NHS staff face prison
pharmafile | June 13, 2014 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Francis, Mid Staffs, NHS, berwick, prison
The government is to create a new statutory criminal offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect of patients, which could see offenders being fined £5,000 or jailed for five years, or both.
Likely to become law next year, the move comes in the wake of the scandal at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust where patients were ‘routinely neglected’.
Robert Francis QC’s report into the scandal revealed that patients at Stafford Hospital were subjected to ‘appalling and unnecessary suffering’ there, with hundreds dying between 2005 and 2008, many of whom were not cleaned properly or given medicines, food and drink.
The new law will apply in England and Wales, with clauses covering the two new offences added to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament.
Professor Don Berwick’s report in the wake of Francis recommended that patient safety should be prioritised above all else and that the NHS must “engage, empower, and hear patients and carers at all times”.
But in Berwick’s opinion, NHS staff are not to blame for scandals such as Mid Staffs. “In the vast majority of cases it is the systems, procedures, conditions, environment and constraints they face that lead to patient safety problems,” he insisted.
He warned that criminal sanctions against the NHS “should be extremely rare, and should function primarily as a deterrent to wilful or reckless neglect or mistreatment”.
Concerns from the Medical Defence Union (MDU) that existing legislation already provides adequate safeguards were brushed aside by the government, which said that the new offences of acting deliberately or with a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude “represents a step up in severity from many of the existing offences”.
There are offences such as physical violence for which carers could currently be charged, but the government argues that “existing legislation is not sufficient to cover each and every situation that an offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect would”.
The new amendments will bring patient care into line with similar offences and penalties under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
Adam Hill
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