Tuesday 5 July 2011

Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP gets Parliamentary Health Select Committee inquiry on whistleblowers

We are very pleased that hard working Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP has been successful in obtaining agreement from Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell for an inquiry into NHS whistleblowers. Dr Rita Pal, veteran whistleblower (ward 87, North Staffordshire) alerted Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell of problems associated with doing the right thing for the patients in a dysfunctional system of medical regulation.

Dr Rita Pal, North Staffordshire whistleblower (care of the elderly in Ward 87) with help of Rt Hon Andre Mitchell MP managed to get a committeemen from Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell:

"The committee will look into whistleblowers. It is every professional's business to ensure that clinical care where they work is of a certain standard. Like Sir Ian Kennedy said after the Bristol babies inquiry: 'It wasn't that nobody knew, it was that everybody knew.' Every doctor and nurse has an obligation to act if they know there is a problem and those who do nothing should be questioned by their regulator; it would soon stop this kind of thing."

We agree.

However, we do know that when we inform medical regulator, regulator can turn nasty towards whistleblower too, so some measures would have to be introduced to deal with regulators' wrongdoing. The first such measure would be for regulators to agree to consent order for whistleblower's rehabilitation where regulator wrongly persecuted whistleblower and introduced sanctions against their professional practice. This would allow High Court to quash GMC findings, for example.

Another measure would be financial fines for regulator who treats whistleblowers badly. I learned, for example, from training unwilling men to do housework that it was easier to achieve my goal by asking them to contribute towards cleaners' salary that to give them lectures on feminism or to manipulate them by cooking nice meals for them (I am a good cook).

Doctors4Justice has campaigned for a couple of years now for improvements in regulation of medical profession. We have produced several papers on whistleblowing. Here is one:
http://www.doctors4justice.net/2010/03/whistleblowing-in-uk-problems-and.html

Read Sir Ian Kennedy's Witness Statement to Staffordshire Public Inquiry HERE.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is evidence of Dr Rital Pals's
persistence and diligence. GMC must NOW stop taking any more dictations from the NHS Managers and set a precedence not to reverse complaints against whistleblowers. NHS Medical Managers and senior doctors still get preferential treatment.

I suggest this wellcome news should be passed over to Wikileaks and all newspapers.

Anonymous said...

Doctors like Rita Pal and Peter Wilmshurst should be in parliament and they will look good as MPs,Lords and Baroness Pal.