death.

Problems have been compounded by the dire state of the ‘books’ at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTH), which was put into the equivalent of financial special measures in February.

The deficit forecast for 2025/26 could range anywhere between £7 million and £13.4 million.

But neither cutbacks, budgetary restrictions or staff shortages can explain the wickedness and depravity that have also stalked the wards of Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Amal Bose, 55, was the consultant heart surgeon in charge of the department. He was also ‘a predator hiding in plain sight’, who molested a string of younger, junior members including, on one occasion, grabbing a nurse’s breast as she helped him prepare for surgery.

Bose was jailed for six years last week for sexual assaults against five women between 2017 and 2022.

Aloaye Foy-Yamah was a consultant in acute medicine. He was investigated by police, though not charged, after a woman accused him of raping her at his home in 2018.

At a hearing six months ago, however, a panel of the Medical Practitioners Service tribunal, found he did rape her in what was controversially described as a ‘one-off event’ in his personal life.

Mr Foy-Yamah, who maintains his innocence, avoided being struck off and was suspended for 12 months.

The General Medical Council, which regulates the register of doctors licensed to practise in the UK, said it was ‘deeply uncomfortable with the victim-blaming narrative from the tribunal and considered the determination lacked a proper assessment of the misconduct’.

The GMC has appealed the decision to merely suspend Mr Foy-Yamah to the High Court.

Mr Foy-Yamah could, in theory, eventually return to Blackpool Victoria or indeed another hospital.

And then there is the infamous stroke unit, where senior nurse Catherine Hudson, 54, and her junior colleague Charlotte Wilmot, 48, ‘worked’.

The ward is tucked away in the far corner of the hospital and is reached via a long corridor, a four-minute walk from the main entrance in the older part of the building and one of the reasons, some think, why their behaviour went undetected for so long.

It was here that the pair dispensed the sedative Zopiclone like sweets to keep patients ‘quiet and compliant or ‘out of spite’ or simply ‘for their own amusement’.

One of those who spent more than three months under the ‘care’ of Hudson and Wilmot back in 2017 was David Boyle, a much-loved figure in Blackpool, who used to run the Doctor Who Exhibition on the Golden Mile.

Mr Boyle, 69, was paralysed down his right side and sometimes had to wear a ‘restraint mitt’ on his left hand to prevent him pulling out his feeding tube.

But his partner Julie Whitfield found the mitt had been velcroed to the side of his bed rail like he was a ‘handcuffed prisoner’ and inside his bedside cabinet was his ‘medication’: Zopiclone.

David, a highly successful businessman – he founded leading model railway manufacturer Dapol – passed away in 2019.

‘There seems to be more bad publicity about the hospital every week,’ Julie said. ‘It inevitably brings back memories of what happened to David.’

Catherine Hudson and Charlotte Wilmot were jailed for a total of more than ten years in 2023 for conspiring to drug and ill-treat defenceless patients. While Marek Grabianowski, a senior nurse, was given 14 months for conspiracy to steal drugs and perverting the course of justice.

‘I know the perpetrators have been brought to justice but you do wonder if there are more staff like them still there,’ added Julie.

‘Thankfully, I’m in good health so I have never had cause to visit the hospital.’

A series of measures to improve patient safety and care standards has now been introduced by the new Trust chief executive Maggie Oldham.

But the legacy of the past – as well as recent cases like the suicide of Jamie Pearson – continues to blight the Vic.

It was only this month that a coroner ruled that 75-year-old Valerie Kneale, who bled to death on the stroke ward on November 16, 2018, was unlawfully killed after being sexually assaulted.

Her attacker has never been caught and the police investigation remains open.

‘Like everyone else in my home town, I share the deep concerns about the serious cases which have come to light at Blackpool Victoria Hospital,’ said Chris Webb, Labour MP for Blackpool South.

‘I’ve spoken openly and at length with the new chief executive, who I meet with regularly, and I’m confident in her dedication and vision to turn things around.’

The question is: would you be happy for your loved ones to be treated there?