NHS managers are destroying the careers of whistleblowers who raise concerns about patient safety, a group of medics warns.
More than 50 doctors and nurses have told the Telegraph they have been targeted after raising concerns about upwards of 170 patient deaths and nearly 700 cases of poor care. One consultant described it as “the biggest scandal within our country” and said the true number of avoidable deaths was “astronomical”. The report continues:
Instead of trying to fix the problems, the whistleblowers claim NHS bosses are spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money hiring law firms and private eyes to investigate them instead, leading many medics to quit the profession in despair.
In one case, the NHS spent more than £4 million on legal action against a single whistleblower, which included £3.2 million in compensation.
The same tactics are being repeated in hospitals up and down the UK, with some doctors – including some of the country’s most skilled surgeons – being suspended from work for years after raising patient safety concerns, effectively ending their careers.
Several have been driven to the brink of suicide after being “pulled to pieces” for fulfilling their legal and moral duty to raise the alarm when they believe patients are at risk.
In some cases, NHS managers are accused of falsifying or destroying evidence to make whistleblowers appear to be the guilty ones.
The law meant to protect whistleblowers is the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, under which workers have the right “not to be subjected to any detriment by any act…by his employer done on the ground that the worker has made a protected disclosure”.
But many whistleblowers say the law lacks teeth and has failed to prevent them being targeted by managers whom they say are more concerned with protecting reputations.
Once whistleblowers have been put under investigation – and often hauled before the General Medical Council on trumped-up charges that are typically dismissed as baseless – it takes on average six years, three months and 19 days to resolve their cases.
By the time their ordeal is over, they are often broken physically, mentally and psychologically and many are unable to work again.
Dr Naru Narayanan, president of HCSA, the hospital doctors’ union, is now calling for the establishment of an independent statutory national whistleblowing body, outside of the NHS, to register protected disclosures and protect individuals against recriminations.
He said: “There also needs to be a new criminal offence of causing detriment to people who have spoken up, so those who put reputation before patients are punished for it.”
Worth reading in full.
