Bullying and toxic culture at one of England's largest NHS trusts - BBC Newsnight

Culture of fear at one of England's

largest

hospitals trust the news Tonight's investigation into uhb uncovered allegations of a

toxic

culture

. It is simply shocking what is happening to patients in Birmingham, where staff who raise concerns about patient safety feared punishment. You will be punished fairly quickly and harshly in response. Our findings, the NHS began three reviews, the first by Professor Mike Buick reported today on this type of

culture

of fear. I'm afraid it's still prevalent and people are still reluctant to come forward and our review after their own new late night reports has confirmed many of those.

We are afraid that we have not found any evidence that trust is in disarray in terms of clinical safety, but this kind of corrosive effect of an environment where people are not free to speak or do not feel free to speak, this corrosive effect will have a effect on patient safety if things are not quickly reversed amid our investigation, the trust wrote to Newsnite telling us they would no longer be answering any of our questions today, although they invited us to speak to the interim chief executive, the report states a few things very concerning about the culture of the organization, what I have been doing over the last three months since becoming CEO is going out and talking to as many people in the organization as possible across a wide range of different professional disciplines to understand what how they feel about working in the organization and the way they are treated and what I hear is a variety of comments that are improving and that are proving very helpful in understanding where we need to focus our efforts to improve. culture and improving the kind of sense of belonging and ownership that people feel in the organization, how they are treated, so we are very committed to solving that.

I fully accept Professor Buick's report and all the findings and recommendations made. I believe the report reflects that the overall organization is a safe place for patients to access and receive care and treatment in 2017. Dr Manos Nicolus, a consultant haematologist, was commissioned by the trust to review the cases of 19 patients in the Department of Hematology at Queen Elizabeth's. Hospital that died, found that a lack of ownership among doctors meant some patients died without receiving any treatment, so when we raised concerns when Dr Nicolusis alerted the trust, he told us in November that it was not clear that any notice in All of your warnings were taken into account - there was definitely a lack of safe patient care and a lack of patient ownership, a failure to care for the patient in the way that these patients should be cared for, in a very detailed way in the report from today.

Professor Buick has recommended a full review of the cases in question the written response to the report was inadequate given the nature of the concerns raised and the lack of any apparent formal response or documented action arising from the findings it is not clear whether relatives were informed about the review Surely, all of this has come too late for Frank Bird's family. He died in the hematology department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital after a catalog of serious errors, two years after Dr Nicoluses submitted his report, the trust previously apologized and paid an undisclosed sum. the family his family says he would be alive today if the trust had taken these safety concerns seriously if they had taken Dr.

Manos' report more seriously my dad's life could have been saved because of all those things going wrong that he saw there they could have been changed, they could have been corrected, something could have been done with it to prevent more deaths in the hospital. I feel like he should have yelled and screamed at someone until they heard me, he was supposed to do that. I did more all the time and he. I always expected that from me because that's the way he brought me was by using my mouth and talking and I didn't do it because the doctors are superior to you and they know what they do, they probably killed him and that's it, I know it and they are not responsible because They are not God didn't know they could do what the Lord can get away with.

We have apologized unreservedly to Mr Bird's family and are deeply saddened by his death and the circumstances surrounding it. What we need to do is make sure that we learn when we don't do things right so that we can reduce or eliminate the possibility of this happening in the future and there are many areas in which we do this extremely effectively, but there are areas in which we We must do better and what I am committed to doing is making sure that we do much better, that we support staff to do even better things for patients, because that is what we care about.

Tristan Reuser is an eminent eye surgeon, an employment tribunal has found. that he had been unfairly dismissed from uhb in 2017 initially for reasons that the then chief medical officer, David Rosser, who fired him, knew or should have known were false. Mr Rosser also referred the eye surgeon to the General Medical Council for an investigation, the court judge convicted him. of this action, that referral contained a number of material inaccuracies suggesting that Dr Rosser was deliberately misleading the GMC or, at best, that he had failed to give the matter the level of care and attention required despite a such a critical evaluation of his actions.

Rosser was then promoted from medical director to trust chief executive. We need to do a much more forensic analysis of the board documents. At that point, the decision-making process that may have existed will be a mitigation for why that's not what never happened. dispute, but we just don't know that that's not something that, as the current CEO of the organization, I can comment on because when that operations officer at the time, what did he think when he read that Employment Tribunal? I think the employment tribunal was very clear in its findings. I think the trust responded at that time while we were preparing our original report in November, the trust issued a statement saying that David Rosser would be leaving uhb to take up a position on the regional health board;

However, through a response to a freedom of information request we discovered that David Rosser is actually still employed by the trust, why did this organization issue a press release on November 22nd saying that he was leaving the trust and that it was a sad loss to the trust when he has never left the trust, he is still employed by the trust he left, he left his role as chief executive sure, but he has not left the trust, he has continued to succumb to work, the NHS is responsible for him leaving of your budget at this time.

Hospital, the NHS budget, the budget of this hospital. I'm really not Liberty to discuss any agreement related to Mr. Ross's employment. Great, so understand that David Ross is retired, our state

trusts

us while we were recording our interview with Mr Brotherton, there was an announcement that David Rosser had decided to retire from the NHS, although other senior executives and non-executives are still in their positions. positions. Dr. Nicolusis, whose safety concerns were apparently ignored, says that's not good enough. I must admit that with the current structure I really don't think the trust will make much progress. I think what the trust needs is that the trust needs new people to come in.

Are you, sir, as interim CEO, the interim CEO of this organization. Let no one in the current leadership have questions about his behavior. behave if perhaps they were too aggressive in their dealings with people raising concerns, are you clear that none of them have questions to answer about it? If there are questions to answer, then we will answer them as CEO. I will ensure that Whenever in the organization we are perceived to have incorrect behaviors that are not in line with our trust values, then I will deal with that. Professor Buick says further staff changes at the trust may be necessary as new information about patients emerges. although we know very well that a diagnosis is not the same as a cure