Register for this online webinar on Wednesday 24th March, 11.15-12.15

DAUK’s chair Dr Jenny Vaughan is an invited speaker at the Health Service Journal’s monthly webinar

“In a high-risk industry such as healthcare, small, accidental errors can usually have significant consequences – affecting the safety of both patients and staff. It’s no secret that a blame culture is prevalent across the sector due to years of focusing on individual failings rather than underlying systemic and organisational faults.

As NHS workers continue to go above and beyond to protect patients throughout the covid-19 crisis, leaders need to take steps to build an environment that demands fairness, openness and honesty; where staff feel confident and comfortable to speak up when things go wrong so that similar errors can be prevented, rather than fearing undue recrimination or reprisal for speaking out. 

How can leaders and managers invest personally and emotionally in the workplace culture to influence change and improve care during these extreme circumstances? 

What can you do to ensure you are working in the same reality as that of your teams? Understand the value of having leadership at all levels to drive change from the ground-up and remove barriers between ‘us and them.’”

Join this webinar to find out what support mechanisms you can put in place to create an empowering environment for staff to meet the unique challenges presented by covid-19.

Once among the sector’s top performers, it is now facing fundamental questions about its leaders’ conduct and its overall performance. It is very unusual for a provider to drop two ratings from a single inspection, and the change makes West Suffolk one of a very small number of trusts which have earned then lost an “outstanding” rating.

The rating downgrade follows ministers ordering NHS England and Improvement to launch a “rapid and independent” review into WSFT following concerns over how it handled an alleged “witch-hunt” for a whistleblower.

Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors’ Association UK, which campaigns for better working conditions for doctors, said: “The CQC’s findings have sadly tallied with what doctors on the frontline have told us, in particular, that ongoing patient safety concerns raised by clinicians have been dealt with in such a manner that staff no longer feel able to speak up.

“Despite this, dedicated staff at West Suffolk have spoken tirelessly of their commitment to patients, and we hope now that this report, in combination with the recently commissioned rapid review, will be the start of positive change within the trust.”

Excerpt from the HSJ, read the full article by Nick Kituno here.