New exec: staff must be free to raise issues

Southern District Health Board quality and clinical governance executive director Gail Thomson....
Southern District Health Board quality and clinical governance executive director Gail Thomson. PHOTO: PETER MCINTOSH
The Southern District Health Board should be a workplace where staff feel safe to raise employment issues, a newly appointed executive in charge of quality control says.

Gail Thomson, who has just started as the organisation's quality and clinical governance executive director, arrives as the SDHB's workplace culture is under scrutiny following a damning report into the gastroenterology department.

A culture of blame would drive issues underground, but a culture where people talked issues through would lead to better care for patients, she said.

"We need to make it OK for people to raise things that are happening, so that my team can notice and then take action on those things," Ms Thomson said.

"It shouldn't become an exercise in blame. It's about helping the organisation to talk about things knowing that it's not punitive, there is not going to be retribution, it is about working with them to establish what is happening, why, and resolving it together."

Ms Thomson's role is a new one, leading a directorate responsible for a range of issues including patient safety, quality of care, and accountability. As well as staff issues, it includes maintaining the SDHB's equipment to the best possible standards.

Her team's first task will be to design a "quality framework", which will set standards in all health sectors throughout the southern region.

"The framework, we have spent six months engaging and consulting across the organisation from all different groups of people, medical directors, service managers, general managers, and so forth.

"The clinical governance side is how do we hold people to account for that, so wrapping around the framework are governance committees and accountability throughout the organisation."

Ms Thomson, who has just left a similar role with ACC, is a qualified critical care nurse.

She has extensive overseas experience, including a role where she had clinical governance oversight of 30 hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland.

"Good clinical governance is not a witch-hunt," she said.

"It is about what is happening and why, it's not about who; it is about understanding all the things that might contribute to something failing."

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