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The whistle blowing story
Why this came to pass is a story that has never been fully told or understood by Wright or those closest to his career. The following pages outline the circumstances, detail and impact of the devastating events of 1983- 1987. Exhaustion and compromise What could have brought him to express his disgust in this way? Was he at such an impasse that he had grown tired of the bizarre penalties he saw paid by his patients and their families and their children? A dangerously incompetent administration was saying that it knew better than he did about “the frontiers of difficulty and peril” which brave and fearful patients lived with only for as long as a surgeon was beside them. Only the administration knew that, when the time for reckoning came one day, John Wright’s contract would prove toothless and deceptive. Over many years, John Wright had detailed these administrative and institutional defects and needs. He was forced to substitute his own energy and expertise to maintain services. He was labelled a “disruptive” trouble-maker who had to be suppressed and disciplined until he gave up on his demands. There had to come a time when he couldn’t continue that way - when he could no longer be answerable to his conscience while excusing gross errors and concealments in patient-care. He could no longer explain how patients, whose surgery had been entirely uneventful and their progress untrammelled, might suddenly deteriorate for no apparent reason. That was the ultimate catastrophe which meant that at times he stayed beside his patients’ beds while he and they lived out their nightmares. Worst of all, he had become hated by hospital management which would never begin to understand sick patients’ needs. Further reading on this topic, page 2 |
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