NHS employees covering up mistakes ‘should be prosecuted’

Chairman of the public inquiry into failures at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Robert Francis QC, recently released his findings after the year-long investigation. In doing so, he called for it to be made a criminal offence for NHS staff to hide information about poor standards of care, in news that will interest clients of Employee Management Ltd’s (http://www.employeemanagement.co.uk) human resource consultants in related sectors.

As part of 290 recommendations that Francis published in his report into an inquiry that found failures in leadership and culture, he said that prosecution should also be faced by health care staff failing to adhere to basic standards that lead to death or serious harm, declaring that a change of culture was needed in the health service to “make sure that patients come first”.

He proposed a code of conduct for senior NHS managers, with disqualification the consequence for code breaches, as well as a statutory obligation for a duty of candour among doctors and nurses, to encourage openness with patients about errors.

Francis said that as a result of poor personnel and leadership policies, some wards in Stafford offered “a completely inadequate standard of nursing”. “Appalling” levels of care at the hospital had already been uncovered in previous reviews, which established that the period between 2005 and 2008 saw between 400 and 1,200 more deaths than would have been expected.

Other recommended changes that may interest HR outsourcing clients included an increased focus on compassion in the recruiting, training and education of nurses, as well as all clinical staff being subjected to regular competence checks.

Dean Royales, director of NHS Employers, commented: “As a result of the inquiry all NHS organisations will be taking a hard look at their core HR approaches, and working on organisational development plans that will collectively affect the lives of the 1.3 million NHS employees and the millions of people who use our services each week.”

“This is going to be a major test of our HR community. But if we get it right we can turn what is undoubtedly a tragedy into an opportunity for exceptional staff engagement, driving improvement in patient safety, patient experience and patient outcomes that would be a fitting tribute to those who suffered.”

The news comes as new research of interest to many HR support clients was released by the CIPD, showing that only 21 per cent of employees in the public sector trusted their senior leaders and a mere 29 per cent were actively engaged – with only a third of workers having satisfaction with their ability to voice their concerns.

Such results suggest that public sector employers have a real need for robust whistle-blowing policies and procedures, as well as managers who are trained in their implementation and upkeep and staff members who feel confident in using them to report relevant issues in good faith. These are processes that the employment law specialists at Employee Management Ltd (http://www.employeemanagement.co.uk) have a strong track record of assisting in.

Editor’s Note: Employee Management Ltd (http://www.employeemanagement.co.uk) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.