There have been a lot of nasty scandals in English NHS hospitals over the last year. But have we seen similar incidents elsewhere in Europe?

One indication is the results from country-specific Google searches. Using the terms “patient neglect” and “mistreatment of patients hospital” in French, German, Italian, Spanish and English gives us a sense of how the countries compare.

UK incidents were much higher-profile, with the latest incident at Queen Alexandria hospital attracting hundreds of mentions. And now we have the report on West Stafford.

I couldn’t find anything similar in the other countries. In France, Spain and Italy, the terms threw up individual acts of negligence inflicted by named professionals, who were then taken to court. Now, that IS an interesting idea to a Briton!

I am sure that if I had included Romania and Bulgaria, I would have found more mentions. In general, however, the big systemic scandals we have seen in the English NHS, don’t seem to be happening in Europe.

Or are they happening, and simply not being reported?

On balance, I think that is unlikely.  The press in Germany, Sweden and Denmark is more powerful and command more resources than in the UK. In fact, it could be that Brits have become inured to low nursing standards and are actually under-reporting the problems. Now there’s a thought…