Editorial
The whistle-blower’s charter n 12 June 1992, the Secretary of State for Health, Mrs Virginia Bottomley, announced an amnesty for nurse and doctor whistle-blowers. The proposals in cluded the instigation of an administrative body to which the aggrieved nurse, midwife, health visitor or doctor may have redress, culminating in contact with the Chief Executive of the NHS, Duncan Nicol. We have yet to learn of the details of this body, the constitu ents of its membership, the extent of its power and other minutiae. This has no doubt been jettisoned into action by the Graham Pink case, recent media interest and the socalled ‘gagging’ clauses in nurses’ and doctors’ contracts of employment. The Secretary of State and the Depart ment of Health will have to think long and hard about the implications for both professionals’ and patients’ morale if the present situation is allowed to continue within the NHS at the grassroots level of care. Cynics have already labelled the proposal' ‘The Gagger’s Charter’, but others could equally well reply ‘well they would, wouldn’t they?’ Ultimately, the acid test for this proposal is whether or not it will really work. It is all very well paying lipservice to the grum blers, but to achieve total fairness and balance, the body must be given real power so that it can take up recom mendations made by its own committee(s) after a whistle-blower’s genuine complaint. This will enable the body to scotch bad practice/management or inept finan cial priorities and practices as soon as possible. If it fails to do this it will lose its credibility instantly and become yet another Government ‘quango’ with all the force and power of an academic flea. By contrast, it has to achieve credibility by ensuring that the practitioner who cries wolf is flushed out at an early stage. To allow spurious or disingenous com plaints through the system will only serve to weaken the body’s own constitution. It could also have the com mensurate result of draining the staff and/or financial resources of a trust or health authority unnecessarily. Thus the body’s judgment has to be extremely sound and, notwithstanding the recent designation of court judgments, almost beyond criticism or fault. Take a frequent example of the frustration under which a large number of nurses in the UK presently practise: a short-staffed 31-bedded geriatric or ‘long term’ medical ward; two staff are on afternoon duty; the patients are heavy in weight or confused in behav iour or both. What to do? The nurse in charge telephones a senior manager or someone more junior if it is a weekend. The nurse rings several times but the answer on each occasion is that there are no extra staff in the form of jobbers or runners, bank or agency staff. Why not? It could be genuine financial constraint or inept management. This type of case was dealt with successfully in 1984 when the U K C C ’s Professional Conduct Committee
O
British Journal of Nursing, 1992. Voi I, No 6
(PCC) removed from the register a nursing officer who was found to be inept, and who had been reported by several ward sisters in his unit for failing to provide sufficient staff cover on their wards. Returning to the example, the nurse in question com plains ‘a la Pink’ to this particular body. The complaint is found to be genuine and true although it would have been better if the complainant had made a brief contem poraneous note of the telephone call(s) and the ensuing action taken. Now what can this body do? Order that the trust or health authority in question spends more money on extra nursing staff, thus diminishing funds allocated else where with the effect of an overspend at the end of the financial year? Will the Secretary of State or the Department of Health acknowledge this by injections of funds into the relevant areas, e.g. the subjects of the complaint? Will they allow greater funding to nurse edu cation so that practitioners need only practise in areas where they are both safe and competent. This is another area of professional abuse and one that will be open to greater abuse in time to come by reason of the exten sion of the registered nurse’s practice into quasi-medi cine or surgery? And what of the nurse general manager’s hitherto lack of support for whistle-blowers? Will this body have the strength to recommend disciplinary action before the U K C C ’s PCC? Who can tell? Time alone will reveal. Meanwhile, for those of us who occasionally lecture nurses and others on the law and practice, I can only hope that something positive will crystallize from these proposals. I want to stop being left speechless at the end of a session in which I have urged my audience to report bad practices of this nature when I am told by a sea of innocent faces: ‘Why should we? We’ll get the sack. Look what happen ed to Graham Pink . . Karen Rea Barrister an d RGN 1 Sergeant’s Inn Temple London
Correspondence If you have any comments on -this or any other article in the journal, please write to:
Managing Editor British Journal of Nursing Croxted Mews 288 Croxted Road London SE24 9DA
271
Downloaded from magonlinelibrary.com by 129.215.017.188 on January 11, 2019.
