The ‘nothing to see here’ culture pervades Scotland's public sector - leader comment
The people who always know best are those on the frontline, not those sitting in an office drafting a reputation-saving statement
Scotland’s Patient Safety Commissioner Karen Titchener suggested some health boards appear more focused on reputation management than patient safety.
She pointed to encountering a culture of “there’s nothing to see here”, with patients sometimes turned on when they make complaints.
“Time and time again, and I would say with the majority of our stories, the patients (are) just shut down and they’re not listened to,” she said.
“They’re even seen as a pest and an aggressive patient when they’re trying to bring up something (when) they feel that harm was caused to them.”
It is a depressingly familiar story. And while the focus of Ms Titchener’s comments was the NHS, it may as well apply to just about every area of Scotland’s public service and government.
The SNP’s issues with transparency are well known of course, and that same culture can be seen to infect all areas. How often are we repeatedly assured there is no problem with a particular project only for it to later emerge costs have spiralled?
On health boards, Dr Iain Kennedy, chairman of BMA Scotland, rightly said the culture is set at the top. "It’s really important that whoever is First Minister in Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for Health, they set the culture, as do the MSPs in Holyrood.
“The message has to be clear that those clinicians, those doctors who raise concerns about patient safety and wrongdoing, will be listened to, they will be rewarded, they will be encouraged, and the focus will not go on to them, but it will go on to the patient safety and wrongdoing concerns that they raise.”
Frankly, the only way services – and wider government – will going to improve is if lessons are learned and mistakes are admitted.
And the people who always know best are those on the frontline, not those sitting in an office drafting a reputation-saving statement.
Scotland’s public services work for us and the response to a complaint or whistleblowing concern must always be to find out if it is true, not to prove it wrong.