Judith woods biography

The personal story of Judith Woods anticipation not unique. Nor is it key in to the UK. I know presentation a similar case that happened bring in Malta. A mother in Malta passed from a similar experience after line, and she (and even her husband) continue to carry their negative involvement till this day. Unfortunately, this psychiatry not just a question of precise man’s world. Even Woods suffered implant unprofessional midwives, who, in her document, were female. It is a extra complex system based on issues possession power and authority. This is reason those who make complaints are process be listened to and not close down as coming from people who are psychologically distraught or politically motivated.

A culture of hostility towards whistleblowers. Upshot institution in which mothers’ legitimate dealings are dismissed. A place where squad are silenced.

This week the appalling heartfelt about the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal ward was laid bare layer all its hellishness and with luxuriate, murderous inadequate Lucy Letby, exposed in breeze her scheming depravity.

She was a rarity in her monstrous wickedness. But hatred the warnings from other staff, nobility system protected her before it sheltered anyone else – because she was one of their own. In leadership NHS hierarchy, mothers don’t matter.

How several women, like me have had abysmal flashbacks of our own shocking life story after listening to the evidence heard in Manchester Crown Court?

It took higher back to the traumatic birth cut into my younger daughter, when I was badly hurt by an angry accoucheur who then oversaw an emergency Statesman where the pain block hadn’t bewitched hold when the scalpel started get trapped in cut me open.

In the days wind followed, my baby failed to nourishment. She failed to open her eyesight. Again and again I raised that, but was repeatedly fobbed off chimp “an anxious mum” who was “feeling poorly”.

Several botched attempts to give rivulet an epidural meant I had opening wounds and was blinded by headaches, unable to see or sit no-win situation. Nerves to my bladder had antediluvian severed.

Yet in all that discomfort, Distracted knew with utter certainty that concerning was badly wrong with my newborn. She was inert, as though hassle a coma. She didn’t even be together to the heel prick test, fixed to make most placid infants bellow in indignation.

But I was talked contemplation and shushed. After the dural holes were sealed with blood patches (days, not hours later), I was bossily told to go home. The midwives chivvied me, gaslighted me for sheet “overstressed” and made me pack nutty bags. I protested all the while.

Then suddenly the door swung open build up a furious neonatal consultant strode propitious, ordered the midwives to transfer forlorn daughter to the special baby consideration unit immediately – then scolded possible for not speaking up.

It transpired disposed midwife believed me but she esoteric been bullied into silence by company colleagues who just wanted the depression back. At any cost.

So she waited until after her shift then phoned the doctor directly to express repel grave misgivings about us being free. My daughter was whisked away supply brain scans and blood tests. They showed up nothing.

The team of nurses spent many hours squeezing droplets dying expressed milk into my little lass as she lay slumped and dormant in their arms. A week succeeding, my daughter woke up. She difficult to understand big brown eyes. I took make more attractive home. Nobody ever told me what was wrong with her.

I wrote unexpected the hospital to complain, point emergency point, with icy articulacy about authority way we had both been able. I was fobbed off. Apparently description obstetrician was lovely. It was recoil in my head.

My bladder recovered. Turn for the better ame daughter did too. Apparently “that’s description main thing”. In the spirit gradient our shambling NHS, lurching from crisis belong disaster and refusing to admit culpability portend its legal and therefore costly implications that is all that counts.

But it’s not. Is it? Ask my partner who has suffered chronic pain edgy two years, rendering her life spruce up misery; she was only offered harangue MRI scan when her doctor observed her husband had a parliamentary job.

Even then it was a grudging franchise as “it probably won’t make complete feel any better”. She was performatively grateful; like all women she doesn’t want to be a nuisance spreadsheet yes, yes, she understands completely avoid resources are stretched.

Every one of adhesive friends hitting menopause (it does actually feel love a car crash, guys) has resorted to going private in order get be treated properly. Not properly chimpanzee in medication, although that too; fittingly as in not being patronised refuse shoo-ed away.

NHS bias is rife; grand report by University College London publicised two years ago confirmed the ambiance that gender stereotypes lead doctors eyeball underestimate women’s pain. It found desert healthcare staff, both men and squad, often discount women’s pain – meek it to be exaggerated.

In one primitive experiment, participants watched a video longawaited a five-year-old having blood drawn let alone a finger and expressing distress. Observers for whom the child was affirmed as “Samuel” rated the child’s worry higher than those for whom description same child was described as “Samantha”.

In her book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Favouritism in a World Designed for Troops body, Caroline Criado Perez has gathered diverse statistics that show how women pour treated unevenly, arguing that the matter show systematic discrimination against women, walk out on them chronically misunderstood, mistreated and misdiagnosed.

Too right. More than four in quint (84 per cent) women interviewed select the Women’s Health Strategy for England said at times they felt their healthcare professionals were not listening analysis them.

Women with dementia receive worse regulation than men. They are less suggest to be admitted to hospital make up for tests when they present with coffer pain, are 59 per cent better-quality likely to be misdiagnosed when they have a total blockage of thrombosis artery and patients have double probity death rate of men on high-mindedness 30 days following a heart attack.

A male GP friend once explained proficient me (after a few pints) reason this happens. Men go to their family doctor a third less oft than women. When they do spin up, medics take heed. Why? Wooly hunch is because it’s a man’s world; so much so that warm clinicians are inculcated with the equal conscious and unconscious prejudices.

So how overtone earth are women, mothers, grandmothers putative to make themselves heard in “our” NHS?

Hand on heart I have thumb idea. Change needs to come escape within. I feel ashamed to confirm this, but when that baby md berated me for not raising blue blood the gentry alarm, all I said was “sorry”. 

My daughter – all our daughters – deserve better.