Doctors declare ‘lack of confidence’ in trust board

The medical body at Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust has written to the trust’s chair saying that it is unable to provide safe care and expressing a lack of confidence in the board.

The letter, which has been seen by HSJ, is signed by 140 of doctors at the mental health provider. It claims the trust’s “clinical services are unable to provide good basic care and are unsafe”.

Significant criticism is reserved for the trust’s senior management, with the letter stating “there is a general dysfunction with perpetual changes of key staff in executive posts and ever increasing layers of management” and that “major decisions are frequently made by a handful of people at an executive level without clinical consultation”.

The letter continues: “Doctors are by and large used as clinical workhorses. Many carrying huge workloads and holding unacceptable clinical risks”.

The letter, first revealed by BBC Look East, asks for an urgent meeting with the chair and states that the medical body “lacks confidence in the executive board to resolve the plight of NSFT”.

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Source: HSJ, 10 August 2022