Reactions to health reports ‘leads to fear’

CLAMOURING for heads on a platter every time a report on the health services is published will discourage people from opening up, the head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) warned yesterday.

Prof Brendan Drumm, said people needed to learn that it was “absolutely normal” for the health authority to publish results and reports showing that it got it wrong at times.

“Over time I think the public will see that as a positive thing rather than a headline to be grabbed for the next day’s newspaper,” Prof Drumm told a health conference in Dublin.

“The challenge is being able to suffer that pain until we can reach that point where we will bring the public with us,” he said.

He also stressed that the overlooking of risks should be seen as a dereliction of duty and should be seen as one of the greatest harms.

And the professor said the reconfiguration of services was all about reducing risk.

He could identify several trauma units where there was no doubt that there was a significant risk to patients based on current services and it was not the fault of the staff working in those units.

He was disappointed, however, that every reconfiguration mentioned was associated with downgrading and cost-cutting.

Prof Drumm said he was also anxious the role of the clinician in risk management was not downplayed.

There was a huge responsibility on the clinician to remain in contact with patients when something went wrong but he had become quite fearful that they had moved on from that level of accountability.

And, he said, more of an effort should be made in teaching medical students to communicate with patients.

He also believed some clinicians were becoming more afraid of being frank with patients out of fear of ending up on the front page of a newspaper.

“We have got to get over that culture of fear. If that gets bred into our system, then we are all doomed,” he warned.

Earlier, medico-legal adviser with the Medical Protection Society, Dr Lyn Griffiths, said members of the medical profession should say sorry with their hands up.

Develop a culture of honesty and transparency, he urged, and explain at an early stage all the circumstances surrounding an event.