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What Can Nurses Do To Report Poor Care Within Their Workplace?

What Can Nurses Do To Report Poor Care Within Their Workplace?

There are safe ways to raise your concerns about healthcare conditions

ProNurse

A few months since the scandal of the Mid Staffordshire Hospital and there are more horror stories about above average death rates in hospitals and the neglect of patients.

Since the Mid Staffordshire Hospital hit the news, Margie Haywood, the nurse who filmed the footage of poor nursing standards for the BBC Panorama programme, was reinstated.

Judging by the comments on ProNurse about the recent findings it is obvious that nurses are not prepared to put all the blame on management. So how do you safely raise and escalate concerns? Is it worth the trouble you are bringing on yourself?

In our recent interview with nurse entrepreneur Dave Dawes we covered this difficult area:

ProNurse: You have lots of great quotes on your web site about breaking the mould and not being afraid to challenge the status quo – doesn’t this sort of behaviour run the risk of being seen as whistle blowing?

Dave Dawes: I explicitly don’t encourage whistle-blowing, I’ve coached a lot of people through that process. There are various ways of approaching problems in clinical areas and whistle-blowing involves going above your managers to the senior managers, to the media, to outside organisations and so on. There is inevitably a cost and it is almost guaranteed that you will not be able to work in your area afterwards.

The worst examples, and these are the ones we tend to hear about in the media, are where the person making the complaint don’t seem to have a plan. They see something and they immediately raise it in an unstructured way. They don’t get the support mechanisms behind them and often their career and their mental health deteriorates.

There are a lot of nurses who do it very successfully but you don’t hear about it as it has been handled well.

However, it can also be the people who don’t do anything about a problem that can suffer the most. If you look at examples like Bristol Royal Infirmary about 10 years ago where there were operations on kids who died needlessly, I think the people that came out worst there were the people who knew what was happening but didn’t say anything. They were the ones who tended to suffer through guilt afterwards. If you do speak up at least you get to think that at least you achieved something.

Response from the NMC on the NMC Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust and Basildon & Thurrock NHS Trust

The NMC Chief Executive and Registrar Dickon Weir-Hughes is quoted on the NMC web site as saying:

“As a nurse of over 30 years experience I know that nurses and midwives often work in difficult environments, however they are also responsible for upholding the principles within The code: Standards of conduct, performance and ethics for nurses and midwives. Within the code they are expected to manage risk and make the care of people their first concern.

“The code remains relevant throughout a nurse or midwife’s career so applies equally to those in senior leadership roles. We are now considering our course of action in accordance with the Nursing and Midwifery Order (2001).”

The following is a recent press release from the NMC on whistleblowing. Whilst it is short on the actual details of the process you need to follow it does provide contacts for you to discuss your situation with people outside of your workplace.

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