Govt Report into Prosthetics Services in UK

Contributors to the UK Limb Loss Information Centre Forum have been asked to contribute to the government's investigation into how good (or otherwise) prosthetics services are in the UK, and as one of these, I've been asked to take part. We are writing up our experiences and sending them, via one of our co-contributors, to David Bickers, chairman of the Douglas Bader Foundation, who will be compiling them to send to the review team.

David Cameron has given a commitment that military personnel returning with injuries will get a "first class service" for rehabilitation. Servicemen and servicewomen returning from the warzones with amputations currently get this first class service from Headley Court Militery Hospital near Epsom, or at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham; and because this is what we (and the MPs) always see on the telly, it has been assumed that this is the level of service they will get when they return to civvy street. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it is because concerns have been voiced about this that Dr Andrew Murrison MP has been asked to carry out a review, to find out what level of service will be available to ex-service personnel when they have to rely on the civilian system.

He's going to get a shock. As usual, it's a postcode lottery, a.k.a., "services commensurate with the needs of the local community". In other words, commensurate with the amount of money the local Health Service Trusts are prepared to spend. In some areas amputees are not offered any prosthetic service at all, but have to live in a wheelchair and on crutches, with few or no adaptations in their homes - they're basically sent home and told to get on with it. One guy on the forum doesn't even have a wheelchair to go home in! He's going to have to wait until he gets his first appointment at his limb-fitting centre.

I know from reading the LLIC Forum, that I was very lucky with the service I received from the Astley Ainslie hospital, which is second to none in the civilian service. I had very few bad things to say, so couldn't really support the thesis that services are really bad; but my contribution will serve to point out the differences from one region to the next. I didn't have access to the very expensive prosthetics given to the soldier amputees, but within the civilian service, there were very few limits as to what I could have.

Dr Murrison will be reporting to the Prime Minister after Easter, and it's a great opportunity to put forward our case for bringing services in the poorly performing regions up to some kind of reasonable standard. A similar review was carried out for psychiatric care, and improvements were made in that area, so there's no reason why the same shouldn't happen in prosthetics.

It's a shame, though, that nobody thought it was worth reviewing this area of care until we had injured military personnel returning home. This review should have been carried out years ago, for the unfortunate civilians who have had to live in misery, trapped and immobile.