Doctors must help foster a new culture in the NHS to end the climate of “fear, bullying and harassment” that allowed the Mid Staffordshire scandal to occur, the BMA’s chairman has urged.

Mark Porter said he was “profoundly disturbed and saddened” by the findings of Robert Francis QC’s public inquiry into the catastrophic failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust that led to the deaths of thousands of patients at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2009.

In a rallying call to the profession, Porter called for a new culture to be adopted by doctors and managers in the NHS that showed “zero tolerance to poor and dangerous care.”

The report—finally published on 6 February—said that too many doctors in Mid Staffordshire “kept their heads down” and did not pursue …