Posts Tagged ‘Bullying’

Sacked Polish consultant wins record payout

By Francesca Robinson - 20th December 2011 9:22 am

A record payout of nearly £4.5 million awarded to a senior doctor for workplace discrimination and unfair dismissal exposes the bullying culture that can still exist in the NHS, claims the BMA.

Dr Eva Michalak, 53, who worked as a consultant physician at Pontefract General Infirmary, was found by an industrial tribunal to have been a victim of a sustained campaign of race and sex discrimination

A hearing to decide compensation heard that Michalak had suffered from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, was unable to accomplish everyday tasks and was suicidal as a result of her treatment by three senior managers, including the medical director, at the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust.

The award, the highest compensation award in 45 years of discrimination cases, reflects Michalak’s severe psychological injury and her likely inability to ever be able to return to normal working. The majority of the award was for future loss of earnings (almost £942,000) and pension benefits (over £666,000). It also includes £30,000 for injury to feelings; £56,000 for psychiatric injury; £4,000 in exemplary damages; over £43,000 for the past cost of care for her and her young son, whom she became unable to look after; over £31,000 for the estimated cost of future care; and £50,000 for medical treatment.

Last year the Leeds employment tribunal heard that Michalak, who moved from Poland to practise in the UK in April 2002 had taken maternity leave shortly after her appointment.

While she was away, her colleagues were paid extra to cover additional responsibilities, despite a locum being hired to cover her role.

In reality the extra workload was low and when Michalak returned to work she asked to receive the same amount. She alleged sex discrimination when she was refused. This led to her becoming unpopular at work, the tribunal judgement said.

This resulted in a concerted campaign designed to bring her employment with the trust to an end. She began to receive complaints and criticism against her, and was accused of bullying junior doctors. It led to a “bogus” disciplinary procedure being adopted and an unjustified and lengthy suspension leading to her dismissal in 2008.

The trust’s medical director, Dr David Dawson, consultant physician Dr Collin White, and the human resources manager Dianne Nicholls were ordered along with the trust to pay Michalak £4,452,206.60. Michalak had originally claimed £9m.

The payout comes as Mid Yorkshire is battling to make savings of £31m and has warned it will need a £14m bailout to balance its books.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said: “Dr Michalak has been treated appalling by Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust and it is right that she has been compensated for the extreme suffering she has experienced.

“While the trust’s behaviour is not representative of all NHS employers it does reveal that a bullying culture exists in the health service. It is essential that hospital trusts have systems in place to counteract bullying and that staff feel able to speak out against harassment.”

Michalak’s husband Dr Julian DeHavilland, a research scientist who gave up work and studied employment law to represent his wife, said: “This payout is not a win. Any happiness and joy she had has diminished because she does not enjoy life in the way a happy person can. She is now very reclusive and the slightest thing can make her very upset.

“I think we are supposed to receive the full amount the tribunal awarded, but we will have to write a cheque out for £2m in tax.”

Trust chief executive Julia Squire said an independent review commissioned after the tribunal judgement found no evidence of widespread discrimination at the trust.

She said: “We have unreservedly apologised to Dr Michalak for mistakes of the past and I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that apology in public.”

Paul Daniels, lawyer and partner at Russell Jones & Walker, said : “The award is so high due to a ‘perfect storm’ of factors including a serious case of sex and race discrimination, the claimant suffering a devastating psychiatric illness, preventing her from ever working again, and even requiring a personal carer, together with the loss of a very well paid medical job and pension at a relatively young age. The tribunal found there were a number of deliberate falsehoods and lies by the trust witnesses.”

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Posted in Hospital Dr News | 3 Comments »

Too old to have my GMC prejudices challenged

By Bob Bury - 26th May 2010 4:55 pm

I’ve got to go to a bullying and harassment course. Two and a half bloody hours. I thought the consultants’ forum on the trust intranet would be buzzing with ripe comments from disgruntled refuseniks, but no. A number of colleagues felt it was a good and necessary thing. And some of them were - wait for it - surgeons!

For God’s sake - when I sat the FRCS nearly 35 years ago, we had to do a whole module in bullying - methods; choosing a victim; deflecting the blame, that sort of thing. How times must have changed*. And anyway, I do rather resent the implication that I might be bullying our SpRs. No, as long as my tea and toast is waiting for me when I arrive in the morning, my car gets valeted once a week and they hand over their dinner money every day, the lazy little gobshites have nothing to fear from me.

Incidentally, it looks like being an interesting week for anyone who questions the GMC’s competence (i.e. anyone on the Medical Register). I see they’ve just struck Andrew Wakefield off for paying children to give blood as part of a research project for which he didn’t have the appropriate ethical clearance, and in which he had an undeclared financial interest.

Then there was the shock/horror programme on the telly about their ‘victimisation’ of Dr Myhill who was only doing her best for her patients. For those of us with a natural and, I believe, justified antipathy to the Hallam Street mafia, these cases make interesting reading. The initial reaction is to hope they get a good media kicking over the Myhill case, then you read her website and begin to wonder if they don’t have a point. Which would mean they had got it right twice in one week. I’m at an age where it’s unsettling to have your prejudices challenged in this way.

But to get back to the bullying course: one reluctant potential participant asked if our masters couldn’t make it an e-learning course, like all the other (hand-washing and bottom-wiping nonsense) training we have to pretend to absorb in order to get appraised, or revalidated, or canonised, or whatever it is we have to be in order to continue doing our jobs. But the answer was “no” - you have to be there in person apparently. And you know what that means, don’t you? Sodding role-playing. Well, I don’t do role-playing, not since I grew up, anyway (although I don’t suppose it will be a problem for the surgeons). I’m going to have to do something I haven’t done for 50 years; forge a note from my mum excusing me on the grounds of my innate diffidence and good taste.

