Whistleblowing protections should be strengthened to prevent the bullying and persecution of NHS staff who raise concerns about safety, a union has said.
The Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) warned that the failure to tackle the bullying of staff who make protected disclosures is “fatally undermining efforts to prevent the next big NHS safety scandal”, and has called for the establishment of an independent statutory body to monitor the treatment of those who raise safety concerns.
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HCSA president Dr Naru Narayanan said: “The intolerable cover-up culture by managers that we still see in corners of the NHS is bad for patients and bad for doctors.
“Many of the cases our union deals with have whistleblowing at their root, often indirectly and sometimes months or years afterwards. Doctors have been pushed towards taking their own lives due to the abject failure of a system which punishes them when they should be receiving gratitude.
“For too many doctors, the brave, professionally obligated and morally correct step of reporting safety concerns is rewarded with attempts to silence and force out the individual who reports problems by managers focused on protecting reputations.”
The union’s recommendations came as the senior doctor who first raised concerns about Lucy Letby, the nurse who received a whole-life prison sentence for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others, called for hospital managers to be regulated in the same way as doctors and nurses.
Dr Stephen Brearey told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there was “no apparent accountability” for what NHS managers do in trusts.
He claimed that instead of acting on his warnings about Letby, hospital bosses made life difficult for him.
He said: “You go to senior colleagues with a problem, and you come away confused and anxious.”
The HCSA said the ‘Freedom to Speak Up’ guardian system, a network of support workers who encourage staff to speak up when they feel that they are unable to do so, has weaknesses.
It urged all NHS trusts to review their internal whistleblowing processes to ensure that cases are handled robustly without interference by managers.
It said an independent statutory body should be set up to register potential or actual whistleblowing at the point of disclosure, monitor investigations, and investigate any allegations of whistleblowers being treated unfairly.
Sir Robert Francis, who led the inquiry into a series of patient deaths at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008, has also called for more support for NHS whistleblowers after a BBC investigation found those who raised concerns were victimised by management.
An NHS spokesperson told the BBC: “It is absolutely vital that everyone working in the NHS feels they can raise concerns and that these are acted on and we have reminded NHS leaders about the importance of this following the verdict last week.”
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