St Thomas’s Hospital: A tribute

When the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was first admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital, I felt an obscure sense of relief. That’s because over the years I have come to regard St Thomas’s as a particularly good hospital. It is a centre of many kinds of medical excellence, and, not unrelated, an institution with an espirit de corps.

Founded more than 800 years ago, it moved to its present site on the banks of the Thames opposite the Palace of Westminster in 1868. Florence Nightingale established her Nursing School at St Thomas’s, which thus benefited from the world’s first professional nursing education. Her insistence on hygiene, clean water and good sanitation were the foundation of modern nursing.

By the late 20^th century, however, standards had slipped. My wife gave birth to our first child at St Thomas’s in 1991, and, apart from the view of Parliament, it was a depressing experience. Florence Nightingale’s insistence on cleanliness had been forgotten. During the delivery itself, the staff were competent, but post-natal care was slipshod at best. Outside the delivery suite there was a marked lack of hygiene. When my wife wanted to bathe she had to clean the bath herself. When our son was a few weeks old we worried, in the way that new parents do, that he might have an infection. Fiona took him back to the hospital, and they were admitted for the night. The next day, an unusually forthright nurse told us to take him home before he caught something much worse: “This place is filthy,” she said.

Our other two children were born elsewhere, and in 1999 we moved out of London, and St Thomas’s ceased to be our local hospital. Then I began to experience two unrelated health issues, one neurological and the other cardiological.

As a young boy I had poliomyelitis, which affected both my legs and to a lesser extent my right arm. In 2002 I began to have sharp tingling feelings in my right arm and a slow loss of muscular control of my right hand. After an exhaustive series of tests, a neurologist in Kent tentatively diagnosed multiple sclerosis. This was particularly unwelcome as MS had killed my mother; but I thought MS would not confine itself to a single limb and so I secured a reassuring contrary opinion from a different neurologist.

A decade passed, and I gradually had more trouble with my hand. I wondered whether it might be Post-polio Syndrome (PPS), an idea popular in the US but regarded with suspicion by most British neurologists. My GP accordingly sent me to the one clinic left in Britain that dealt with polio: the Lane Fox unit at St Thomas’s Hospital.

The Lane Fox is in fact the specialist respiratory ward, situated on the ground floor of the Victorian part of the hospital, with access to the river path, and even its own private garden. The weekly polio clinic is attached to it because many polio sufferers experienced breathing problems, and there is a display case full of iron lungs and all sorts of unpleasant historical breathing machines. Yet I was comforted by the display, which showed a connection with, and even pride in, the hospital’s past.

Dr Robin Howard, the polio man, was immensely interested in my case, and embarked on another round of investigations. His diagnosis was not long in coming: I had MS. To be sure he booked me into the Lane Fox ward for three days of tests, though of course I had no breathing difficulties and I felt a bit of a fraud. I don’t suppose Boris Johnson was sent to the Lane Fox, but my stay there taught me how horrible real respiratory ailments are. Most of my fellow patients were in a pitiable state. But the care from nurses and doctors was exemplary, kindly as well as technically superb. And the ward was Nightingale-standard spotless: cleaning was continuous and conscientious. St Thomas’s, I saw, had got its mojo back. Follow up care was excellent, and I was heartened when an MS specialist told me my condition was atypical and perhaps not a death sentence.

A year or two later I was told that I needed an aortic valve replacement. I was referred by a consultant friend to a specialist at a private hospital. After discussing the surgical options, I asked Chris Young what this would cost. I blanched at the suggested figure. Seeing the look on my face he grinned and said: “On the other hand I could put you on my list at St Thomas’s. You’ll have exactly the same team as you would have here, and though you’ll have to wait a few months, and the hotel accommodation won’t be as comfortable, if anything goes wrong you will be in the right place.”

During a preliminary visit for tests, I saw the first fragmentary reports of a terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge. I asked a passing doctor what had happened. “I don’t know,” she replied, “All I’ve seen were the crash teams from A&E running over the bridge.” A lump in the throat moment.

The surgery went ahead at St Thomas’ a few months later and was entirely successful (although Mr Young complained to me afterwards — I presume tongue in cheek — that I had a “very deep chest”). The nurses and other staff on the cardio ward were superb. As in the Lane Fox, it was cleaned continually. My ward companions, mostly hard nuts from the Medway towns, were funny and brave. And the view of the Palace of Westminster was — well, I won’t say to die for, but it was spectacular.

The change in the fortunes of St Thomas’s hospital must be due to many factors, including better management and increased spending, especially under New Labour. But surely it was also the decision in 1993 to put it into a trust with its great neighbour, Guy’s. This enabled it to preserve and develop its institutional identity which, together with other ancient hospitals like Barts, were in danger of being homogenised or even closed. Today St Thomas’s — for all the pressure it is always under — feels like a hospital whose staff are proud of it. I can’t think of a better place in which the prime minister could recover his strength and emerge to lead the nation to the recovery for which we are all praying.