Never shoot the messenger

For those who have had time to read the 'extraordinary review' from the Local Supervising Authority to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, two alarming passages will have jumped off the page.

The first is that despite a worried PEH midwife breaking ranks to highlight concerns over both the quality of an investigation into a neo-natal death and poor midwifery practices, this brave attempt to 'escalate issues internally' with HSSD quite mystifyingly failed.

The second is that after clear warning bells in May over an initial annual audit into midwifery standards, it took until August to decide to launch a joint LSA and HSSD review, which would later go on to discover it had 'lacked rigour and scrutiny'.

Why there was an apparent impasse in June and July is not explained. But, if this was due to the need to jump through several procedural hoops with various players, surely all the more reason to have listened to the 'whistle blower' and acted far sooner.

This week, during his election address, the now new Health minister accepted that with regard to the HSSD brand, 'the community may have had its confidence knocked slightly'.

Slightly is an understatement.

And perception will only change if the States makes a real stance to encourage and protect those who come forward with concerns.

During the same session, one of his ministerial rivals called for an independent complaints panel for the public and staff. He also said that whistle blowers should be afforded genuine employee protection for doing, let's face it, something in the public interest.

If we learn nothing else from this whole shocking and sorry debacle, it must be that listening to and acting on all information is imperative.

Informal departmental agreements are all well and good, but unless those values are enshrined in legislation, they remain sheer lip-service and risk endorsing a culture of fear and complacency.