NHS must listen to whistleblowers, says health secretary

The NHS must listen to whistleblowers and investigate their concerns in the interests of patient safety, the health secretary has said.

Victoria Atkins said she had asked officials to look into cases where there were claims of mistreatment of people who had spoken up about the issues they had experienced.

“It cannot be right that NHS management spends millions of pounds fighting doctors who have concerns over patients’ safety,” Atkins wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

“I will never put protecting reputations ahead of protecting patient safety. Every concern should be investigated, and every staff member should be free to raise them without fear of recrimination or damaging their career.”

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Atkins said it was a priority to develop a culture within the NHS that “encourages speaking out, protects whistleblowers, and always puts patient safety first”.

Atkins said each of England’s NHS trusts now had a dedicated member of staff known as a “freedom to speak up guardian”, to listen to and support staff who want to report concerns.

These guardians have already handled more than 100,000 cases and more than eight in 10 staff who spoke out to give feedback said they would feel comfortable doing so again, Atkins said. She said a national independent guardian and helpline service had also been set up.

Standardised background checks had been brought in for NHS board members, to prevent “irresponsible leaders from covering their tracks by jumping between organisations”, she said.

A review of the whistleblowing framework announced last year was continuing and evidence and next steps would be published in due course, she said.

She added: “I have asked my officials to look closely at these NHS whistleblower cases to identify the common themes and to consider what possible action could be taken to address the issues. This is to ensure a positive culture that encourages speaking out within the NHS becomes the norm, not the exception, across England.”

Atkins was responding to an investigation by the Telegraph into the NHS’s treatment of doctors and nurses who said they had been targeted after they raised concerns about patient safety.

Prof Phil Banfield, the chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) council, wrote in the same paper that doctors who raised issues were “often met with hostility and risk losing their careers”.

A doctor from Justice For Doctors, which was set up in 2019 to support medical professionals who feel targeted because of whistleblowing, said on Thursday the group had noticed “a pattern” of doctors who raise concerns being investigated themselves.

Dr Salam Al-Sam told the Patient Safety Conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London: “They say: ‘Concerns were raised against you, you are not allowed to practise until we’ve finished our internal investigation.’”