Easy News: Abuse at Edenfield Hospital

1. 

   Edenfield Centre, a hospital in Prestwich, has been treating its patients very badly. Some of the nurses and support workers were abusing the patients.

2. 

   Edenfield is a very large mental health hospital near Manchester. It is supposed to take care of people who may hurt themselves or other people.

3. 

   The BBC TV show Panorama told everyone about what was happening at Edenfield. On the 28th of September, they showed an episode called 'Undercover Hospital: Patients at Risk'.

4. 

   Some people working at Edenfield were not happy with what was going on there. They asked the journalist Alan Haslam to help stop it.

5. 

   Alan Haslam went to work at Edenfield. He recorded what was going on there with a hidden camera he did not tell people about.

6. 

   He filmed some nurses and staff talking very rudely to the patients. They would laugh at the patients to their faces, or insult them.

7. 

   He also filmed nurses and staff hurting patients. They would slap or pinch patients if they did not do what the nurses told them to.

8. 

   Hospitals like Edenfield can take patients away from everyone else. They put them in special seclusion rooms.

9. 

   These rooms are very upsetting to be in. People should not be in them for long. People should only be put in them if they are dangerous.

10. 

    At Edenfield, patients were put in seclusion rooms for weeks. Some patients were kept in there for months. A nurse put a patient in a room because the nurse wanted a break.

11. 

    At a hospital, staff are supposed to check on patients and write down how they are doing. Doctors can use the notes to see what care people need.

12. 

    At Edenfield, nurses would not check on their patients. Then they would lie and write down that they had. They would also lie about the patient in their notes.

13. 

    Hospital workers say they are working too hard and that is making them unhappy and rushed. There are not enough nurses who want to work at hospitals like Edenfield.

14. 

    Sometimes at Edenfield there were no nurses at all. There were only people who didn’t have as much training as nurses.

15. 

    After the episode of Panorama was shown on television, many of the staff at Edenfield were suspended. This means they cannot come into work until a decision is made about whether or not they did something bad.

16. 

    Some workers have also been sacked. This means they have been told to leave their jobs straight away.

17. 

    Police are checking if what the workers did was a crime. Politicians are asking for an inquiry to find out information about how it could happen.

18. 

    The Care Quality Commission is a group that tells everyone if hospitals are good. It had said that Edenfield was good but has now changed its mind.

19. 

    Workers from other hospitals were sent to Edenfield. They will try to run it better than before.

20. 

    If you think something bad is happening in a hospital, doctors' surgery or support service, you can tell a manager or the Care Quality Commission.

21. 

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