NHS suffers more internal bullying accusations
The NHS has come under fire after a whistle-blower exposes ongoing harassment
By Aidan Robertson
The NHS has come under scrutiny after an inquiry has been made into its culture surrounding bullying and safety of staff members. This comes after a heap of accusations concerning toxic workplace environments and constant harassment among fellow nurses, with some such as Miguel Ng saying it left him feeling suicidal.
In addition to these three other ex-employees have reported similar experiences of bullying in their workplace and despite raising concerns with the Health Secretary Neil Gray, Miguel was informed that the inquiry was “independent” from the government and its ministers.
The allegations include senior officials yelling and verbally abusing staff, discriminating against them based on race and expressing anger by hitting and throwing furniture. Miguel claimed one of his bullies pursued him around the office and “preyed” on him while other colleagues were also scared to come to work.
These situations have resulted in a high turnover rate in recent years for NHS staff alongside an increase on spending on agency staff to cover the lack of workers.
This inquiry isn’t the first time the toxic workplace environment has been brought to the attention of higher ups by staff however as the NHS has had a long history of criticisms towards the way it has handled harassment culture in hospitals between staff.
A senior staff nurse who wished to remain anonymous said “I would say the majority of staff have experienced bullying in one form or another at some point in their career. I’ve known managers using off duty and annual leave requests as a tactic to control favouritism between staff, prioritising their buddies over others.”
This issue doesn’t just effect employed and trained staff but also students’ nurses and doctors on placements, she continued “Students have left their nurse training over the way their supervisors have treated them and belittled them in front of others.”
“Some wards are very much a clique, if you’re not part of it and socialise outside of work you are very much seen as an outsider and excluded from a lot of work-related information, it’s a still a very much shut up and put-up attitude, you are spending 12 hours a day with these people and those 12 hours can be great or hell depending what staff your on with”
During Miguel’s Inquiry and time at the hospital he conducted an anonymous employee survey that revealed that a staggering 75 percent felt there was a widespread bullying issue within the organisation, with staff turn-over standing at 36 per cent – significantly exceeding the national average. These results with multiple other reports of harassment in different departments showed Miguel just how widespread of an issue this really was.
This specific inquiry has led to two civil servants being the subjects of grievance due to their inability and failure to tackle the issue of bullying and
Since leaving the inquiry in February 2023, Miguel tried to raise the alarm with Scottish Government ministers and officials but they appeared to be wiping their hands of the issue.
