Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) has issued an apology to 29 A&E consultants at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) for not fully investigating their claims about patient safety. The consultants wrote to HIS to express serious concerns about patient safety last year. They provided 18 months’ worth of evidence of overcrowded and understaffed conditions in the A&E department to back their claims. However, HIS did not ask to see this evidence or speak to the doctors raising concerns, instead conducting an investigation where it only spoke to senior executives at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. HIS has now upheld two complaints about the way it handled the whistleblowing letter, apologising “sincerely and unreservedly” to the consultants.
One of the 29 consultants who signed the letter said, “We offered to share evidence of patient harm. We were shocked that they ignored this and didn’t engage with us as the consultant group raising concerns.” Another consultant added that they were “shocked at their negligence.” A QEUH source commented that the inquiry appears to have started and ended with HIS asking hospital managers if everything was okay and being told it was.
HIS has said it is committed to learning lessons from the complaints it has upheld, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has said that improving overall patient safety at QEUH is its top priority. The A&E department at QEUH is one of the busiest in the country and has frequently failed to meet Scottish government targets on treating patients within four hours.
The QEUH has been the subject of longstanding concerns about patient safety standards in the A&E department, and issues such as treatment delays, inadequate staffing levels, and patients being left unassessed in unsuitable waiting areas. The 29 consultants claimed this has resulted in preventable patient harm and sub-standard basic patient care, leading to a number of critical events and potentially avoidable deaths. Complaints about safety concerns in Scotland’s A&E departments have also been raised in Aberdeen and Edinburgh in recent years
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