Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has announced proposals for a new ‘duty of candour’, designed to give patients and local clinicians “more power to hold the NHS to account”.
The contractual Duty of Candour in healthcare will be an enforceable duty on providers to be open and honest with patients or their families when things go wrong, ensuring they receive information about any investigations and encouraging the NHS to learn lessons. The Health Secretary said that being open with patients when something goes wrong is a key component of developing a safety culture – where all incidents are reported, discussed, investigated and learned from. The consultation proposes to contractually require providers of NHS funded care to be open according to the principles of the ‘Being Open’ policy published by the National Patient Safety Agency. To avoid unnecessary bureaucracy, the Government proposes that enforcement of the requirement to be open is limited to those incidents involving moderate and severe harm or death (around 70-80,000 per year). Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, chair of the National Patient Safety Agency, commented: “When something goes wrong in healthcare, making the patient and family aware of it should be the norm. An honest mistake is something the NHS should learn from. It could save another patient’s life in the future. Secrecy and cover-ups are not just patronising but they are dangerous because they suppress learning. “Good practice elsewhere in the world shows that if such disclosure is done well, patients and families will often work positively with a hospital’s staff to ensure their experience is part of the solution to making future care safer.”