And anyway - bullying is good for them.

*On the other hand, perhaps they haven’t. See Jerry Nelson’s latest column.

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How a bullying culture can be contagious

By Katherine Teale - 8th March 2010 1:02 pm

It’s one crisis after another. Not only is my husband facing possible redundancy, but my daughter has had an incident of cyber bullying.

Her latest craze is the Moshi Monsters website, which allows preteens to spend their evenings sending misspelt messages to friends they’ve just spent all day with, instead of getting on with their homework. Inevitably this leads to tears.

Our deputy head has spoken severely on the subject of cyber bullying on Facebook where apparently “4 letter” words were being used by some of Year 6.

My daughter has a firm idea of what constitutes bullying (“someone saying something nasty about you”) but unfortunately it’s not always so simple. It’s got to the point where you can’t actually raise your voice above a soothing whisper without being accused of harassment. Like any word which you repeat often enough, the word bullying has become practically meaningless.

That’s not to say ‘real’ bullying doesn’t go on. The only surprising thing about the bullying in Downing Street debacle is that anyone was surprised by it.

Fans of In the Loop like me, have known for ages that bullying is endemic in politics. Perhaps it’s something about the sort of people who get on in Whitehall - kindness and politeness probably don’t get you very far.

Just imagine the atmosphere when the minister realises their pet policy has failed or the media questions their ‘non-dom’ status - our dreaded senior managers’ meetings must seem like a WI coffee morning by comparison.

The problem is that, just as in a school staff room, a toxic atmosphere at the top filters all the way down - the hyper-aggressive attitude to targets is transferred from Whitehall to SHAs, to hospital executives, to middle management, and finally to us at the coal face.

But let’s be careful what we mean by bullying. Recently a consultant surgeon wrote a letter to BMA News because his clinical director kept sending him emails telling him to roll his sleeves up on the ward round, in compliance with trust policy. These repeated demands constituted, in his view, bullying and harassment.

I disagree. Bullying is not being told to do something which your trust has accepted as policy, but which you, personally, happen to disagree with. Nor is it, for instance, being asked to stay late to finish a list (as overtime) provided saying “no” isn’t penalised, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

The toxic atmosphere of hospital management does, however, lead to a certain scenario: that of middle managers being expected to meet impossible targets and being criticised for their inevitable failure; these middle managers then repeatedly ask frontline staff to do extra work and become extremely stressed and angry when those staff refuse; and, frontline staff become stressed about constantly being asked to do extra work and either don’t perform well, or go off sick.

I’m sure many of us recognise this. How much of this constitutes real bullying I’m not sure, but it certainly creates massive amounts of unhappiness.

My daughter’s bullying episode was easily solved - a quick call to her friend’s mother, a couple of nice messages posted (“boys aren’t worth falling out over”) and an early night with her favourite reading material (the Argos catalogue) and everything was forgotten.

Now I just need as clean a solution for work…

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Posted in Katherine Teale | 3 Comments »

Accountability must cut both ways with allegations

By Stephen Campion, HCSA chief executive - 14th September 2009 12:15 pm

It has been a busy weekend. I successfully searched for a ten-year supply of 100 watt light bulbs before the European bureaucrats turn off the supply.

I then stocked the cellar with a liberal quantity of “promotional offer” red wine before the BMA persuades the government that such luxuries should be banned. Time well spent.

But then it became really busy. For some reason a number of people used the weekend to contact me with a problem that seems to bedevil the NHS. The subject? Bullying, harassment and allegations of racism.

E-mails and telephone calls came from both alleged perpetrators and victims of what I hope we all believe should have no part to play either in society or the workplace. But the reality is that it does. And that worries me.

Dealing with these lengthy, complex and at times distasteful allegations I could not help but come back to one word - accountability. Those making such allegations are of course perfectly entitled to do so; it must be right to conduct a thorough investigation and bring the perpetrator to book where the evidence justifies the complaint.

That is what (hopefully) trust policies and procedures and indeed legislation is there to provide. Sadly, these are not always followed.

Conversely though some allegations are made without taking proper advice and can be based on spurious motives. By then considerable damage has been done to reputation, health and in some cases careers. Alleged victims and perpetrators should both have a duty of accountability. That accountability cuts both ways; to act in a manner consistent with the standards that society demands and, at the same time, not to hide behind the cloak of damaging accusations simply for ulterior motives.

Sorry to be so serious this week. We may not be able to influence the European bureaucrats or indeed the BMA on the availability of our favourite tipple. But this issue of accountability is one that we must influence; both to protect the innocent and safeguard the vulnerable.

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DH will probe East Mids bullying claims

HSJ - 29th July 2009 11:06 am

The Department of Health is to launch an independent review into allegations of bullying and harassment against East Midlands strategic health authority.

The allegations were made following a row over targets that led to the departure of a hospital trust chair.

United Lincolnshire Hospitals trust chair David Bowles was suspended last week, he says, having told NHS East Midlands and the Appointments Commission he intended to resign.

Trust chief executive Gary Walker is on sick leave with stress and did not attend Tuesday’s trust annual meeting.

In separate letters, Mr Bowles and Mr Walker both asked NHS chief executive David Nicholson to step in.

Read more at HSJ.

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