Under the Carpet

Letter from Dr Campbell [ Clinical Tutor] to Dr John Green [ Clinical Director and Golf Player]

So everyone asks, what is the above letter all about? Well, its about my Clinical Tutor attempting to do what we used to call " Emergency Concealment" or " Undercarpet Sweeping". Dr Campbell though was one of those people who tried to do the right thing but in the end his own behaviour made matters worse. He already knew of the doctor before me whose career was destroyed, who ended up having a breakdown and disappeared from medicine.


I had a number of conversations with Old Colin. I was young, impressionable and trusted him. That was of course my mistake. We all make mistakes when we are young. He was though what we call a mediator not a fighter for justice. He was also ineffectual, lacked in backbone and did not quite know what to do with this renegade whistleblower. Then one cannot expect much more from a man. If we all relied on men to be heroes, we would be waiting until hell freezes over. I certainly know that in North Staffordshire NHS Trust, it was the cat like women in management that pulled everyone's strings, then cried when things didn't go their way.


It should be made clear that they all knew of Ward 87 [ 2001 Report] and its problems but pretended not to. They pretended that I was the problem not their ward. Old Colin will of course pamper his ego and be of the view that he did the best for me. What was it that he said to me again? Ah yes " You must not tell anyone about this outside of this hospital. I will deal with it".

Of course, Campbell didn't deal with it. He brought me back to the Trust, shovelled me off to general practise so everyone had the impression I had disappeared. We must not forget that he also cut my pay by a half. By doing this, the Trust varied and breached my Employment Contract. He brought me back to be employed by the Trust so he could force me to stay there and discipline me for something I didn't do. Even in my traumatised state at the time, I knew what the game was. I though found myself in a difficult situation complete with accessories at the Trust who were quite frankly derranged. Management definitely were.


The game was this, people were dying and they needed to ensure that the lid was firmly placed on it. Having a PRHO running around in the public away from the clutches of the Trust was a surefire way for the matter to spiral out of control. What the Trust needed to do was contain me, control the situation and then let me go. That was Colin Campbell's job and he did it well. He also lied to me a time or two about his shock regarding the status of the ward when he knew what had gone on. The 2001 Report shows that they all knew. They just kept it under wraps.


Of course, you realise the dark side of people like Colin Campbell when reports like that come out. All people have dark sides, its simply that as young people we often trust our seniors. As we become older, we realise their ulterior motives and agendas and their allegiance to themselves. Campbell's concern was never for me, it was for his Trust. It wasn't the patients welfare they were concerned about.


The Trust was more concerned about breaking me - that is what they wanted to do - break me into tiny pieces as they did the doctors before me. The pieces should be so tiny that you cannot lift yourself up and fight never mind think straight. They did this to my colleagues and for that one cannot forgive them. These dysfunctional people still work within the Trust. There is never any accountability for people like this apart from writing an historical account.


It is true, they took all my money away, they endangered my GMC Registration, they spread malicious rumours about me, they ensured all my friends left me, they ensured I would not get jobs elsewhere, they ensured I was always a target and whatever else they have admitted in their internal documentation. The important issue here is that - they never succeeded in breaking me and I still continue to enjoy life the way it was meant to be. It is the darker side of medicine that makes you develop a sense of rising above the dysfunctional people around you. To a certain extent you begin to pity them for their empty emotional states, for their lack of kindness and for the fact they have become wicked people by the evolutionary state of the Trust. You also realise that the ASDA supermarket checkout girl is much happier than you are. And I thought about ASDA a lot during this period. I thought about the pointless nature of all the hard work I did at school and how much I had studied to become a doctor. I though believe that when you have reached the lowest point in life, there is only one way to progress and that is up. My main aim was to keep my self safe, my mind sinking in masses of music and keeping busy. I spent hours walking in the country discovering that in the grand scale of the universe, North Staffordshire NHS Trust was simply a fragment of my life. It was therefore treated as such. I believe that is how I came to terms with what happened to me.

The letter from Colin Campbell is interesting though.


For Campbell, he needed to keep me quiet and " appease me" so they could get the money for the new rotation. More importantly, so they could obtain the agreement to develop the new University. I was an inconvenient bright young thing who refused to break no matter how much they attempted. The letter looks harmless on the face of it until you look at it in detail

" I hope we can sort out this matter quickly as it seems to have come at an awkward time as we are just about to formally apply for a new PRHO rotation I am hoping to attract to the district"

He then wrote

" If we do not sort this out we will only continue to receive adverse comments on the posts but will stand little chance of attracting new training posts in medicine, at this grade - and it would be a great asset to us all if we did".

In the following years, while the Trust with Professor Griffiths's assistance attempted to undermine and discredit me and despite these serious problems on the ward and at the Trust, the GMC approved the rotation and turned a blind eye to the concerns raised with them. They then applied for University status and obtained that as well. Of course, I was left of the stigma of being a whistleblower.


There is though a entertaining sentence in the letter. Old Colin describes what I did to Human Resources after they lied twice and reversed their agreement on proper supervision.


Colin states " As I have expressed to you, I think that it is unfortunate that things have not been right for almost 3 weeks before I knew anything about it, only then when she had actually walked off the premises, but from our discussions I understand the reasons".


In retrospect, the best decision made was to throw my bleep at Human Resources and walk out.


I recall that day - I recall the freedom from the Trust. I recall getting in my Renault Clio and stopping at the Esso, buying tons of chocolate, rolling the window down and playing loud music. It was infact the first feeling of happiness I had in 3 months. Freedom is a good feeling, it always has been. I returned home, watched the X Files, took the dog for a walk and then hung out with my school friends. That was until Colin Campbell rang my home number. Sadly, the worst decision made was to believe Dr Campbell and return back to be controlled by them for one year.

I love internal documentation like this. North Staffordshire NHS Trust has no idea I have copies. The question is where did I get the copies from and what else do I have in my files. Well, quite a lot actually. Amazing what people can find after they dig through various organisations and how many Information Officers accidentally just send me documents that perhaps I should not have had access to.

Anyway, I am North Staffordshire NHS Trust's best kept secret they like to forget but the future is always bright because the internet is always provides detailed history of what they did.
They ought to remember to treat ALL their junior doctors well.