Culture of covering up mistakes is a sickness within the health system

NOBODY says it better than Terry Prone.

Her article in yesterday’s Irish Examiner was about how medical professionals fail to respect the needs of patients and their loved-ones. It was profoundly important. The casual and often brutal styles of communication she described should have been eliminated years ago, but are still, all too often, the system’s centrepiece.

We criticise the Church, and banks, and nowadays charities, for covering up mistakes or wrongdoing. But how often are there cover-ups in our health system? The first instinct, when someone is hurt within the system, is self-protection. We must hide it, or minimise it, or deny it, or hush it up. It’s as if, when bad news has to be delivered, the only advice available is from some legal handbook that says “whatever you do, don’t incriminate us.”