JUSTICE FOR DOCTORS
JFD is a not-for-profit organisation aiming to provide support, and guidance to doctors and other healthcare professionals who have experienced or are experiencing discrimination, harassment, and bullying, and feel targeted because of whistleblowing.
ABOUT US
We endeavour to promote and effect cultural and system reforms at every level including that of leadership to protect patients, the NHS, and public funds.
We will provide support, lobby, and advocate for individual identified cases, both as a group organisation and in conjunction with others. We will work to raise awareness and anchor support across the sector, the public, local and national government, and with all stakeholders.
Membership is free and this includes all professionals, including non-doctors, who join to help victims of failing healthcare services.
OUR MOTIVATION
As doctors, the GMC tells us that we must speak up if we observe patient safety concerns.
Good Medical Practice requires doctors to raise concerns around “inadequate premises, equipment or other resources, policies or systems” which put patients a risk, and to “act promptly if you think that patient safety or dignity may be seriously compromised,” whether through systems or by the practice of other doctors.
Employers similarly say that staff should speak up – at least in official policy.
In practice, you are walking a tightrope between highlighting concerns and highlighting yourself as a “problem” and someone who may damage the reputation of your employer.
Senior management in trusts often deploy a predictable method when a doctor who speaks up is in their sights.
THIS IS THE PLAYBOOK.
It is essential that you know how to spot the early signs and seek advice.
In our experience the pattern is all too common
A doctor raises patient safety concerns then suddenly finds themselves facing a Maintaining High Professional Standards (MHPS) investigation — an entirely internal process. Possibly this is triggered by malicious allegations made by their clinical colleagues to the Medical Director. After an investigation, the doctor who raised concerns faces dismissal.
Typically, the initial safety concerns they raised are not investigated.
Professor Jane Somerville: Supporting doctors who speak up for patient safety.
Professor Jane Somerville, emeritus professor of cardiology at Imperial College, talks about the issues facing doctors who raise concerns about patient safety issues in the NHS.
She shares her views on the risks facing doctors who speak up and the ways that healthcare managers treat whistleblowers. She also highlights issues in the employment tribunal system and outlines the need to regulate NHS managers.
Before her retirement, Jane was a consultant paediatric cardiologist at the Royal Brompton. She is known for defining the subspecialty of grown ups with congenital heart disease (GUCH) and was also the cardiologist involved in the UK's first heart transplant in 1968.