Blaming individuals for care failures is sometimes the right response (HSJ, 6 February 2026)

Summary

The report published this week by Great Ormond Street Hospital, showing that surgeon Yaser Jabbar harmed close to 100 children between 2017 and 2022, should be an urgent wake-up call for the NHS, writes James Titcombe in a commentary for HSJ. The Great Ormond Street scandal exposes a growing imbalance in NHS patient safety policy. In moving away from blame, the system has also lost sight of individual competence, leadership responsibility, and the non-negotiables needed to prevent serious harm. James wants leaders to:

• Foster a problem-sensing culture in which safety concerns are reported, escalated, and acted upon.
• Ensure systems are in place to proactively monitor and benchmark safety performance.
• Ensure evidence-based practices and interventions known to reduce patient safety risk are implemented.
• Learn meaningfully from previous harm – moving beyond the rhetoric of “lessons learned” to auditable actions and demonstrable change.
• Be honest with patients and the public when things go wrong, and be proactively open about known risks.