Dr Howard Baderman

• DR Howard Baderman I got to know when I worked at the old University College Hospital in the 1980s. I was in the works department as a maintenance carpenter.

UCH being in central London had a heavier burden to bear than most hospitals at the time, especially in its A&E department, particularly over the weekend.

Monday at 8am, while taking my coat off, the phone rang and a building officer told me to immediately go to A&E.

A heavy door had been ripped from its hinges and flung at the medical staff. The person who did this must have had maniacal strength. It took me all my time to rehang it.

Dr Baderman, as head of A&E, was there to survey the damage that had occurred over the weekend, especially Saturday evening. I asked him what kind of person would do this.

He didn’t answer but shook his head in sadness. He wasn’t willing to condemn any patient, or discuss them with non-medical staff. He was so approachable, never pulling rank.

He merely pointed out a desk that had been kicked in with a couple of the drawers destroyed. I was suddenly surprised when he began to discuss joints, not of the skeleton kind but of the wooden variety.

He seemed to be a DIY enthusiast, and went on to tell me about his woodworking and power tools. He would ask glaziers, also there after some Saturday nights, the best way to cut glass.

You might wonder what security were doing. Well, security only consisted of one large male, in suit, shirt and tie, who patrolled A&E, and the wards. He couldn’t be everywhere, and weekends weren’t something he did on a regular basis.

Security consisted of flashing overhead panels that went to the floor above with the message: A&E STAFF UNDER ATTACK.

That meant any available nurses, male or female, plus any doctors also available, male or female, would rush to A&E and pin down the recalcitrant, and hold them until the police arrived. This was the job of the medical staff with porters and maintenance staff being told to not get involved.

One Monday morning I was told to report immediately to A&E to board up a jagged part of a reinforced glass wall until the glaziers could be called in. Someone had put their fist through the heavy, reinforced, glass.

I asked a nurse, who had been working that Saturday night, what state the person’s fist must be in. Her reply was what state her face could be in if he had hit her.

I later learned that sometimes people with a heroin habit were picked up off the street and taken to A&E.

After being ascertained as being an addict by the number of needle marks on the arms and legs, they would be given an antidote. On waking the person would realise that what they had paid money for was now leaving them in withdrawal. Some of them just went crazy.

Another job was to inspect the cupboards and gas and electric alcoves for signs that maybe some of the rough sleepers were occupying them at night. That meant locks being replaced with heavier ones. But somehow they managed to break even these.

Dr Baderman humanised what would normally be thought of as a place of continual crisis, and sometimes mayhem, with the bloodied, the mentally ill, the maimed and the dying.

Sometimes when working in A&E a nurse would tell us to stop hammering because behind a curtain a patient was dying. After about 10 minutes she would tell us we could continue the job.

You might be working in an elderly patients’ ward and notice the sister seemed traumatised. Bits and pieces of overheard conversation and you would know six of her patients had died during the night.

Maintenance staff don’t have the training that medical staff have in dealing with such scenes.

There are occasions when you have to do an emergency repair in a theatre while an operation is going on.

First you strip naked and don surgical clothes. Then you enter the theatre with all the noise of surgical instruments at work in your ears. On occasions a surgeon might shout and swear because a patient can’t be saved.

We were working in a totally different environment that we weren’t prepared for.

If Dr Baderman was around he would ask maintenance staff how they were feeling after coming out of such situations.

Your next assignment might be a psychiatric unit where you never turned your back on your set of tools of hammers, sharp chisels and saws. But then that was the same rule for A&E.

In the evenings, during free time, you might think you were drinking alcohol normally but you deny to yourself that you are losing control.

That means not turning up for work the next day because of a chronic hangover. You can be too ill to even phone into work. Eventually you are pulled up by management to account for those days off.

I had overheard bits and pieces of conversation about alcoholism by medical staff and comments about excuses about drinking too much. There are dozens of excuses. I thought about this carefully and when being interviewed by management I decided not to humiliate myself by lying and own up to alcoholic drinking.

I expected to be sacked but instead I was put on a programme of rehabilitation and allowed time off to visit the now defunct Temperance Hospital near UCH. That was the end of alcohol for me, back in 1985. I also developed a more tolerant attitude towards others suffering this illness.

Obviously I felt grateful to UCH and its reforms, especially to Dr Baderman.

Since that time I have been to A&E a few times as a patient and note the reforms that have been made. A&E is a much more pleasant place with medical staff you can communicate with in the manner of a Dr Baderman.

But a note of caution. Security staff are now a necessity in hospitals today, and they wear body armour. Police cars are usually parked somewhere in the grounds.

Mental health issues see new buildings being built in addition to what already exists. It is a time of severe drug and alcohol addiction.

The A&E is still the front line in a never-ending battle, and the medical staff are still not getting their just rewards.

WILSON JOHN HAIRE, N19