Speaking up for patient safety: Bernie Rochford MBE in conversation with Peter Duffy & Helen Hughes

In this podcast interview series, NHS whistleblower Peter Duffy and Patient Safety Learning’s Chief Executive Helen Hughes explore how the healthcare system responds when its staff raise concerns about patient safety. In each episode, Helen and Peter interview someone who has spoken up about patient safety issues in healthcare organisations, or who works to help staff raise concerns where they see unsafe care.

In this episode, Peter and Helen speak to Bernie Rochford MBE, who spoke up while working as a clinical commissioner at a primary care trust. Bernie found serious issues and inaccuracies in reports that posed a risk to patient safety—vital information about Continuing Healthcare patients (patients with significant ongoing care needs in the community) was missing from the system, and there were financial anomalies and serious governance issues. After raising her concerns and getting no response from her managers, Bernie found herself classed as a whistleblower and was isolated at work, eventually losing her job and going to employment tribunal. Bernie describes the serious impact his had on her health and talks about how she is now using her own traumatic experience to work for positive change for others who speak up. She discusses the complexities of regulating managers with Peter and Helen, and argues that we need to look at how people relate, rather than technology, to provide a safer future for healthcare. Now a Principal Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, Bernie currently has a Churchill Fellowship award and is researching different global approaches to speaking up.