Have you seen clinical practice that might need support?

Last month, the statutory Duty of Candour, which arose as one of the recommendations from the Francis Report, became a standard requirement for all NHS providers.

This means that organisations must be open and transparent with patients about their care and treatment, including when it goes wrong, and can be prosecuted if poor care is not reported.

This regulation comes into force at a time when we are seeing a steady drop in staff reporting incidents, yet serious incidents (SIs) are going up. This is a concern, as we are now seeing more SIs from patient complaints, rather than from our own staff.  You have all been brilliant when things have not gone to plan with patient care and treatment and have highlighted system or care issues to us in a timely manner.  Please continue to do this so we can ensure safe care for our patients and safe working for you as our staff and volunteers.

Poor patient care is the opposite of what we all do this job for and we must highlight any cases where this might be occurring. Whether this means self-evaluation of how we treat patients or discussing it with our colleagues, we sometimes need to review our work so that we are delivering the best possible clinical care to our patients.

If you are concerned by any areas of poor clinical practice or system failures, please tell us. It is our responsibility as clinicians to ensure this is acted upon and resolved, by making a DATIX report, which is available on East24, or speaking to your line manager. I hope we can see EEAST’s high standard of reporting culture return and our clinical care be of the best quality it can be which reflects the best of EEAST.

Tracy Nicholls
Director of Clinical Quality

Published 11th November 2014