NHS whistleblowers need to be better protected by the law, says BMA

NHS whistleblowers need stronger legal protection to prevent hospitals using unfair disciplinary procedures to force out doctors who flag problems, the British Medical Association has said.

Doctors are being “actively vilified” for speaking out, which has resulted in threats to patient safety, including unnecessary deaths, according to the council chair of the doctors’ union, Phil Banfield.

Despite a series of scandals in recent years, it is becoming more common for hospitals to use legal tactics and “phoney investigations” to undermine or force out whistleblowers rather than address their concerns, he warned.

Banfield said: “Someone who raises concerns is automatically labelled a troublemaker. We have an NHS that operates in a culture of fear and blame. That has to stop because we should be welcoming concerns, we should be investigating when things are not right.

“Whistleblowers are pilloried because some NHS organisations believe the reputational hit is more dangerous than unsafe care,” he added. “Whereas the safety culture in aviation took off after some high-profile airplane crashes in the 70s, the difference is that the aviation industry embraced the need to put things right and understand the systems that led to the disaster – the NHS has not invested in solving the system, it’s been bogged down in blaming the individual instead of the mistake.”

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Source: The Guardian, 2 July 2023