Fewer NHS staff feel able to raise clinical safety concerns, data show

The number of NHS staff who feel able to raise concerns about clinical safety has fallen for the second year in a row, an analysis of NHS staff survey data has shown.

A report by the NHS’s National Guardian’s Office, which represents local “freedom to speak up guardians” who help NHS workers to raise concerns, said that staff were increasingly disillusioned and that they believed that speaking up was “futile,” which had “worrying implications for patient safety.”

For the report the authors analysed results from more than 600 000 responses to the 2022 NHS staff survey …