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File on 4: Whistling in the Wind: The NHS doctors sacked after raising concerns

20/02/2024

Whistling in the Wind: The NHS doctors sacked after raising concerns

BBC Radio 4 - File on 4, Whistling in the Wind: The NHS doctors sacked after raising concerns

The NHS whistleblowers punished for raising concerns.

How NHS whistleblowers are punished for raising concerns about bad practice and bad practitioners in the NHS.

Lucy Letby was allowed to continue working with new-born babies despite her colleagues raising concerns about her for months. Her conviction highlighted how NHS executives put the reputation of the Countess of Chester NHS Trust ahead of patient safety. But what happened in Cheshire was far from a one-off. File on 4 hears from doctors with unblemished medical careers who were sacked after raising patient safety concerns. The programme follows one medic through an Employment Tribunal as he attempts to save his career, and hears the emotional, brutal toll the process takes on him. For the first time, a top doctor who won record damages talks about the extraordinary steps her managers took to undermine her. Their tactics included relocating her to an empty office with a broken chair and telling colleagues that she agreed with their assessment she was incompetent. And a former NHS executive tells the programme that trusts are more interested in “flying LGBT flags” than tackling concerns about patient safety. With widespread calls for NHS managers to be regulated, File on 4 asks who should take on the role, given the willingness of the NHS to redeploy managers found to have ignored patient safety concerns, or even punished those who dared to raise them. 

Reporter: Michael Buchanan
Producer: Katie Langton
Editor: Carl Johnston

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