A new whistleblowers’ pressure group has been launched to challenge the government to provide more protection for doctors and other healthcare professionals who raise concerns about patient safety.
Called Patients First, the group says an increasing number of NHS employees in recent years have been raising concerns about patient safety but end up being sacked, bullied, harassed or victimised. Others are forced to settle their disputes through out-of-court payments and gagging clauses.
Politicians have introduced a range of laws, policies and procedures such as the Public Interest Disclosure Act, guidance on compromise agreements and most recently an announcement of changes to the NHS Constitution in 2012 to enshrine whistleblowing law.
But none of these will improve the safety of NHS services, say the campaigners.
With the backing of two leading legal firms, the group is planning in the coming months to mount a legal challenge to force the government to improve protection for whistleblowers.
One of the group’s founders is consultant paediatrician Dr Kim Holt, who blew the whistle on failings at the clinic where Baby Peter was treated just days before his death. Holt and three colleagues wrote to managers in 2006 warning that understaffing and poor record keeping posed a serious risk to patients’ safety at St Ann’s clinic in Haringey, north London.
Warnings about workload were not addressed and Holt went on a short period of sick leave in 2007. Whilst on sick leave an inexperienced locum sent Baby Peter home after failing to diagnose child abuse. Dr Al-Zayyat was the last professional to see Peter two days before he was found dead.
She was later vilified by the press and a petition called for her to be struck off. Holt blew the whistle regarding the warnings and understaffing to her MP, the Healthcare Commission (now the Care Quality Commission) and strategic health authority as she felt that Al-Zayyat was being unfairly blamed for failings in the wider system.
Holt has now received an apology from her former employer, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and, after four years, is back in her original post following transfer of the Haringey community paediatric service to a new trust, Whittington Health.
Holt says a lot of whistleblowers have made contact with her who have been in similar situations and many have been forced out of their jobs or to accept a pay off and a compromise agreement which prevents them speaking freely. Other people are punished in subtle ways - employers might block their career progression, bully them or isolate them by suspending them.
“We have launched this campaign because it is completely wrong that people are losing their jobs for doing the right thing. Whistleblowers have got to feel confident that it is safe to speak out. There are a lot of people who never get their stories in the press and they feel a massive sense of injustice.
“We are inviting Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to our official launch on 14 December and we are going to say to him that in many trusts when people raise concerns they are not well supported. We need someone who is external to the trust who can independently investigate issues brought to their attention and ensure that whistleblowers are not victimised for raising their concerns. We are also concerned that a number of managers are breaching the law by forking out hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation but they are never held accountable for their mismanagement of the situation.”
Patients First, is campaigning for:
- A legal duty for staff to act on concerns raised by staff.
- A ban on compromise agreements which gag whistleblowers
- Greater transparency: a requirement for NHS organisations to publish their costs in fighting legal battles to silence whistleblowers.
- Reform of the Care Quality Commission or the introduction of an independent patient safety body with extensive legal powers of investigation and the ability to bring prosecutions if necessary.
- Reform of employment law – the statutory cap on unfair dismissal claims needs to be removed along with the ‘good faith’ test for whistleblowers . Currently claimants in an employment tribunal may lose their case if they do not raise their concern ‘in good faith’.
- A review by the Health Select Committee of the approach the NHS has taken against whistleblowing.
Tags: Whistleblowing
Good luck to Patients First! But there should be no need for such a group if managers and their employers behaved properly.
It is the DUTY of all professional staff to report any activity (or lack of it) that puts the care of a patient at risk. It is disgraceful that any employer should impose a ‘gagging clause’ on anyone; whatever happened to ‘freedom of speech’? Of course it would be easy to say that the whistleblower should not signn such a clause; but it is equally easy to understand the pressure they are under when their whole career is at stake.
Certainly there are a few vindictive troublemakers who falsely accuse some staff of ‘maltreatment’ of patients; but they can usually be dealt with speedily (because rarely has a patient been put at risk). But there have been too many ’scandals’ in recent years where patients have suffered because ‘the powers that be’ have chosen to ignore the warning signs and the explicit detailed accounts of whistleblowers.
Is ther no way of obtaining the details of correspondence &/or the sums paid (and legal costs) under the ‘Freedom of Information Act’?
The profession must stand firm and support those who ‘blow the whistle’ on behalf of patients. There is no place for a ‘cover up’ culture in medicine!
Retired Orthopod