Francis Inquiry Report: Executive Summary (NHS Choices / Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry)

Summary

The NHS Choices “Behind the Headlines” service provides a brief synopsis of press responses to Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry, in addition to supplying their own considered summary concerning the systematic failures of care at multiple levels identified in the executive summary.

The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry discovered:

• A “Somebody Else’s Problem” (SEP) attitude among hospital staff; whereby responsibility for problems becomes diffused.
• An institutional culture oriented more to the needs of the hospital staff than to the needs of patients.
• Unacceptable readiness to tolerate poor standards of patient care.
• Failure to acknowledge and respond to legitimate complaints.
• Failures to communicate and share concerns.
• Failures of leadership, with financial changes to achieve Foundation Trust status taking precedence over patient care.

“…even if it were true that there were no other provider within the healthcare system which displayed the combination of deficiencies found at the Trust, it is of very grave concern that the extensive system of checks and balances intended to detect and prevent such failures did not work. Large numbers of patients were left unprotected, exposed to risk, and subjected to quite unacceptable risks of harm and indignity over a period of years”. Francis Inquiry Report, p.25.

The 290 individual recommendations in the executive summary of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry are covered briefly in summary form.

Full Text Link (a)

Reference

Mid Staffs inquiry calls care failings a ‘disaster’. London: NHS Choices; Behind the Headlines, February 6^th 2013.

This relates to:

Full Text Link (b)

Reference

Francis, R. (2013). Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: executive summary. London: Stationery Office, February 6^th 2013. ISBN: 9780102981476. 116p. Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 26 of the Inquiries Act 2005. Ordered by the House of Commons. HC 947.

[A version of this item features in Dementia: the Latest Evidence, Volume 3 Issue 6, February 2013].

Reactions, and the Full Government Response, to the Francis Inquiry Report

To access links to the full 3 volume report, and a compilation of reactions to this report, click here.

To read more about the full Government’s response to this report, click here; alternatively here are the quick links:

• Department of Health (1). (Final Full Response Report)
• Department of Health (2). (Final Full Response Report)
• Department of Health (3). (Final Response Report)