NHS culture change needed, BMA says

Mar 15 2013

A new culture is "urgently" required in the health service in the wake of the scandal in Mid Staffordshire, doctors' leaders in Scotland have said.

Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland have unanimously called for doctors to be able to "raise concerns about patient safety free of bullying and harassment".

The motion, which has been approved at the BMA Scotland annual GP conference in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, comes in the wake of serious failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Patients there were routinely neglected and as many as 1,200 could have died needlessly as a result of maltreatment and neglect.

Dr Alan McDevitt, chairman of the BMA's Scottish GP committee, said: "Doctors across the UK have been deeply disturbed and saddened to hear how the series of failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust resulted in tragedy for so many patients and their families."

He warned: "While this happened in England, we in Scotland must not be complacent and instead share the lessons learned. It is essential that we all - politicians, NHS organisations, doctors, managers, nurses and patient groups - work together to develop a different kind of health service where the system will not tolerate poor quality of care.

"We must urgently develop a new culture - everyone working in the health service must play their part and be allowed to play their part."

Opening the debate, Dr Andrew Cowie, a GP in Tayside, said medical professionals could sometimes face bullying if they attempted to raise concerns.

He stated: "In practice, clinicians raising concerns are all too often treated as irritants.

"Frontline workers are all too often dissuaded - through learned helplessness after being ignored over and over again; by being saddled with the responsibility to solve any problems they raise themselves, or at worst by covert measures or even bullying to silence 'trouble-making' clinicians."

He said: "The events at Mid Staffordshire showed the NHS what happens if managers focus on cost efficiency and doctors focus on clinical outcomes, while no-one focuses on the patient experience."