NHS whistleblower in West Suffolk will ‘never be the same again’

A whistleblower at the centre of a bullying scandal at West Suffolk hospital says she will “never be the same again” after being “pursued” by NHS managers when she raised concerns about a doctor injecting himself with drugs while on duty.

Dr Patricia Mills was exonerated last week in an independent NHS review that was highly critical of the way she was ignored and then subjected to disciplinary investigation that verged on “victimisation”.

The review, by Christine Outram, chair of the Christie NHS foundation trust, said Mills’s concerns about the self-injecting doctor were “well founded” and yet, instead of acting on them, managers subjected her to an investigation that lacked “fairness, balance and compassion”.

It included what Outram called the “incendiary” and “extremely ill-judged” demand to Mills and other doctors for fingerprint samples as part of a management hunt for an anonymous letter-writer who had tipped off a grieving family about a potentially botched operation.

“I do feel vindicated,” Mills, a 53-year-old anaesthetist, told the Guardian, but she said the 21-month investigation into her conduct, which was only formally dropped in September, has had a lasting impact.

“I will never be the same again. To be absolutely pursued like that by your employer inevitably has long-term consequences in terms of psychological wellbeing. It was an orchestrated campaign that really floored me.”

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Source: The Guardian, 17 December 2021