We hope to build a whistleblowing portal to allow NHS staff to speak up, to make the NHS safer for patients and for themselves.
We hope to build a whistleblowing portal to allow NHS staff to tell us about problems in the NHS safely, so that we can bring important information into the public domain and push for change to safeguard patients and staff. We would like to build and trial the whistleblowing portal for 12 months, and we're hoping that you can help.
The problem
EveryDoctor believes that NHS patients deserve the highest standards of care and patient safety; we also believe that when things go wrong (we all make mistakes) openness, transparency and candour are crucial; without this no learning happens, nothing improves and patients and staff remain at risk.
Acknowledging that something has gone wrong requires courage, understanding, compassion and support. Unfortunately, all too often NHS staff are not offered these things. Many NHS staff have been subjected to a witch hunt, tracked down and punished for speaking up about systematic failures that have compromised patient safety within the organisation they work for.
An example of really appalling behaviour by trusts towards a doctor who blew the whistle about patient safety matters include attempting to fingerprint and obtain handwriting samples from doctors that were "suspected" of being the source - see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-59597801. I
Our solution
EveryDoctor has expertise in the law that governs speaking up and whistleblowing, as well as a wealth of experience in working with the media. We are in a great position to help those who want to speak up do so safely.
In the current system senior NHS executives and government ministers are all too often more concerned about their own (or their institution’s) reputation rather than publicly admitting that something has gone wrong. So many of the safety problems that occur are the result of systemic failings at the highest level; the entire system has been chronically underfunded since 2010 but the government does not want to admit it; this exerts pressure on senior NHS executives to try to provide a safe service with inadequate resources but they in turn are unwilling to criticise the government publicly. The system is broken and in reality it is more often than not left to healthcare workers to raise the alarm; we believe it is vital that when an NHS worker is concerned about patient safety, and their employer and/or the government has failed to act on their concerns, they have somewhere to go that is safe.
That is why we are building our own Whistleblowing Portal and this is why we are asking for your help. At this stage we are aiming to raise enough funds to run the project for 12 months and then we will review it. If successful, we hope to build the portal quickly, and "go live" in the middle of April 2023.
How can you help?
In order to ensure that the Portal is absolutely secure, and that those who use it are completely protected, we need to put in place a structure that will, inevitably, cost money.
The key elements that we need are:
The first element need not be expensive, but we estimate this + the cost of the staff time required to set up and manage the interface will be around £10,000 per year.
We believe that this is essential work for healthcare workers and the patients they care for. There is no place for cover ups and “reputation management” in the NHS; safety has to be the number one priority and we must be able to hold organisations and the Government to account for any failings. Together, we must ensure that any failings result in learning and improvement of the whole system for everyone.
Thank you for your overwhelming support so far.
Dr Julia Patterson, and the EveryDoctor team.
Any funds exceeding our crowdfund target will be used to continue our work fighting for a better NHS for all NHS staff and patients.
This project successfully funded on 28th March 2023