The whistle-blower’s charter n 12 June 1992, the Secretary of State for Health, Mrs Virginia Bottomley, announced an amnesty for nurse and doctor whistle-blowers. The proposals in cluded the instigation of an administrative body to which the aggrieved nurse, midwife, health visitor or doctor may have redress, culminating in contact with the Chief Executive of the NHS, Duncan Nicol. We have yet to learn of the details of this body, the constitu ents of its membership, the extent of its power and other minutiae. This has no doubt been jettisoned into action by the Graham Pink case, recent media interest and the socalled ‘gagging’ clauses in nurses’ and doctors’ contracts of employment. The Secretary of State and the Depart ment of Health will have to think long and hard about the implications for both professionals’ and patients’ morale if the present situation is allowed to continue within the NHS at the grassroots level of care. Cynics have already labelled the proposal' ‘The Gagger’s Charter’, but others could equally well reply ‘well they would, wouldn’t they?’ Ultimately, the acid test for this proposal is whether or not it will really work. It is all very well paying lipservice to the grum blers, but to achieve total fairness and balance, the body must be given real power so that it can take up recom mendations made by its own committee(s) after a whistle-blower’s genuine complaint. This will enable the body to scotch bad practice/management or inept finan cial priorities and practices as soon as possible. If it fails to do this it will lose its credibility instantly and become yet another Government ‘quango’ with all the force and power of an academic flea. By contrast, it has to achieve credibility by ensuring that the practitioner who cries wolf is flushed out at an early stage. To allow spurious or disingenous com plaints through the system will only serve to weaken the body’s own constitution. It could also have the com mensurate result of draining the staff and/or financial resources of a trust or health authority unnecessarily. Thus the body’s judgment has to be extremely sound and, notwithstanding the recent designation of court judgments, almost beyond criticism or fault. Take a frequent example of the frustration under which a large number of nurses in the UK presently practise: a short-staffed 31-bedded geriatric or ‘long term’ medical ward; two staff are on afternoon duty; the patients are heavy in weight or confused in behav iour or both. What to do? The nurse in charge telephones a senior manager or someone more junior if it is a weekend. The nurse rings several times but the answer on each occasion is that there are no extra staff in the form of jobbers or runners, bank or agency staff. Why not? It could be genuine financial constraint or inept management. This type of case was dealt with successfully in 1984 when the U K C C ’s Professional Conduct Committee
O
British Journal of Nursing, 1992. Voi I, No 6
(PCC) removed from the register a nursing officer who was found to be inept, and who had been reported by several ward sisters in his unit for failing to provide sufficient staff cover on their wards. Returning to the example, the nurse in question com plains ‘a la Pink’ to this particular body. The complaint is found to be genuine and true although it would have been better if the complainant had made a brief contem poraneous note of the telephone call(s) and the ensuing action taken. Now what can this body do? Order that the trust or health authority in question spends more money on extra nursing staff, thus diminishing funds allocated else where with the effect of an overspend at the end of the financial year? Will the Secretary of State or the Department of Health acknowledge this by injections of funds into the relevant areas, e.g. the subjects of the complaint? Will they allow greater funding to nurse edu cation so that practitioners need only practise in areas where they are both safe and competent. This is another area of professional abuse and one that will be open to greater abuse in time to come by reason of the exten sion of the registered nurse’s practice into quasi-medi cine or surgery? And what of the nurse general manager’s hitherto lack of support for whistle-blowers? Will this body have the strength to recommend disciplinary action before the U K C C ’s PCC? Who can tell? Time alone will reveal. Meanwhile, for those of us who occasionally lecture nurses and others on the law and practice, I can only hope that something positive will crystallize from these proposals. I want to stop being left speechless at the end of a session in which I have urged my audience to report bad practices of this nature when I am told by a sea of innocent faces: ‘Why should we? We’ll get the sack. Look what happen ed to Graham Pink . . Karen Rea Barrister an d RGN 1 Sergeant’s Inn Temple London
Correspondence If you have any comments on -this or any other article in the journal, please write to:
Managing Editor British Journal of Nursing Croxted Mews 288 Croxted Road London SE24 9DA
271
Downloaded from magonlinelibrary.com by 129.215.017.188 on January 11, 2019.
