Healthcare staff struggled to speak out long before COVID-19. They need help to so now (11 June 2020)

Summary

While healthcare workers fight on behalf of us all against COVID-19, they can still risk their jobs for blowing the whistle on dangerous practices and wrongdoing. In fact whistleblowing and the global crisis caused by COVID-19 are closely intertwined.

We know from staff at whistleblower helplines that healthcare is the sector from which they get most calls. But it can be extremely difficult for healthcare staff to effectively report problems. 

In this blog, Professor Kate Kenny and Professor Marianna Fotaki discuss how drawing attention to wrongdoing and risks has long been a problem, forcing staff to become whistleblowers, often at high personal cost to themselves. However, healthcare whistleblowers need help to speak out, now more than ever now, when timely disclosures can help prevent major disasters. Building transparent and fit-for-purpose channels for disclosing and preventing wrongdoing is key for achieving this. Senior healthcare managers, politicians, and unions must also fight hard to be the voices of frontline healthcare staff who struggle to draw attention to serious issues they encounter at work.