The NHS Blame Culture

National Health Service or the NHS is a public funded organization of the United Kingdom which provides medical services to citizens all over the country. Majority of tits facilities like primary care, in-patient care, long-term healthcare, ophthalmology and dentistry are free at time of administration. Besides being the world’s largest health system it is also the third largest employer.

Though the NHS has a lot of facts to its credibility, it has recently come under a lot of flak for its failure to meet minimum standards, and issues of NHS cover-ups of these mistakes committed by the staff of the hospitals. The most serious of these problems is the “blame culture” leading to severe problems and incidents being covered up.

Surveys show that many doctors of the NHS did not trust the hospital management or the health department to accept confessions without imparting blame to anyone. Most of these doctors have seen their colleagues make serious NHS mistakes - and most incidents are kept secret. Rarely these incidents (mostly concerning casualties) are bought to the limelight in fear of the blame games.

More recently, a nurse was suspended after a successful thirty year career at a well recognised NHS hospital for wrongful administration of an injection. Though accepting she gave insulin to the wrong person, she stated that such NHS mistakes were common among hospital staff. This only confirmed that the bulk of such “common” errors go unreported and are part of the NHS cover ups. Almost everyone accepts for sure that this is due to the fear of the blame game occurring very commonly amidst the staff or the management itself.

Such NHS mistakes are committed when the staff are under a lot of pressure, mainly caused by staff shortages or personal problems interfering with their work. If nay one suspects an NHS cover up, they can report the situation to the National Patient Safety Agency on an anonymous basis, or can give fuller details. The most important thing is to alert everyone to the problem so that the patients are safeguarded in future.