Speaking up requires a supportive organisational culture to be effective

Frontline staff are well placed to identify failings in care, but speaking up requires a supportive organisational culture to be effective, say Russell Mannion and Huw Davies in a recent analysis published in the BMJ.

Concerns about care are raised and ignored, staff are denigrated or bullied, the situation escalates into whistleblowing to outside authorities, and eventually, often years later, a formal inquiry is set up to get to the bottom of things. The long line of inquiries in the UK and elsewhere highlights the sentinel role of staff “speaking up” when they see unsafe or poor quality care.  But exhortations to speak up (encapsulated by the statutory duty of candour introduced in the NHS after the Francis inquiries into failures at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust) belie the complexity and ambiguity that it creates for staff.

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Source: BMJ, 19 August 2019