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Catch-22 for hospital bosses


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19 March 2009

Catch-22 for hospital bosses

The management of a Staffordshire hospital have been in the firing line for not engaging in an open dialogue about a catalogue of problems according to a damning report which hit the national news headlines.

The Healthcare Commission accused bosses at Stafford Hospital of being obsessed about keeping up appearances when the level of care was described as third-world.

And while they have rightly been pilloried, the incident has highlighted the PR tightrope that hospitals and other key public services have to walk every day.

The hospital has to constantly maintain the public's confidence in it- which, as all PR people will know, means shouting good news from the rooftops and burying bad news or minimising the damage if any negatives get out into the public domain.

If bosses had admitted problems or failings long before the Healthcare Commission blew the whistle then they would have been committing professional suicide.

So was it a catch-22 position where they couldn't ask for help from the people who could have probably been in a position to help for fear of it getting out and denting the reputation of the hospital?



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