NHS Whistleblowers will be offered more support

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has promised to introduce measures that will strengthen protection for staff whistleblowers.

This promise comes in the wake of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital scandal that saw more than 450 patients being killed over a 14 year period after being prescribed incorrect doses of painkillers.

Mr Hancock apologised for the “systemic failure to respond to terrible behaviour.”

The new plan would require all NHS Trusts in England to regularly report on how they address any staff or patient concerns that they receive.

Furthermore, the plan would also see the introduction of medical examiners who would be used to investigate any non-coronial deaths.

The aim is to allow NHS staff to be able to report any concerns more confidently, which in turn should result in errors being highlighted and responded to in a much shorter amount of time. Increasing transparency, increasing drug control and investigating every hospital death should prevent a scandal like that of the Gosport scandal from ever happening again.

In 2015, guardians were appointed to any staff who wanted to address concerns over patient safety. These guardians were brought in by the government in order to protect and support NHS staff. However, there is not much evidence to suggest that this ever made a positive difference on staff.

Amanda Cavanagh, a Medical Negligence Specialist at Ashtons Legal, says: “It is incredible that despite gagging clauses being “unacceptable” since 2013, the government still has to come up with “new schemes”. The truth of the matter is lessons are not being learnt. Staff are still keeping quiet for fear of reprisal or some misplaced loyalty. Errors are not being identified, early admissions are not being made, all of which adds to the already overburdened staff and under resourced NHS. Is it fair to blame individual staff for these failures? In an ideal world with properly funded resources available would these errors still occur on such a grand scale, probably not?”