Elizabeth Adams, Iwan Lewis-Jones, Zarko Alfirevic, Robert MacDonald, Feroza Dawood, Shuba Mallaiah et al
Adams E, Lewis-Jones I, Alfirevic Z, MacDonald R, Dawood F, Mallaiah S et al.
18 Liverpool consultants reply
BMJ 2009; 339 :b4981
doi:10.1136/bmj.b4981
Safety & clinical governance
A clinical diagnosis may be satisfactory on the day, but may be in
error in retrospect, a realisation which may be delayed by years. The
eighteen consultants' first sentence in their letter rebutting
Bousefield's points is about safety, and they later use the NHS sacrosanct
phrase 'clinical governance' as an imprimatur that all is well in the
trust.
Would other trusts feel that the lack of a blood bank, for example,
sited in such an important unit would be acceptable on safety grounds for
their clinical governance procedures?
The publicised events at Basildon over the last days might suggest
that a satisfactory assessment initially might be deemed otherwise a
little later
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests