Ockenden report: the refusal of our healthcare service to take patient experience seriously (BMJ, 1 April 2022)

Summary

In March 2015, Bill Kirkup published his report on avoidable harm in maternity services at the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. His introduction carried a warning: “It is vital that the lessons, now plain to see, are learnt... by other Trusts, which must not believe that ‘it could not happen here.’”

With the publication of the Ockenden report, we now know that one of those other Trusts was the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust. 

“For more than two decades,” Donna Ockenden wrote, “they [famiies] have tried to raise concerns but were brushed aside, ignored and not listened to.”

But why should patients and families have had to show that kind of courage in the first place?

Instead of seeing patient feedback as a foundation stone of high quality, evidence based care, healthcare providers too often see it as a threat writes Miles Sibley in this BMJ Editorial.