Blowing it: whistleblowers 10 years onø | Society | The Guardian:
In his former life, Dr Raj Mattu was an internationally recognised cardiologist. On course for a professorship in London, he nonetheless jumped at the chance to return to his home town of Coventry in 1997, to set up a medical school at Warwick University and help turn the large district Walsgrave hospital into a teaching facility. It was a choice he would live to regret.
He found problems straight away. Patient safety was at risk through broken equipment and misallocation of resources; there were factions among staff and tensions with management. In the months before he arrived, senior clinicians had narrowly failed to pass a vote of no confidence in CEO David Loughton. Little was as it should be.
As the youngest consultant but one of the best-trained, Mattu worked long hours trying to improve things. All the same, one issue kept returning: the so-called “5 in 4” system of squeezing an extra bed into cardiac wards designed for four, a policy that left essential services such as oxygen, mains electricity and suction less accessible to some patients. Already convinced this was quietly costing lives, staff including Mattu pleaded for the practice to end, but management wouldn’t listen.
Dr Raj Mattu:
‘I’m not alone: there are hundreds of whistleblowers crying out for
help. In fact, I’m almost unique in that I’ve come out the other end.’
Photograph: Richard Saker for the Guardian
