Dignity Ambassadors - will Parky cut the mustard?

Dignity really is more than a word - it's right at the core of care.

But is the Department of Health's latest wheeze of appointing a Dignity Ambassador (aka Michael Parkinson) the best way to put dignity on the map? Well, it's certainly a start. And since most of the posts on Patient Opinion where dignity is an issue (and there are lots) concern care of the elderly, having an Ambassador with the right age demographic is probably important.

Best of all, perhaps, the BBC website says that Parky's enthusiasm for dignity comes from having seen 'the mixture of care and indifference' shown to his own mother when she was ill. So his heart is probably in the right place. And as Julia Neuberger's recent article in the Mail and new book Manifesto for Od Age shows, dignity for older people is rising up the agenda.

More worrying is that the Dignity in Care Champions Network looks like it might be run by NHS networks -  the outfit that DH has just decided to shut down rather than fund further.

But the real trouble is that dignity comes about through countless acts of work and thoughtfulness from everyone involved in care. In short, creating dignity is the responsiblity of everyone who works in the NHS. And celebrity tours won't change the culture much in the countless wards and departments up and down the land where dignity is actually provided or withheld. To begin to affect that you need something different, something that has a chance of interacting at this level of granularity with the service.

Of course we're a long way from achieving it, but Patient Opinion was created with the intention that it should scale to have this degree of interaction with busy staff up and down the land. And it is beginning to happen.

Here's a story about an episode of hospital care that certainly lacked dignity, plus a response that shows that the hospital (Rotherham) was clearly brought up short and shocked by what had happened and went on to really try and change things. The result? a further posting from the family that shows both how much they appreciate the Trust's sincere efforts to address the issues, and a determination to report back on what happens to readers of Patient Opinion when they meet with Trust staff in October to review progress.

Although I'm sure that Rotherham would prefer it if this posting had never been public, I'm also sure that anyone reading the story will be left with the clear impression of a Trust really trying to do things better. And because this comes from a member of the public, it is a priceless endorsement of the Trust's approach and a clear example of how dignity is indeed more than just a word.