Intended for healthcare professionals

Letters Staff treatment when things go wrong

Focus on what went wrong, not who might be blamed

BMJ 2016; 355 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i5859 (Published 08 November 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;355:i5859
  1. Bill Kirkup, former chair
  1. Morecambe Bay Investigation, Gateshead, UK
  1. bkirkup{at}blueyonder.co.uk

Oliver makes excellent points about NHS complaint handling.1 We are caught in a lock that is hard to break.

On one hand, in investigations that I have done, those who had suffered harm understood that healthcare is complex, risky, and demanding and that things go wrong sometimes. They didn’t blame clinicians for …

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