Scottish health boards should be prosecuted when preventable deaths occur, or patients are harmed according to the parents of a girl who was killed as a result of health failings.
Former Crown prosecutor for the Health and Safety Executive Roger Livermore believes that there are numerous cases of failings which could have resulted in legal action against the health boards.
Investigation
Last week an investigation by the Royal College of Nursing found that as well as patients being failed by the health boards, elderly care were being highlighted time after time as a major issue for the NHS by inspectors.
Roger Livermore believed that there were many examples of failures of duty of care from the NHS in regards to patients who required specialist care and the elderly. Mr Livermore also stated that although there were rules in place to ensure that patients were cared for, legislation was not being enforced.
He said: “There are critical incidents reports from all over Scotland which show serious harm – often fatalities – which, if you look at it from the perspective of the law which does apply, they could, and should, have been prevented.”
“Confidence High in the NHS.”
Jason Leitch, the clinical director of NHS Scotland who is now in charge of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme said: “Health and safety legislation exists for a very good reason and applies in all workplaces, but what it doesn’t apply to is the kind of individual patient harms which occur in healthcare systems.
“I’m very confident we have layered levels of scrutiny which deal with those issues competently.”
He also stated that “blame culture” was responsible for many of the issues that people felt was prominent in the NHS.
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