Chris Elston

We have had quite an eventful few weeks in the NHS in England, much of it not very pretty. There have been reports of a consultant dismissed from a Trust for raising concerns about safety, and, following a well-reported series of events, an experienced and essential clinician leaving the workforce. Then there were the events in Manchester where a nurse has been convicted of murdering seven children and the attempted murder of another six children. This despite the raising of concerns by not one, not two but seven senior clinicians. They faced the now repeatedly seen series of actions where they were not believed, faced counteraccusations and threatened with being reported to their regulators. Now we have the inevitable fall out, an incoming inquiry and, no doubt, the same or very similar themes to the many inquiries that have happened in the past. There has been much discussion about these events on social media, mostly focused on Lucy Letby, about patient safety, the actions that people should have taken and reasons why they did not. However, in this blog, I am choosing to look at things from a slightly different perspective, that of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF). 

Chris Elston, Patient Safety Education Lead for University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, introduces a new network that is being set up for colleagues in similar roles.