Yet another official review has confirmed what The Independent has reported: that the body in charge of making sure that nurses are qualified to work safely in the NHS and the private sector has been guilty of serious failings.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has allowed 350 underqualified or fraudulently qualified nurses to work in the UK, a damning new report from the Professional Standards Authority has found.
The NMC is also failing to spot workers who could pose a risk to patient safety and to prioritise investigating them, as we report today.
These are only the latest of a series of damning findings by inquiries that might not have taken place if it were not for journalists acting on the concerns of whistleblowers to investigate problems.
Rebecca Thomas, The Independent’s award-winning health correspondent, has been tenacious in reporting the problems of poor NHS services that are so often compounded by cultures of covering up, usually backed by bullying or threats.
This latest inquiry was prompted by her reporting, based on the testimony of whistleblowers.
What is most discouraging is that The Independent and other media organisations have been reporting on failures of the NMC for at least 17 years. We reported two years ago that Sir Ben Bradshaw, who was a health minister in the last Labour government, said that he was “extremely concerned” to see many of the same issues that led him to commission an inquiry in 2008 “are still being raised today”.
In a health service beset by problems, a regulator that is fundamentally unable to root out problems is instead going to make them worse. The Independent has led the way in reporting the systemic problems in maternity care and mental health care – and in both cases, the failure of the regulator to ensure nursing standards makes matters worse.
After the Lucy Letby case, we ought to be more aware of the need to pick up concerns about nurses at an early stage. This is a job that the NMC has simply failed to do in far too many cases.
Since The Independent’s reporting, the NMC’s chief executive and chair have stood down, and Paul Rees, the interim chief executive of the NMC, said the report reflected a “dark period” in the NMC’s history. But it is a dark period that has lasted for far too long.
We hope that Mr Rees is capable of the “radical change” that he has promised. Bringing about a change in the culture of organisations is a huge challenge, and one that seems to plague the health service and many of the regulatory bodies linked to it.
This requires leadership from the top. The running of a regulator such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council may not be the direct responsibility of the secretary of state, but ministers have to take a close and intrusive interest in it. Rooting out rogue nurses ought to be part of a wider safety culture in the NHS.
Jeremy Hunt, who was the longest-serving health secretary, made the making of a safety culture a personal mission towards the end of his time in office. Wes Streeting should take up his crusade. The current health secretary should even consider drafting in his predecessor, in a safety overlord role, to assist in trying to change the culture of the NHS at a fundamental level.
Mr Streeting owes it to all patients to try a new approach. Patient safety is too important to allow any more years of repeating the same failures.
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