\n<\/p>\n
Patients are being put at risk by NHS bosses launching \u201csham investigations\u201d into whistleblowers to shut down concerns, a former hospital chief executive who won a \u00a31.4m bullying claim has said.<\/p>\n
Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby case. She was awarded the payout \u2013 one of the biggest in NHS history \u2013 last month after a tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about alleged bullying and harassment by <\/strong>the chair of the hospital board.<\/p>\n An employment judge found that board members of the hospital conspired to unfairly exclude her and deleted documents when she launched legal action.<\/p>\n Speaking to the Guardian, Gilby said she had been \u201ctraumatised\u201d by the experience and made to feel like a \u201cpariah in the NHS\u201d for refusing to drop her concerns in return for a \u201cnon-job\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel desperately saddened that my NHS career has come to an end in the way it has. It\u2019s had a really deep psychological impact [and] probably taken at least 10 years of working life away from me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been very isolating. People walk away when they realise you\u2019re not willing to play by the NHS playbook and accept the offer to get you out of the situation. Doing that has resulted in being made to feel that I\u2019m a pariah in the NHS.\u201d<\/p>\n Tribunal judges found that Ian Haythornthwaite, the chair of the Countess of Chester hospital NHS foundation trust, worked with three other senior figures to \u201cengineer her dismissal\u201d after Gilby raised a whistleblowing complaint about his \u201cbullying and harassment\u201d.<\/p>\n Haythornthwaite, who resigned after the tribunal ruling, was described by the employment judge Dawn Shotter as an \u201cinaccurate historian\u201d who did not give credible testimony.<\/p>\n Shotter also criticised the reliability of the three others \u2013 Ros Fallon, Ken Gill and Nicola Price \u2013 who were found to have conspired with Haythornthwaite to build a \u201csham case\u201d against Gilby to force her out.<\/p>\n Haythornthwaite, a former BBC executive, was judged to have worked with others to delete scores of documents, including private emails and WhatsApp messages, despite being legally obliged to retain them for the employment proceedings.<\/p>\n Shotter described this as a \u201cdeliberate intention to hide documents\u201d that would have exposed \u201cthe true part\u201d played by him.<\/p>\n A barrister for the Countess of Chester hospital told the tribunal there was no intention to deceive. However, judges rejected this claim as being without \u201cany validity given the extent of [their] failure to disclose\u201d.<\/p>\n Gilby, a consultant in intensive care and anaesthesia, was suspended on full pay at the hospital in 2022, shortly after making a protected disclosure about Haythornthwaite\u2019s \u201cunacceptable and bullying\u201d behaviour.<\/p>\n She said she and her legal team were now exploring whether to make a criminal complaint against Haythornthwaite after the tribunal\u2019s findings. One of the offences being considered as the basis for a possible complaint is alleged misfeasance in public office, in which a senior figure has knowingly misused or abused their power.<\/p>\n Haythornthwaite told the Guardian he denied any allegation of criminal wrongdoing and said he would not comment on \u201cunspecified allegations by unspecified people\u201d.<\/p>\n He rejects the claim that his behaviour was \u201cunacceptable and bullying\u201d and contests the tribunal\u2019s finding that his evidence was not credible, and that he deliberately hid documents.<\/p>\n Gilby told the tribunal she was offered a \u201cnon-job\u201d with NHS England if she dropped her complaints, which she refused to do, which is when the trust\u2019s chair launched a misconduct investigation into her.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cSham investigations appear to be increasingly and frequently used as a way of manipulating somebody out of an organisation or closing down concerns inappropriately. I think it is a very common problem across the NHS. I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s endemic but it\u2019s happening too often and it\u2019s incredibly harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilby is now calling for new regulations for senior NHS managers from non-clinical backgrounds, as well as a legally binding framework for how they operate.<\/p>\n The NHS has been criticised repeatedly for the way leaders deal with whistleblowing complaints. Gilby said she had been contacted by numerous health bosses since her tribunal who had been forced out in a similar way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just one bad apple \u2013 absolutely not,\u201d she said. \u201cI genuinely believe that on the whole there are very many people doing the right thing across the NHS. But unfortunately [these issues] repeat year on year, but not many people have got the resources or the resilience to see it through.<\/p>\n \u201cI therefore do feel that something needs to be done that will ensure that people think twice before they choose to use their organisation and resources to wage personal vendettas.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilby said the protections for NHS whistleblowers did not go far enough, leaving medics afraid to raise concerns and potentially putting patients at risk.<\/p>\n \u201cPatient safety incidents will go unnoticed and unreported and there will be no learning,\u201d she said. \u201cWe see that time and time again. I was acutely aware of how poor culture and behaviour at the very top can impact patient safety. That\u2019s why I was so adamant that I wasn\u2019t going to walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Countess of Chester hospital NHS foundation trust said: \u201cWe acknowledge the tribunal\u2019s decision regarding the failures of the trust in this case. We remain focused on learning from the findings and continuing to support our staff and patients. As this matter has now concluded, we will not be commenting further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patients are being put at risk by NHS bosses launching \u201csham investigations\u201d into whistleblowers to shut down concerns, a former hospital chief executive who won a \u00a31.4m bullying claim has said. Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[22716,578,658,1229,1476,356,736,22715],"class_list":{"0":"post-43437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-exceo","9":"tag-hospital","10":"tag-investigations","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-patients","13":"tag-put","14":"tag-risk","15":"tag-sham"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}