Good News about the 'Duty of Candour'

You may remember I wrote last month about Will Powell and others campaigning for a Duty of Candour (Robbie's Law) with the aim of reducing medical errors and associated cover-ups. Some of you may have signed the petition for which I gave a link. - I am delighted to report a good outcome to this long campaign:

AvMA PRESS RELEASE For immediate release
GOVERNMENT APPLAUDED FOR INTRODUCING A "DUTY OF CANDOUR"

In its response to the NHS Future Forum report published today, the Government has finally committed itself to a Duty of Candour in healthcare - an enforceable duty to be open and honest with patients or their families when things go wrong. Although the detail of how the new duty will work is not yet known, it is described as a new contractual duty on healthcare providers. Additionally, the Government has said that it will give legal force to patients' rights in the NHS Constitution, which also covers being honest about mistakes.

Peter Walsh, Chief Executive of AvMA, said:
"This is great news - potentially the biggest breakthrough in patients' rights and patient safety since the creation of the NHS. The devil will be in the detail. The duty must be clearly set out in statute and organisations who fail to comply must be held to account. But we are extremely grateful to the Government for having listened. This new duty should be known as "Robbie's Law" in honour of Robbie Powell, the young boy who became the symbol of our campaign and whose family have done more than anyone to raise awareness for the need for change".

Blackdog has written more fully about this.

Will Powell is campaigning with others for a Duty of Candour (Robbie's Law) in the hope that it would reduce medical errors and associated cover-ups

Among the online Comments beneath the Telegraph article about Lord Crisp's disgraceful attempts to cover up NHS hospital maternity deaths, is one by Will Powell, who tragically lost his 10-year-old son, Robbie, to gross medical negligence in 1990. Since his loss Will, whom I met some years ago at a SIN (Sufferers of Iatrogenic Neglect) conference, has been campaigning against lying by healthcare professionals, and against the cover-ups that permit them to treat patients negligently with complete impunity.

I hope you will read what Will Powell has written and be shocked by this extract: "As the law stands now, however, doctors have no duty to give parents of a child who died as a result of their negligence a truthful account of the circumstances of the death, nor even to refrain from deliberately falsifying records."

If you have not yet signed the petition for Robbie’s Law, you can access it here.