APIL urges NHS to prioritise patient safety through a reform strategy including enforcing a legal “duty of candour”.
The NHS must make preventing avoidable deaths and injuries a cornerstone of its new ten-year health plan, according to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). The campaign group has called for a comprehensive approach to patient safety, underpinned by greater transparency and accountability across healthcare services.
A call for candour
APIL has urged NHS England to enforce a legal “duty of candour,” which requires healthcare leaders to be open and honest with patients and families when care goes wrong. Guy Forster, APIL’s joint vice president, warned that compliance with this duty has been inconsistent, hampering efforts to learn from past mistakes:
“Compliance with the duty has been sporadic, despite various programmes to get it into play. Without candour, vital lessons are not learned when failures in care happen and the same patterns of harm are repeated again and again,” he said. “We’ve seen cases where trusts claim a ‘duty of candour discussion’ has occurred, but patients are still left in the dark.”
Demand for accountability following staggering patient statistics
APIL’s analysis of NHS England data highlights a 30% increase in patients dying or suffering severe harm due to sub-standard care over the past decade. In 2022/23 alone, 39 patients died or faced serious, permanent harm every day – a stark reminder of the urgent need for systemic reform.